There's lots more to do than wander the art shops and museums that surround the centuries-old plaza. Don't get me wrong, its an intoxicating pastime. We admired everything from priceless religious art and Georgia O'Keefe's to original oils and sculptures by lesser knowns along Canyon Drive. Some of the most exquisite gallery pieces were priced anywhere from a year of private college tuition all the way up to suburban starter home. I'm not kidding. "Most of our buyers contact us through third parties, or over the internet," one proprietor allowed, as though pardoning us for merely browsing without a checkbook (or loan officer).
We soon discovered that our favorite art treasures weren't locked up in any of the lovingly preserved adobe dwellings. In fact, we drove over 700 miles in less than 4 days, covering a good portion of the Northeast quadrant of the state. It's in the high desert that you see the most spectacular palette of colors. Fire-bright cottonwood yellows and quaking aspens tucked between rough-barked Ponderosa pines. Brick red cliffs and shimmering streams that catch the late afternoon sun, just so. The artists along tony Canyon Drive were good, but they weren't that good. No disrespect intended.
We followed mile after mile of winding highways, stopping constantly to snap photos or walk out to an overlook. We gazed across one vast caldera, trying to fathom it's size from one edge to the other. We knew there were pine trees miles and miles across the grassy meadow, but they were a blur of green, too far off to see detail. Then we spotted a collection of dots in the middle of the expanse. They were moving, but I couldn't image what they might be. Dogs? Sheep? I brought out the binoculars and said to Angela, "you're not going to believe this."
It was a herd of elk. Huge, lumbering elk lost in a vast sea of caldera grassland surrounded by thousands of feet of towering Jemez mountain range. No canvas or brush could be clever enough to capture the thrill of that moment, or the sweet smelling breeze that rustled through the grass.
Two mornings later our plane took off from the Albuquerque airport and quickly climbed to 20,000 feet. "We're flying right over the section of Jemez mountains that we drove through," I said. Sure enough, we could see where the scenic highway left the main road and started it's winding assent through the pass. It surprised me, as the plane continued climbing and we recognized landmark after landmark from our travels, that the high desert section had very finite boundaries. We had driven through the very highest, most scenic section. But from the plane we could see that within 10 or 20 miles in either direction was scrubby, treeless lowland. And that vast, seemingly endless caldera with the elk was merely a drop of spilled milk on a banquet table.
I smiled and wordlessly thanked the Living God. "You are an artist's artist," I offered up with quiet praise.
Century after century people have come to that area and re-created--or interpreted--on animal skin and canvas what they see and sense. What they recreate, He first created.
And just when we conclude that our vantage point has empowered us to see from one edge to the other of his creation, it only takes a plane ride and a few thousand feet to realize that there are still countless horizons beyond our vision.
What do you believe?
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