New Mexico, Nov. 2012

Lydia Hailu

Over centuries first the Indian and then the Spanish peoples have created, with little more than earth hands, and simple tools, a system of fields, orchards, and irrigation ditches and an indigenous architecture that must rank with those found anywhere. Depending on weather, season, and vantage point, one can seem to be in the Far East, rural England or Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, or even the southwestern United States.

This mixture, then, of the divine and the human in its landscape, the cultural diversity of peoples, is what makes New Mexico so unique.

!viva New Mexico! Happy 100th Anniversary of Statehood (1912-2012).

There is nowhere else quite like you. You offer a sense of space and possibility stretching to the horizons. You keep reminding me, whenever I leave you: that I need to come back to you.

Our journey took us, this time, to the southern most of NM, to Silver City via Gila National Forest. The weather was warm and favorable for hiking and site seeing. The previous Southwest trip in 2007 was mostly spent in the northern region of New Mexico.