Ruidoso

It goes without saying that those of us with anything to do with southeastern New Mexico have broken hearts about what is happening in Ruidoso: fire, flood, loss of life, loss of houses, etc. It's a tragedy. We send them our prayers.

We wait by the news for more information about what happens when hard rains fall on ashen hillsides - I'm sure the result is not good. I would no longer dip my feet in the Rio Ruidoso or take a dip in Grindstone Lake - it'll be pretty bad for a while. Those who are sheltering in Roswell can do the UFO museums but really no other place is quite like Ruidoso and Ruidoso will never be the same.

From my house in Sixteen Springs I could walk straight back into a narrow strip of national forest, and from there straight over the mountains that you see on your right, as you are making a sharp turn right in the middle of the Mescalero Reservation, when the highway hits Elk Canyon Road. We never walked on reservation land, but I always wanted to, because it's beautiful back there and that road, 244, is about the prettiest I've ever seen. We used to go to Ruidoso a lot to swim, or wade in the river, or just get away from Cloudcroft. It was like our sister city in the mountains.

We are atually climate refugees. After an evacuation, we realized that we were surrounded by tens of thousands of very dry acres of national forest - so dry that a single cigarette could take out the whole region on a slightly windy day. And that's what happened in Ruidoso, though I have no idea if it was a cigarette. Could have been lightning even, not unheard of. But either way you live with that kind of enormous danger to your life and your sanity, and you have to get used to living with it every single day. My wife and I chose tornadoes in the end; it's easier.

We study the maps of Ruidoso and have memories associated with various places. We did a lot of things up on the western side of town, Upper Canyon, places that are now charred to ruins and being rained upon. It may be part of a natural cycle, to burn and start over, but it's painful to watch, and it's taken two lives already. Not like tornadoes, but in some ways worse. And definitely hotter.