Finding oneself in the Sangre de Cristos

Ispent the night at the Rio Grande Gorge just outside of Taos. The day in town was nothing short of magical. At sundown, I made haste towards a hot spring. A friend that recommended it and a kind local helped me get there. As I closed the distance to my destination, I was closer to the gift that awaited me against the sky and sage brush.

As I closed distance between myself and the spring, I knew pulling over on the 1-lane road leading to the ravine was my impetus. The sunset igniting the bulging, rocky mounds blew away any thought that couldn’t match the grandeur of that very moment. In that instant, I knew I was destined to visit this place, and was lit up and burning, just like the Sangre de Cristos.

I shared a purpose with those mountains. I found it right there, engraving itself in my consciousness. In my heart, my soul.

Allowing these priceless moments, I arrived at the spring. However, the trek to the hot soak was farther than I was willing to navigate with the day coming to its end. With no definitive plans of where I’d be sleeping, I knew it’d be ideal to find somewhere close by.

The temperature was descending through the 30s as quickly as light could escape from the cliffs surrounding me. I figured a town I’d never been to, in the middle of the desert, living my best globetrotting life: I’d stay and camp for the night. I inconspicuously parked my spaceship near my chosen plot, grabbed my sack of essentials, and started toward my home for the evening.

I propped up my 6-person tent faster than I’d ever put it together, motivated by the thought that there may have been a feline prowling about with better night vision than me. I did all of this without a flashlight, knowing it would hinder any feline-like eyesight abilities.

Let’s just say adventure was in full effect. The spot I chose wasn’t a camp site, but I claimed it as such for that night. I was under a tree, on the flattest section of land I could find,15 feet from the riverbed; any earlier in the year, my tent would most likely have been a sunken (space) ship. Plus, I figured I’d rest easy with moving water nearby, regardless of the inquisitive lioness I imagined.

In my tent, inside my cozy sleeping bag, through the ceiling screen, I could see the stars shine like diamonds of pure essence, blasting through a blanket of chill and silence. In my sack of essentials was a sharp pocket blade, flashlight and my pen & notebook. Earlier in the day, I was reminded to “keep journaling,” and that’s what I did. So, in the dark, I wrote.

I wrote as my heart could’ve pounded out of my chest. I wrote about “saving my eyeballs” by not using a flashlight. As my pen flowed, I wondered “for how long I could write to the sound of the river mixed with the sound of my thoughts,” and “how they seemed to blend well ... paired with sight deprivation.”

Even in the dark, the pen and paper seemed to electrify my hands.

I wrote about what obligations I had coming up, obligations that had passed, and wrote about the items I’d purchased that day to detox from previous toxic entanglements — how I felt about them, and why.

I wrote about aspen trees and frigid autumn water that I paint with. I humbled myself when I jotted, “I really had no clue how underwhelmed I’d been by mere images of New Mexico and Arizona. Really, no photo do these two states justice. And what are “states” anyhow?”

I wrote, “His beautiful land has something unique and magnificent to offer everywhere we go.”

I wrote about my friend that insisted I visit this place, and the dream he had the night before:

“He dreamt I was on a tricycle in the desert. His only interpretation was when we are like children at heart, we enter the gates to heaven.

I added more about the stars, my view of the canyon, and the miraculousness of it all. I slept for 3 hours that night, waking to the same bounding sound I fell asleep to: the unforgiving, relentless rush of constancy that flows along the path of least resistance back home.

Forever I am grateful for those pages, the moment I captured those bleeding peaks, and the timeless wandering of my heart, feet, and pen to paper.