To Mora and Ocate -- Hi Lo or the Faraway Nearby

Ocate Peak

Grazing herd

Ocate Mesa

Downtown Ocate

Frack No!

Mora Driveway

The beetling cliff that looms over what little is left of the town of Ocate, New Mexico, comes as a distinct shock as you drive toward the remnants of the place from the south on NM 442 from La Cueva. You're not expecting it to be so high nor so dominant, especially if your eye has been caught by Ocate Peak over on the east, a round mound looming over the temporarily lush ranches of the Durans and the Montoyas where sparse herds of Angus and other breeds of cattle graze or laze in the early fall sun.

Ocate became a destination because of Ol' Abe, one of our neighbors in Sacramento. Ol' Abe was pushing eighty, and he would come over sometimes to chat about God and his girlfriend's reprobate son and he'd tell me how lucky and blessed he was to survive his strokes. He was a wonderful character who took care of Fred and Rosemary's place across the street when they were off gallivanting or kyaking or doing whatever they wanted to do in their retirement. Ol' Abe was retired, too, of course, as I was when Abe and I got to know each other better than just nodding "hello" at one another now and again.

Two Lane Blacktop; Art and Found

On the way to Santa Fe

"Do you get to Albuquerque much?" asked the Native American film maker sitting next to me at a meeting in Santa Fe on Tuesday.

"Oh," I said, "about as often as we get to Santa Fe. It's about the same distance to go to one or the other, but the route to Santa Fe is a lot nicer..."

We travel to and from Santa Fe via NM 41, an iconic two lane blacktop highway through one of New Mexico's less populated regions. NM 41 aligns along a former railroad route that runs between the what used to be the AT&SF tracks south of the central mountain chain, and the northern tracks that run through Lamy, which was once the rail-stop for Santa Fe, though it is 18 miles or so east and south from the Plaza. The railroad builders at the time said they couldn't go into Santa Fe proper because the terrain was "too difficult." I suspect it had more to do with the amount of money they could or could not extort from the City Fathers.

Well.

There are some towns and former towns of a sort along NM 41, Estancia and Moriarty being the most populous with up to 1,000 people in each, but there's McIntosh, Otto, Buford and Stanley in the Estancia Basin, and then over a rise and through rolling country in the Galisteo Basin, you get to Galisteo itself, a dusty, ancient adobe town beside the often dry but recently roaring Galisteo River, a town with no services, yet one that serves as a kind of outpost suburb for Santa Fe these days.

NM 41 stubs out at NM 285 just east of Lamy. Two-eighty-five north takes a route across the railroad tracks and through the semi-rural El Dorado suburb of Santa Fe. After passing through El Dorado, you pick up I-25, whooshing by at 75 miles an hour north and west another few miles (the signs say 8, but I don't think it is) to the Old Pecos Trail exit, where you sort of follow your instincts -- and in my case, imprinting, since I've done it so often -- till you pick up the Old Santa Fe Trail and wend your way as best you can into Town, which for us is the Old Town around the Plaza.

Santa Fe is not a big city; it's quite small, actually, so it's not really all that likely you'll get lost in urban sprawl or anything like it, but the way the town is laid out and roadways, streets, and paths operate, it's very easy to get lost while trying to get from place to place within Santa Fe, or even get lost trying to find the Plaza. It's not as easy as it may seem.