So here is yet another resolution to write more often.  It’s the new year, a good time for fresh starts and new commitments.  And once again, I resolve to write more.  And to drink less.  Although it occurs to me that perhaps I should actually drink more in order to write more.  It remains to be seen.

I recently became acquainted with a magazine called The Sun. I’ve flipped through a few copies over the years but didn’t really become familiar with it until we got a stack of back issues from the library.  In my quiet existence here on the mountain, it was easy to curl up with an issue and get lost in the stories, essays, interviews, and poems.  The magazine is entirely free of advertisements, and I signed up for a subscription.

One of the regular features of The Sun is “Readers Write,” where readers are given a topic a few months in advance and have the opportunity to write and submit to the magazine for possible publication.  It happens monthly, and that is a commitment I think I can make.  So starting in January, I resolve to write and submit for “Readers Write” every month in 2012.  I’m going to put them on my blog too, and I’ll let you know if any of them actually make it into the magazine.

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I never experienced heat like that summer in Tlacotalpan.  My friend Johanna and I were there with a group of Americans, mostly from Portland OR, studying Spanish for several weeks. I was amazed that the native Mexicans looked so cool in the 110 degree heat with 100% humidity.  The men’s crisp buttondown shirts didn’t look wrinkled at all.  The women in the shops didn’t sweat.  In contrast, we, in our very American shorts and tank tops, were drenched and red-faced and rumpled.  When we sat in chairs we were careful not to let any of our limbs touch any of our other limbs, and we drank cold sodas by the gallon.

Johanna and I got up an hour before the sun rose every morning to go for a run.  It was still warm at 5AM, but not quite so oppressive.  We ran away from our hotel, away from the town, and into the nearby rural area.  We saw giant pigs, the ice-man filling his bicycle trailer with blocks of ice, houses made out of rusty corrugated metal and rotting boards, and the sun rising against the few clouds that hung in the sky.

The day before we left Tlacotalpan, we went to the café we’d frequented during our stay, took a sharpie from next to the cash register, and wrote a message on the wall along with many of the other visitors and regulars.  In our newfound rudimentary Spanish, we wrote something about running every morning – “Corrimos todas las mananas en Tlacotalpan al amanecer hermoso.”

Johanna was diagnosed with a brain tumor a few years later and died at age 36.

I wonder if our inscription is still on that wall.

The other day, curiosity got the best of me and I started looking through some of these videos.  When on YouTube, you can see how many times a video has been viewed, and most of mine have somewhere between 2-100 views.  However, one stuck out to me – a solo version of my song “Needles and Pins” has well over 2000 hits.  That song wouldn’t be considered one of my ‘greatest hits’, so it made me wonder what was going on.

You can also comment on YouTube videos, and one of the comments on this one said the viewer thought it was a Ramones song before they viewed it.  Turns out, The Ramones also have a tune called “Needles and Pins.”  Who knew?  All I can say is that I hope the folks who were expecting to hear an impression of Joey Ramone weren’t too disappointed.

This is something I never saw on my morning walk in the city.

People ask me how I ended up on this mountain in the Sangre de Cristo range, entirely off-grid, starting from scratch.  I have lived in cities my whole life, and never imagined ending up here, living like this.  The Universe, however, had other plans for me.

I found out about the property a few days after my dad died in December 2008.  My mom and uncle and I were sitting around the dining room table of my childhood home, and they were talking about my dad’s businesses.  I was mostly not paying attention, but when my mom said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do with that property near Taos,” I felt suddenly snapped awake from a long sleep.  I asked for details.  It turns out my dad traded a piece of property for his old aerial surveying plane 25 years ago.  He had never visited the property and the company held it all these years as an asset.  My mom didn’t know much about it – she didn’t know how much property it was or where it was.  It could have been 1 acre or 100, on the mesa or at the bottom of the molybdemum mine near Questa for all she knew.

Like I said, I had no intention at that time of leaving Oregon and certainly didn’t see myself back in New Mexico.  But for the next several days, my morning walks were filled with visions of adobe houses and sagebrush, blessedly replacing visions of my dying father that had accompanied me on morning walks for months.

A couple weeks later, when I returned to Portland, I met Jeff (another story for another time).  He is as close to a genuine old-school mountain man as I’ve ever met, and he started to expose me to other ways of living.  Coincidentally, or synchronistically, he had at one time been thinking to relocate to northern New Mexico, about 15 miles away from where we now live.

The following year we came to see the property, and both of us were sold at first sight.  We went back to Oregon and started selling off our belongings.  We bought an old trailer that we gutted and remodeled, and it was our home for a little over a year when we got here (along with our four dogs and two cats.  Pretty cozy…).  We had no idea when we came here, but we have entered into a community of wonderful, like-minded people and feel like we’ve been friends with some of them forever.

It all definitely seems like it was meant to be, that we are doing what the Universe intended for us.  I hope my dad looks down on us when he’s floating around in the stars and knows how grateful I am that he had the foresight to acquire this little piece of mountain for me, whether he knew it at the time or not.

This summer, however, I find myself praying for rain multiple times a day.  In the city, the rain or lack thereof seems mostly a matter of physical comfort, or extra work to keep the lawn green even though you live in the desert.  In the mountains, where I now live, the consequences are much more dire.  I need only to look east to the mountain range above us to see the evidence of a major forest fire that devastated the mountain community in the ninties.  From a distance, the burned trees look like toothpicks on a hill.  The national forest that surrounds our property is currently closed to the public due to extreme fire danger, and we daily breathe smoke from the Los Conchas fire burning near Los Alamos, just south of us.  The fire has burned well over 100,000 acres and came dangerously close to Los Alamos National Laboratories, a major nuclear facility.  We all listened to news reports with a healthy amount of skepticism as we were told the above-ground nuclear waste that was being stored in tents was not going to present a public safety hazard (Tents?  Really?)

Luckily, we have entered what is known here as Monsoon season, where afternoon rains are a regular occurrence for the months of July and August.  We’ve gotten a couple of showers so far, which make it a little less scary.  And it smells so good after a rain.  But the amount of precipitation still hasn’t been enough to lower the fire risk or open the forests.

So, we keep doing the rain dance in our heads.

So the only thing I could do today was laugh when one of my friends on the mountain told me that the word on the street is that our dogs are eating all the bunnies on the mountain and that is why there is a shortage of bunnies.  First of all, there is no shortage of bunnies.  In fact, Jeff and I have commented more than once this season about how many rabbits we see on the road every time we drive toward home.  Bunnies have decimated our kale and tomato plants this summer, and their tracks were everywhere in the snow last winter.  And I’ve never seen any of our dogs eating a bunny.  They probably chase them if they see them, but I don’t think any of them is fast enough to catch one.

Maybe whoever started this rumor got our dogs confused with the coyotes we hear every night.  Or maybe with our cats, who have been known to eat a bunny or two.

I took a few pictures to keep for myself, and when I got home and pulled them out again it was striking which ones I chose.  They are all from when I was very young, probably first grade and earlier.  Riding a pony, playing in the snow, holding a giant zucchini from our first garden, sitting in my dad’s lap…  My hair was wild and long and sunbleached and my smile was big.  The photos I didn’t take, the ones from later stages of my life, with a series of bad hair style choices and eyes hidden from view, made me laugh but they also made me sad.  What a bunch of years spent being insecure, losing sight of what is important, making choices because I thought I should.  What I should have been doing all along was growing zucchini, riding ponies, and playing in the snow.

In addition to our little dog pack, we also have two cats.  Palo is black and white, and he came with us from Oregon.  Rusty is orange, and we adopted him in February from an older Russian woman whose son had left the country and left her with his cat.  “This cat is a bum,” she told us in her thick accent.  “He treats my house like a Taco Bell.  He eats, he sleeps, and then he disappears.”  He fits in perfectly at our house.

One reason we have cats is for mouse control.  We’re building a strawbale house, and all the experts warn that you need to protect your bales from mice.  The cats must be doing their job, because I’ve never seen any sign of a live mouse, although they’ve left a few dead ones lying around as proof to us that they’re earning their keep.

Lately, though, the cats seem to have moved on to big game.  Jeff has been gone most of the last two weeks at a permaculture workshop, so the cleanup of the feline hunting expeditions have fallen to me.  I have been a vegetarian for over 15 years.  I refused to participate in dissection in high school biology.  And now I’m scooping fur and blood and guts off the floor regularly.  This morning, there was a large rabbit that was intact save a large hole in the middle, where various intestines and other organs were plainly visible.  There was also something without a head, possibly a smaller rabbit.  A couple days ago I was greeted by the face of a squirrel staring up at me from the floor next to the fridge.  Not a squirrel head, just the face.  Luckily for you, Jeff has the camera with him so I can’t include photos.

Loki is a 9 year old chow/retriever I got from the Oregon Humane Society when he was 3 months old.  He, like I, grew up in the city and is used to a world of dog parks, leashes, and sitting outside with me at the neighborhood coffee shop or bar.   He was easy as a puppy and has never been any trouble.  Until now.  He’s still trying to figure out how to be a mountain dog.  One of his first stunts when we moved here was to take himself on a walk up the road to our non-dog loving neighbor’s property, where Loki proceeded to bark at the neighbor as he was trying to get out of his own house.  Needless to say, that didn’t go over very well.

Jake is a 7 year old shepherd mix Jeff got from some folks who posted him on Craigslist after they had a baby.  He’s accustomed to living in the woods, off leash, with lots of room to roam.  And roam he does – Jake is an independent spirit who likes to explore the forest and will stay on the same rodent hole for hours if he thinks there’s something in there for him.    He’s easygoing with people and other dogs, and I worry about him least of all.

Mona is a 2 year old bullmastiff we found on Craigslist in the Portland suburbs when she was about 6 months old.  She is quite the character. At 114 pounds, she has no idea how big she is.  Her bark and appearance frighten most folks at first, but all it takes is a cookie and she rolls over on her back looking for a tummy rub.  We sometimes refer to Mona as our “special needs” dog.  She wets the bed, has skin problems, and will eat anything that looks even remotely edible.  She’s also the most huggable dog I’ve ever known.

Eddy is a 2 year old shepherd mix we adopted from the shelter here in Taos a year ago, and I can tell he’s grateful to be here and loves his family.  He’s very smart and also very intense.  He’s become very protective of his people and home – so much so that I have taken him to a trainer a couple times so I can learn how to help him be a better greeter.

These four make quite a motley crew.  Their favorite sport is barking and charging at strangers, which to them means anyone they haven’t seen in the last 24 hours.  As you can imagine, this has given them quite the reputation in the neighborhood.  They also love chasing squirrels and coyotes, finding bones in the forest, and napping.  Every morning at least two of them accompany me on my ritual morning walk, and its obvious they love living on the mountain as much as I do.