The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We seem to have slowed down and come to a total STOP if not a complete rest. Just woke up and decided to stay here in Truth or Consequences another day, hike around the lakes, see what is what while the sun is shining and the days a bit warmer. The future forecast isn’t great. Texas was a fantasy. Last night we considered Arizona, maybe Tucson, but nothing looked warmer. We can’t escape the weather and that is the final Verdict.

Outside Albuquerque and Santa Fe the land looks scorched, mostly a sea of sagebrush and creosote bush with some scattered, stunted juniper and the occasional small bare tree with vicious spikes an inch or two long. The wind holds dominion under what must be an implacable sun in the summer. It’s a hostile land, nearly waterless. The Rio Grande we’ve followed since the gorge by Taos is nearly empty, wallowing to mud and Creekside grass, a small ribbon of life. Here in Truthy Consequence they’ve dammed it, created marinas and tourism, power and electricity, maybe the CCC thought a future Las Vegas, maybe they just liked dams back then, bring the desert to fruitfulness, some quasi-Biblical calling.

The inhabitants here seem poor, scratching out a hard scrabble existence. New Mexico, Land of Not So Enchanted Single Wides cooled by swamp coolers and air conditioners powered by mighty turbines. Fruitful, not so much. Thorny, more than likely.

An old buddy from the South End moved down to these rutted wastelands of America to escape the grief of another wife dying, to escape humanity itself, and holed up in his small motorhome in a failing RV park with his 10 cats and a hermit’s pessimism. In America you can find a place somewhere any lost soul can call Home, just drive long enough and far enough, it’ll find you.

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