Settling in, venturing out

Now that the house is mostly looking like home, we're getting out into the community.

The weather since we arrived has been such a blessing after the incessant winds and heat of Cañon City. We've had rain (with plenty of lightning and thunder) every day but one since we've been here, and one night we must've gotten a couple of inches in the middle of the night starting around 3 a.m., with so much lightning we were awake for hours. Haven't had that experience since Mexico.

Our friend Katy, who's lived here for 13 years and as a biologist and hiker knows the native flora and fauna well, has never seen it this green this late here. She recently took us hiking nearby on the Dragonfly Trail in the Arenas Valley.

It's flat to rolling all the way down to the river. Apparently this is prime horned owl habitat, but we didn't spot any this time.

Eagle-eyed Katy had to warn us not to step on what turned out to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of baby toads in the river bed, each only about a quarter inch in size. 

The beauty of the land and the variety of hiking and biking options within a few minutes of town is mind blowing. We're slowly starting to learn the names of the plants - so different from what we are used to. Mountain mahogany, ironwood juniper, cacti and agave, delicate reeds and, amazingly to us considering it's almost September, wild flowers everywhere:

You can be 15 minutes out of town here and feel like you're hours into the wilderness. When you pause there's a sense of silence and peace here that's deeper and more calming than any other place we've lived or visited. No wonder the area attracts so many contemplatives.

Georgia O'Keefe of course helped make New Mexico's sky famous, but I must say it's well-deserved. We're at 6100 feet here but town itself is undulating and hilly, and the clouds and changing colors seem much closer to the ground here than in Colorado.

This is a typically complex cloud pattern, looking out from our front porch 

Sunset

The Saturday morning farmer's market is a happening place, especially now with summer produce at its peak and chiles from Hatch coming in. Chile is of course serious business in New Mexico, and particularly in our area with the lion's share of the state's chile farming being little more than an hour away. 

There was a line 20 people deep at the Albertson's supermarket last Sunday morning because 30 pound bags of chiles were on sale for $13 instead of $22, with free roasting. The limit was 2 bags per customer, and every cart had two bags in it. The chiles are stacked on pallets in the produce area, and are labeled mild, medium, hot and extra hot. The "mild" pallet went untouched, as you might expect. We think we may be the only household in Silver City without a dedicated freezer for chile - something we may have to remedy. 

The farmer's market opens at 8:30 and you have to be there then to have any hope of snagging a local melon. Too many U.S. farmer's markets have so many non-food vendors (from arts and crafts to soaps and rugs) that food seems like a sideline, but not so in Silver City, where in addition to the full range of local fruits and vegetables you can buy pastured heirloom chickens and pork, local grass-fed beef, goat cheeses, organic herbs and local herbal tinctures. 

It's the best farmer's market we've seen in the U.S. but today both here and at the local food co-op down the street they were conducting surveys to see how to do even better:

With too many daily hikes to choose from and larder full of green chile and pintos we're ready to venture out for music and art now, where again in sharp contrast to our former home there's so much happening we realize we need to be selective or we'll go broke and/or exhaust ourselves in short order. It would take a couple of days to scratch the surface of the local art galleries, and every weekend there seems to be some musical event or lecture or yoga workshop we want to attend. 

We just joined Mimbres Arts, the wonderful local arts council that's won multiple awards at the best organization of its kind in the state. Next up on their calendar is a roots, folk and bluegrass festival called Pickamania:

Hopefully you can see why we wake up most mornings wondering what we did to be lucky enough to live here.