On the road to New Mexico — and back

Traveling along I-25 toward Santa Fe on the eve of Thanksgiving, we stopped at Las Vegas to refuel. Cathy went inside and returned with a report that was surprising, even shocking: Everyone was wearing a mask.

This, we observed during our four days in New Mexico, was part of a broad pattern. Returning to Colorado on Sunday via Espanola, Taos, and then the San Lujs Valley, we stopped in the small town of Peñasco to buy newspapers and coffee. Even there, everyone was masking up. least two of the Pueblos—Taos and Picuris—were closed to visitors. Returning to Colorado, we stopped first at Fountain, the town south of Colorado Springs. Nobody was wearing a mask. Nobody. Completely the opposite.

The difference is that New Mexico has a mask mandate, and Colorado does not, at least not universally. At Still, there was something else going on that I didn’t figure out.

Maybe because New Mexico has a very high rate of covid infections. Which does call into question the mechanism of transmission. A columnist in the Denver Post insists that the science does not support use of masks. I think the science doesn’t support her almost militant refusal to be masked. But I will allow that in times the conventional logic, even of science, has been proven wrong—I think. I lack examples to support that statement, though, unless we go back to the blood-letting days of George Washington.

Other things to noted:

The light was blessed. Taos has always had a reputation for a certainty quality of light. I don’t know if this is actually true, whether the light differs in any particular way from other relatively high locations with mountain backdrops. Quite possibly, this is just something that the artist who flocked to Taos said, because they had come from cities and lower locations, and over time this idea of a “special” quality of light took hold.

I can testify that the quality of life was such on our our drive from Taos northward to Colorado that we could see the Blanca Massif from just north of Taos. Later, we stopped at San Luis, driving to the outskirts to photograph the Sangre de Cristo Range. There was virtually no snow evident on the peaks of the range, except closer to Santa Fe, where it had rained hard the week before, the first in moisture in some times. I don’t know what to make of this.

New Mexico is not Colorado, of course, and not all of Colorado is the same. The San Juans and the ParkRange often have very different snow regimes. And this is still early. I do remember in 1999 climbing Mt. Sherman, a 14er in the Mosquito Range, between Fairplay and Twin Lakes, the day after Thanksgiving. While the warmth is astounding, maybe we’re wrong to suppose snow by December.

As for this fast-food joint in Española, I’m hard-pressed to say more than that it must cater to the very hungry or the easily persuadable. — Allen Best, Nov. 29, 2021

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