New Mexico is a strange place full of extreme contrasts. It is full of awesomely beautiful country intermixed with sprawling rangelands and hard rocky desert. The land in some places is so broken that it looks like an angry giant had picked it up, and then in fury had dashed it hard into the ground. The cataclysmic impact rendered the land into torturous deep chasms, spires, weird-looking hooligans, narrow cuts, featuring towering mesas back dropped by deep blue skies and snow-capped mountains.
The people who live in this land denoted by extremes of topography that sees daytime temperatures soaring to over 110F in the daytime and then plunging down into a bone-chilling freeze at night are an ornery lot. They are very tough and self-reliant, soft-spoken and polite.
Many of them are descendants of American Natives, who claim that their ancestors were star people. Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and Navajo warriors roamed, raided, and hunted all over New Mexico. The Spaniards built marvelous frontier communities in some of the harshest lands possible, giving their names to many striking waypoints, such as the malpais or bad country lands around the Trinity site and the White Sands, and the bleak Jornada del Muerto (Dead man’s Journey) trail that saw many tragic deaths from exposure, Indian attacks, and murders. Some are descendants of Spanish explorers, hardy soldiers, and very tough Spanish and Mexican vaqueros (cowboys). Yet, others are descendants of long riding American outlaws of Irish and Scottish descent.
No comments:
Post a Comment