Country Smart:
Country Smart:
A lot has happened since we came off the mountain, headed towards Puerto Rico. Perhaps the most important is that we have arrived, safe & sound, though we cannot say the same for our luggage.
I am up early, and enjoying a special view of Palm Trees and other tropical plants. In the early morning darkness they are special, shimmering in the same lights I am used to seeing on pine trees. I want to write more about that at a later time, especially if I can figure out how to take a picture in those low light conditions.
One of the things that has struck me in this season?s travels is how smart & self reliant you have to be if you live in the mountains/country.
For example, the same weather that shut down long stretches of interstate highways 25 and 40 hit our little road up the mountain. We are such a low priority that it would be spring by the time the county got around to our road. On Wednesday night I got a call from a new neighbor who lives on our road about ¼ mile from the bottom of the hill. Earlier that evening I had maneuvered our Jeep Cherokee all the way to our place, at the top of the hill. I did it during daylight, riding on four carefully selected snow tires with studs on all four tires. The new guy has transferred out here from The University of California to work at the Los Alamos labs. He is the one of the world?s leading authorities on the underground storeage and transfer of something you can?t talk much about (non-nuclear, according to him).
He is not country smart. He had started up the hill after dark, and slid off the road. Fortunately for him, he had slid off before he got to the parts of the road where the drop would have been several hundred feet. He, his wife & baby had walked about ¾ mile to their house. I told him I would come down in the morning. This is the kind of thing we do for a neighbor, but I also had a sef-interest. Coming down off a steep icy mountain road, only to turn a steep corner (kind of driving & kind of along for the ride), and the encountering an abandoned car blocking 2/3 of the road-that is too exciting for me.
I started down the road on my ATV the next morning, and ran into Wayne Lewis on the way up. Wayne is a great guy. He learned the logging business from his Dad. He lives on what we call saw-mill road. Wane was driving his 4 wheel driv Ford F150 with chains on all 4 tires. He had passed the abandoned car at the bottom of the road, and said he would help get it out. Wayne & I met the guy at the ?scene? a few minutes later. Wayne gave me a secret glance-our part of Northern New Mexico is pretty much Ford country. For sure it is not Hyundai country. Wane kind of looked like a Dr. getting ready to snip a little brown polyp that had become a blight on the road. Then I noticed all the environmental stickers on the car. Wayne isn?t in the logging business any more. Someone says we have some Mexican spotted owls in our forest. Now Wayne makes a living by using one of his trucks to pick up garbage for $3.00 per week from people who don?t want to drive to the dump. I had once asked Wayne how he felt about this. He just looked off into the woods, and finally said-logging was a lot of hard work. And that was the end of the conversation.
The car itself was no big deal. Wayne had a shovel, and went to part of the shoulder where the snow was deepest. The guy gave a me a quizzical look, and I explained that the snow kept the dirt from freezing. With a little new dirt under the wheels, and a little bit of pushing, the Hundai was headed back to the bottom of the hill. It will sit on the sidelines until things get a little easier. The guy thanked Wayne, and I gave him a ride back to his house. I was thinking about how much had truly happened out there. A story of graciousness and a type of forgiveness by Wayne. A wonderful man who is country smart.
