Whispering Wyrd

I’m back home in Santa Fe after spending a week in Texas visiting family. Seeing everyone again after so long was genuinely wonderful. Family almost always is. But Texas itself, at least the part we were in, hasn’t changed except to get worse. Internet speeds still crawl just barely above dial-up (not a joke), the population has exploded while the infrastructure hasn’t even tried to keep up, and everything looks old, tired, and worn down.

But now I am home again. And the moment we crossed into New Mexico, I felt the land exhale and I exhaled with it. As soon as we crossed into New Mexico the skies actually cleared. It had been cloudy and dreary the rest of the trip. That seemed very fitting.

The mountains are crowned with fresh snow, the air is clean and sharp, and this sacred landscape embraced me the way it always does. I feel like I’ve stepped back into both civilization and sacredness. I’m sore and exhausted from driving nearly 600 miles each way, but the heaviness of Texas has already lifted off my shoulders.

The truth is, the things my wife and I had once romanticized about that little (now not-so-little) Texas town simply aren’t there anymore. People feel ruder. The “slower pace of life” is gone. Many of the places we loved are falling into disrepair or have disappeared completely. Whatever charm it once had has faded into memory.

The only thing that place still has going for it is the relatively low violent-crime rate. I won’t pretend New Mexico is perfect, it has real issues with drugs and violence. Even the nearest Texas city to where we stayed has a far lower rate than comparable cities here. But even knowing that I would not trade this place. Not for a moment. These mountains, these skies, they heal me in ways I still struggle to put into words.

And speaking of healing, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. This last “wave” of benzo withdrawal hit me harder than any before it, and it leveled me for a while. Then came the Texas trip. But I’m home again now, in the place where my spirit steadies itself, and I’m hoping to dive back into all the ideas I had before the wave rolled in.

Thank you for being here with me through the quiet spells and the storms.

~Buck