The whole story Part I

We started out driving through Cloudcroft on our way from Lubbock to Las Cruces. That trip was about six or seven hours, with Cloudcroft high in the mountains in about the fifth hour going west. After five hours of flat, hot, windy dusty plains, the high mountain air, the cool fog, the deer and the greenery really made a contrast.

Often it was just me driving, from our home in Lubbock to see my parents in Las Cruces. On the other side of Cloudcroft, down through Alamogordo and past the White Sands, I'd have to endure the Tularosa Basin and another mountain climb, this one the Organs, before I got to their place in Las Cruces. It was actually a pretty wild and diverse trip, but Cloudcroft was the high point in more ways than ooe.

My wife was chair of the Sociology department at Texas Tech, but things were falling apart. She had a good salary, but politics there were making her lose her hair. She too however was impressed by the high mountain atmosphere. Pretty soon we had a good realtor who found us a wonderful house on the cliff looking out at the White Sands, and we moved out there for the summer. The house wasn't quite big enough for us and the three kids, but we figured it was summer only and then we'd go back.

Already we'd go out on the porch and look way out over the White Sands, or go down into the town, two blocks, full of tourist places and tourists. That second wasn't so appealing to me, but the town was nice and friendly. We had no problem being accepted. Some policeman came by and introduced himself as our son was the first black kid they'd seen in a while. They liked us; things were going well.

In the schools though the son had some problems. Looking back I think it was a lesson they did on slavery. It was just part of the curriculum, and people weren't mean to him, but he didn't know how to take it. He didn't know who he was as a kid and it wasn't getting any better. Pretty soon he thought he had to be crazier than they were in order to fit in, and he set out to do that.

My wife and I were walking on a path near the town and encountered a bear, a couple of them. It's a story I like to tell and retell, but basically nobody was surprised. They had bears as neighbors. They cared about how people treated them.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea of moving back off into the mountains, but I agreed with it. This would happen right before the pandemic. We could all see the pandemic coming but didn't know quite what to do about it. It turns out that in an isolated town like Cloudcroft (our kids would still be in its schools) we were relatively safe. Not much in the way of covid came up the mountain and when it did, like everything, everyone knew about it pretty quickly. As we moved out to the mountains, we were about halfway through our six-year stint in southern New Mexico, three in the village, three out there in Sixteen Springs. We rented the house and bought the land that my dad left me when he died.

continued

Ruidoso floods

The news out of Ruidoso these days is especially grim. Two kids swept away at a trailer park? That could have been us.

We lived for a couple of years in the village of Cloudcroft and then out in the mountains toward Mayhill for another almost four more. We went to Ruidoso often. I remember sticking my feet in the river there and being grateful that fresh water came down off the mountain to cool me off at least once a summer.

Fires and burn scars, though, make it so the water comes faster. Even a little water has nowhere to go except straight down the mountain and into the river. Rains are coming harder and faster now than ever before. Chicago got five inches in fifty minutes; Texas got a 30-foot swell in the Guadalupe.

Don't count on FEMA. Don't count on the NOAA. Don't count on warning systems. They are gutted, understaffed, demoralized.

For a while there I was telling people to stay out of airlines too. The FAA has caved in; air traffic controllers are falling over from overwork etc. But that situation seems to have righted itself a little as I'm sure the emergency systems will too. People prioritize based on what's necessary and if they only have a few resources, granted not nearly enough, at least they will put them where they are needed most, and offer some protection from emergencies.

In the end it's up to us to take care of our own. Have you ever heard people talk about life in anarchy? Now's our chance to experience it. The pressure is raised by the thousands of weather events (they will be getting worse) so communities of people have to respond by pulling together and offering what help they can. In anarchy you make your own government to deal with your own problems.

Ruidoso was a beautiful place. Maybe the world is changing too quickly for it.