Monday, September 7, 2009

New Mexico

Listening: Cake
Breakfast: Amstel Light

This morning I just wanted to mention a few things about New Mexico that rock.

1. Breakfast burritos with chorizo. Nearly every convenience store in the state sells breakfast burritos, they’re always big and the best ones are filled with chorizo, a spicy Mexican sausage.

2. The light. The early morning light is breathtaking. This morning at 7am the hills were a bright golden green. Often, this time of the year, the sky will be covered in dark clouds, it will be raining, and everything will be lit up from the sun peering underneath the clouds from one side.

3. Green chile roasters. I’ve said it before, but the smell of green chiles being roasted is one of the greatest smells on earth and right now our home-grown Hatch chiles are tumbling in roasters all over town.

4. Pinon smoke. It’s getting cool at night, soon I’ll walk out of the restaurant at closing and someone nearby will be burning pinon in their fireplace, the fragrant smoke lying close to the ground in the cold air.

5. The grim pride that comes from living in a fly-over state. We’re not chic New Yorkers, cool Californians, or prideful Texans, but plenty of New Yorkers have come here to write or paint, plenty of Californians have moved here to live better, and nearly one hundred and seventy years ago when the Republic of Texas decided it wanted Santa Fe it was a handful of Nuevo Mexicano militia that stopped the invasion. We also tend not to die from things like the latest flu-of-the-week…we get stuff like the Plague.

4 comments:

Maria said...

I have the perfect picture in my mind, Eric. Thank you. I have one of Nebraska too. Not many see this as a place to go when they want to paint, though...although I can't imagine why. The prairie is beautiful.

Eric said...

That's another great thing. If I want prairie, the flatlands begin a little more than an hour to the east...desert, an hour to the west...pine covered mountains, I just walk out the door.
You're right, and I've seen that same light on the prairie, with blue-black clouds above, and it is gorgeous.

Terroni said...

"...we get stuff like the Plague"

made me laugh :)

Eric said...

We do, I think I'm coming down with it now.