I'm in Albuquerque for a week having a belated Christmas with most of my family. My parents both grew up here, and I was born in Los Alamos, which I guess makes me a New Mexican, even though I've pretty much always lived in the Midwest. We take at minimum an annual sojourn out here; all through my childhood, we drove from Chicago or Chesterton to stay with my grandparents here, a mile above sea level, at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. It took 3 days. Ah, memories.
New Mexico is known as the "Land of Enchantment." It's a sappy slogan, sure, but fairly accurate – nature, things, and people here sometimes seem to operate in an alternate reality.
For example, someone at the huge new Mexican supermarket, Pro's Ranch, thought this candy display passed for totally un-creepy:
To be fair, this is Mexican candy, not New Mexican candy, but still. It's called Paleta Payoso, and it's apparently a marshmallow lollypop. I seriously regret not buying one, especially since it's arguably even creepier when unwrapped. I found this shot online:
Yikes! Those cold, dead eyes are not particularly appetizing.
On a slightly more serious and decidedly more sentimental note, there's something positively surreal about the sky here. It's gigantic. One of my favorite things about Albuquerque is that no matter how cloudy it is, you can always find a patch of blue somewhere up there. As much as I love it, the same cannot be said for Chicago. Sorry, Chicago.
I never got around to sharing these shots from last June, when I was last here. Things aren't quite so verdant in January, though I'm not complaining; I managed to escape a week of sub-zero temperatures for a sunny 50-ish. I'll leave with these images for now, and hopefully post a little more evidence of the super-natural natural over the next two days.
