La Luz

So. I put today’s first post up and made the rounds relatively early this morning… or as early as it gets around here. There were a couple of cups remaining in the pot after the Daily Reads had been read… so I went outside, put the awning down, settled into my camp chair, put my feet up, and enjoyed the last of the coffee while simultaneously finishing off the remnants of a couple of cigar ends (I’m such a frugal cigar smoker). In so doing the wonderfulness of my current abode struck me. Not my immediate physical surroundings… as Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park is, in reality, anything but beautiful… Nope. What struck me was…

La Luz.

The light. Brilliant crystal-clear light, seemingly emanating from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The sky late this morning was a beautiful shade of robin’s egg blue, with nary a cloud to be seen within my field of vision. If I craned my neck over Miss Zukiko and looked off towards the eastern horizon I could see puffy white cumulus clouds congregating in the distance. But in front of me and to either side… nothing but blue sky. The counterpoint to the light was the relative calm this morning. There was a distinct lack of breeze, and the trees were stock-still as a result… their brilliant verdant arms reaching straight up into the sky and creating a wonderful tableau of mottled dark and light greens against the brilliant… almost achingly brilliant… blue sky. And it was oh-so-quiet at the same time. In other words: about as perfect a morning as it gets around here.

It’s been said that New Mexico draws more than its share of artists, and if you ask those artists why it is they come here, the answer almost always comes down to La Luz. I haven’t had all that many conversations with artists since I’ve been living in New Mexico, but La Luz is central but those I have had. And those people…artists… are correct, to my way of thinking. There’s just something… something intangible, yet real… about the quality of light in this part of the world. And it just might be the best thing about living in these parts.

Today’s Pic: A re-run, taken on NM 209 just as the road drops off The Cap, about 50 or 60 miles from where I sit. It’s the best illustration I could find in the archives of La Luz… even though there are clouds in the sky… whereas there are none today. But I’m sure you get the picture, Gentle Reader.

January, 2004.