I used to sit on the levee of the small ditch behind my parents two acre property and watch the tall yellow blades of dry grass bend with the cold January wind on evenings where silence demanded more and the day dragged itself west, uncovering purple shadows and mice and things that eat mice.
Beyond our property was a gated desert where I found decomposing Mexican graphic novels and dirty magazines arranged beside a makeshift bed of cardboard and faded flannel blankets underneath gnarled mesquite trees at the base of a a wide crater hidden by more mesquite, nopales, and rises of orange dirt. I visited that hideout dozens of times, mostly to read, daydream, or to lay on the soft sandy rim of the crater, waiting for a jackrabbit to cross the sights of my rifle.
Beyond the desert was the levee of the Rio Grande. Beyond the river was the old highway, once the main artery to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. A salsa cannery occupied a fraction of the view and occasionally displaced the clean desert petrichor with the aroma of roasted jalapenos. On the northern horizon stood the Organ Mountains of southern New Mexico, painted in purples, blues, magenta, and orange in the day’s last moments.
The cold air and wind burned my cheeks and nostrils while I prayed to the mountains through the tall grass. I saw everything all at once, clouds building above the mountain range then dissolving to the dark skies of space.
I know this place. I sleep here, where jackrabbits scamper and dogs bark at ghosts. I will spend eternity here, watching the mountains.