In which New Mexico casts its spell (part I).

Enough time has passed since being home in July that most of the little details have faded. What's left are these pictures, with all the sights, smells, and flavors of memory they evoke. It's now December in Hamburg, with temperatures teetering on the freezing point and Christmas markets wafting their Glühwein-scented good cheer around dark street corners. This trip feels like forever ago, though really it was only about four months. My current setting is just so different, and the wild, New Mexico landscape seems all the more otherworldly when revisited through this lens of a few full months, and some 5000+ miles of space.   

Quick recap: After a night in Boston and almost a week with family in the humid lushness that was Indiana/Michigan, my parents, Hamburg friend, and I flew southwest to Albuquerque and got settled into the parental casa and casita. A "monsoon season"-y storm was brewing and swallowed up the sky just after taking the 3-legged wonderspaniel for a walk. There wasn't much rain to show for it in the end though, and the drought continued unquenched for another day.

It had been about a year and a half since my last trip to the Land of Enchantment (and then for only 3 days) and I was itching to do my favorite hike: the volcano sunrise. I always like to do it at the beginning of the trip when jetlag is still working in my favor (waking up early is easy when your body thinks it's 8 hours later), though it was a bit rougher this time because of having been in the States for a week already. It was pretty cloudy when friend and I got up pre-dawn, which can be hit or miss when it comes to sunrise quality. Last time it had been a miss (rain, sigh), but most of the times before had turned out to be varying degrees of spectacular (like this one or that one time or, hey Asa, that sky!). This day presented a few minutes of knockout yum before the sun disappeared into the layer of clouds above the Sandias.

You can tell when the sun is about to crest over the mountaintops by the approaching stripe of hot pink desert in the distance, where it has already touched down. 

And once it does clear the mountain, the whole valley is flooded with a flat, golden light within seconds, illuminating everything but the long, volcano-shaped shadows.

 

As always in ABQ, many hot air balloons were taking off in the distance, getting in an early morning ride before the heat of the day. 

The light show over and bodies ready for breakfast, we wandered through the bunny-studded shrubs back to the car, and traded the expansive desert landscape for hot chocolate and breakfast burritos at a heavily air-conditioned diner on nearby Route 66.

As a friend was visiting, many of our adventures included best-of-intro-to-the-great-american-southwest locations where I have been many times but also want my friends to see. The next hike on the to-do list was Tent Rocks, which we drove to early the next morning with hopes of beating the heat. It was mid-morning by the time we arrived and already getting hot, though still dark and cool between the close walls of the slot canyon.

We reached the top of the mesa and in the glory of the full sun and ate our sandwiches with a killer view while smearing on sunscreen and chugging water. Pasty northern thing that I am, I couldn't take the sun for long and was soon hiking back down amidst the shadows of the junipers and hoodoos.

The Mighty French Poodle rises!
No, really, look at this undeniably poodle-shaped profile:

By the time we got back to the car (and released the furnace within it), it was still pretty early in the day, so we decided to adventure over to Madrid on about 40 miles of freshly-paved to never-paved roads. We were also getting low on water and were relieved to finally come across a convenience store that could sell us drinkables.

Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid, coal town gone bust, turned colorful artist colony) was having a sleepy kind of day. We ended up chatting with quite a few people, local artists and other tourists, and inevitably had trouble answering the first question that always came up -- "Where you from?". (Well, Germany I guess, though he's actually French, but my parents are in Albuquerque so I've been here a few times before, his first time though, but I actually grew up in Maine so this is still pretty exotic for me...). We poked around for a bit, then got some homemade Mexican hot chocolate gelato (and vanilla caramel green chili gelato, because yolo), and headed down the Turquoise Trail along the eastern side of the Sandias, back home.

The day wasn't over yet though. Once back in Albuquerque, we picked up the parentals and headed back to the mountains, where we dined on New Mexican cuisine while watching a huge rainstorm water the west, dropping to the earth in a funnel-like fashion.

Then, of course, we took the cable car up the mountain as the sun turned the cliffs sandia-pink, and watched it set most dramatically over the city, leaving a lightning show in tow.

Welcome to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.

In which it snows and ballooning gets checked off on the bucket list (New Mexico part V).

To pick up where the last adventure left off, the hiking party split up with the two older members driving south and the two younger members continuing north. We first stopped off in Santa Fe, where we had a peek at the Old Town Plaza and went to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Man, that woman was simply amazing. She's long gone but I've still got such an awesome crush on her, and have for years. Respect.

It was late by the time we were done with fooding and schmoozing, so we stayed the night in the capital before continuing north to Taos the next day, were we were going to visit a dear friend near the toes of the Rockies. (This friend also happens to be an incredible writer with a wonderful blog and three books under her belt.) There we were warmly welcomed into her sweet abode with a view and spoiled with incredible cuisine -- spicy hot cider, gourmet popcorn, amazing chili, purple cornbread with purple tater soup, divine breakfast quinoa with freshly made almond milk... .. . ahhhhh. And wonderful company around a warm kiva fireplace, of course. (Thank you!)

The sky twisted itself up in all sorts of dramatic ways that night, and was photographed in the process on a very cold and very windy stroll.

The sun rose the next morning behind snow-dusted mountains, spilling silently over the violet valley below. We decided that, in order to best and most comfortably explore those towering land masses, it was necessary to drive the 85-mile Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway. As it turned out, this was a most excellent idea. Golden aspens bursting out of a sparkling white wonderland, burbling streams, picnicking in alpine fields... This, too, is New Mexico? How enchanting!

Unfortunately the car needed to be back in Albuquerque by early evening, and as it couldn't drive itself, we had to cut the adventure short. One quick trip to the heart-thumpening river gorge and it was time for Auf Wiedersehen.

Fortunately we didn't have to wait long for the next adventure, which started early early the next morning. My parents had received a certificate for a private balloon flight (from themselves) for their wedding anniversary and were able to add a couple passengers on at the end. We'd already signed up to fly one morning the week before, but the pilot had decided at the last minute that the weather conditions were not up to par. We had more luck on the second try, hoorah hoorah. Part of the experience is helping to get the balloon set up, which is first rolled out of a van and inflated with industrial fans. Next the pilot uses the burner to pump hot flames (and thus hot air) into the balloon until it rises and the basket can be uprighted. Then we all hop in, and literally before you know it, you're 10, 20 feet off the ground. It's absolutely silent except for the wooshing of the burner from time to time, and as you go fly with the wind, there is no wind, er, blowing on you. This fact plus the burner right above you leads to a pleasantly cozy flying experience.

So, off we went. Rising with the sun over Albuquerque.

I'm always struck at how the city just comes to an abrupt stop and turns into desert, and there was no clearer place to see the difference than here.

Balloon Fiesta had ended a couple days prior, but there were still many other balloonists in the area taking advantage of the beautiful conditions.

Check out those cute little volcanoes on the right! Remember them?

One thing we learned was that dogs are generally extremely annoyed with balloons, one reason being because the burner (or something) lets off a very high pitch not audible to humans, and another being because they're giant unknown objects flying over the dog's home turf and they can't do anything about it. Dogs really did bark at us below throughout the whole flight.

After about an hour in the air, the pilot was hoping to land in a schoolyard. One class of kids at the school was clearly hoping for this as well as they had come outside to wave to us as we approached. But the wind decided otherwise and we ended up landing safely (with one single bump-hop) in the back parking lot of some industrial building, surrounded by semi trucks and barely skimming over an electric fence during the descent. I wasn't too worried as we went down, as the pilot was a very chill and experienced kind of guy. The balloon company van had been following us for the last hour and was soon there to pick us up. As before, we all worked together to deflate the balloon, fold it up, and get the massive thing back into the van in an organized fashion. Check.

I don't really know what else to say, other than it was a really wonderful experience. Almost as wonderful as going to the zoo and seeing baby giraffes. Different wonderful.

The final adventure of the trip (the next day) had to be a sunset jaunt up the tramway to Sandia Peak, because it's Albuquerque and what better way to say farewell to the city than here? Followed by delectable New Mexican cuisine -- red or green?

One more sleep, one more green chili cheese bagel with cream cheese and red pepper jelly, one more snuggle with the three-legged wonder spaniel, and it was time to go. Return to land of Real Life on Planet Germany, in a galaxy far, far away.

(I'm guessing this was somewhere around Chicago.)

I was sad to leave, but not as sad as usual, as I knew I'd be seeing my family again for Thanksgiving in just a few weeks, this time on Planet New England. (With the exception of my Gma, with whom we had had the pleasure of visiting many times while in ABQ. Saying goodbye to her was hard.)
Mostly I was just in awe at the range of things we had experienced and the richness of all the time we'd had there. Gratefulness abounds.