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The Road to Taos: Strangers in a Strange Land
Before we got to Kingman, Arizona, the feeling returned. The feeling that we had entered someone else’s land. As the sensuous landscape unfolds, the light and the air become buoyant, the rock cliffs catch the sun. Signs are everywhere: this land belongs to the Native Americans, the ancients, the Anasazi, who have told me they originated here, not in far off Asia.
Where had I known this feeling before? In Egypt’s western desert? Where Timbuktu snuggles into the golden sand frosting the southern edge of the Sahara? Where receding snows reveal stones and tender grasses in the Yukon?
Between Flagstaff and Gallup, histories older than the Natives pepper the land, a meteor crater, the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Perhaps all humans are strangers here.
Tonight we sit in an outdoor café in Albuquerque’s Old Town, sip our margaritas, and talk about our day….
Tomorrow, arriving in Taos
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