The Great Train Trip part the Twenty-fourth

(Lamy New Mexico ) Well, we lost internet signal again so I resorted to pencil and paper to get the thoughts on paper. ( right now the train is sitting in Albuquerque for a service stop and I have a signal so I am in a rush to get this out before we leave.) I suppose that there is no internet in New Mexico since it’s almost all desert out here. The train went through impressive rock formations at Apache Canyon/Cononcita and Santa Fe National Forest. The thrust out of the ground and split into layers of various reddish brown colors ( “Indian red”) and Creme. The landscape is alternately desolate and filled with pin oaks, pinion pine and old deadfalls thro wn about like old desecrated bones.Hidden away among the trees are houses made of Adobe or made to look as if Adobe was used- in some cases it is membraned cement substituting for the mixture. But the rounded corners, Roof Eves and door jams give the appearance of that kind of look. ( even houses that make no pretense of being Adobe are painted in a soil red color as if it was a “State Color!”

Dry creek beds run through the landscape showing if water was present it would be a force to be dealt with and would cause serious damage.

Littering the landscape are piles of Adobe bricks that give an appearence of having been a structure of some kind. And you wonder what was there and why?

As we get near to Albuquerque,the land begins to be more “desert like.”with scrub brush and tufts of a kind of stunted grass. All along I have mentioned the desert like conditions but most of the day it has threatened rain and occasionally fulfilled that threat. It is a strange, bleak but beautiful land that seems eons old and any mark that humans have put on it , stays there a long time. Things fall apart very slowly. A tree that is a few feet tall is out of place. Power poles are the tallest objects on the landscape. And this is the land that created words like Arroyo, Canyon and wash. Here and there you see cattle, not many and it is hard to see what they are grazing on. Earlier in the day I did see a Llama! Up on the highway there was a sign warning about antelope crossing.  Periodically there are Pre-built houses in a cluster and in the front yard s cone shaped ovens for baking traditional Native bread. . . Well used by the look of them.