Monday, June 13, 2005

A good land

Northern New Mexico--if I did not know better, I would ask if elves dwelt here. The air is dry and clear, stars gleam like sunlight on stream droplets, mesas and cajas stand and meditate on the seasons, and the desert blooms pink with Apache plume and cholla cactus.

Tolkien’s elves would love our mountains, where pine and aspen line the rocky streams, but the valley elves would need to be less English and more Spanish or Greek. (DOES Spain have elves? Greece, I know, had a pantheon full of minor deities.) Northern elves need water and green plants. They will find some in our mountains--high, where it is often chilly even in July, and where moss and wild strawberries humbly do their thing--but the lowlands are different.

But the lower ground has a wild beauty that Virginia, soft and green and damp, can’t match. Even the dust charms. (Dust is the stuff of miracle, you know. Out of the dust He created man, and to dust we will return.) The mountains are blue in the distance, and slope down to the foothills. There the vegetation fades from pines to the shorter pinons and junipers, and the blue fades to honey. Nearer than the foothills, mesas are sliced by canyons, so the layers of Bandelier tuff sit in all their weathered orange glory above the red sandstone.

A sudden little mesa juts out, all brown, for no reason but the sheer joy of it. Along its edges, the roots dangle where softer dirt has eroded. An arroyo slices through the valley floor from the hills to the river. The arroyos are empty now, but when a summer thunderstorm comes, they will be full and wet. When the waters subside, wildflowers and chamisa will pop out, green and pink and yellow, and bloom madly. If the monsoon season is good, it may stay green for weeks.

Shrubs and grasses dot the earth as far back as the mountains, to where trees fade into the general blue with a paler blue above.

Elves once dwelt in the land of Hollin, between Rivendell and the Mines of Moria. Hollin yet retains a wholesome air. Much evil must befall a land before it forgets the elves. Here is a wholesome air, in truth, but where did it come from? The dwellers of this land have never, as a people, poured from terra cotta pots libations to the Maker of this dust, but only to the sun and thunder and crop gods, or, more recently, to Lady Science with her whispers of power and knowledge, and to the tyrant-queen of everyday life, who appears with a calendar in one hand and car keys in the other.

But the monsoon rains continue to fall on the just and the unjust alike, and the drought has ended. The valleys are green as they have not been for years. The rivers are full and the rocks still bright. The sun travels by day and the stars by night. Praise to the Maker!

4 comments:

Lisa Adams said...

Beautiful! You make me desperately miss the West (I'm from Colorado, you know)... there is a certain wild mystery to the deserts and mountains. Virginia is beautiful, but it's a very different kind of beauty -- softer, more refined, its beauty in its greenness and variety of seasons, its wildness in the undergrowth of the woods.

Someday I'd love to come visit you. I'm currently strapped to the area with several jobs, an old car not up for long road trips, and no money for plane flights, but someday... someday... I am going to travel. To Ireland and Italy and New Mexico... :)

Pinon Coffee said...

I didn't know you were from Colorado! What part?

It's true. Virginia also has beauty, but "softer" is a good description. Virginia is at its best on a slightly misty spring morning, or a crisp fall afternoon when the wind blows and the fireplaces make things just a bit smoky, and apples are simmering in the hotpots. :-)

Oh, it would be delightful if you could visit! I will take you all the places we took Megan--or at least some of the places (depends on time!). And maybe one day we can both go to Ireland and Italy. :-)

Lisa Adams said...

I come from the place in Colorado where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains, a little north of Denver.

And yes, spring and autumn are my favorite seasons in Virginia :).

I think more than any one place I like variety -- if all the world were like Virginia, that would be sad, and if all the world were like New Mexico, that would be equally sad, but God is so totally cool to create a world with both places and so many others.

OK, I think we do need to plan a post-college trip to Italy :).

Pinon Coffee said...

Thacia, oh how cool! My dad grew up in Castle Rock (part of the time), so we still go up there every once in a while. In fact, we're plotting a Colorado trip quite soon: Pagosa Springs, to go soak ourselves. I plan to get good reading done. :-)

Jonathan, I think you would do well in certain parts of Colorado. There are a few old stone buildings: not civilized buildings, you understand, but the sort that pioneers built with rocks from their own land. There are woods and water (in places). And there are many high dancing places for the elves.

Okay. Italy it is. Next summer? Anyone have any idea how much 'twould cost? (We're all pretty good at being thrifty. :-D)