Aha!

Bragging -
 
I just had a short piece published in New Mexico Magazine in their "One of Our 50 is Found" section.  (Explanation - N.M. Mag also has a long-running "One of Our 50 is Missing " section in which people recount their stories about having to convince someone that New Mexico is actually a state and not a foreign country.  The newly added "Found" stories are about people discovering N.M. - their "aha!" moment")

Here it is.


My wife Marsha and I wanted to go someplace special for our 25th anniversary in 1992.  We had just seen a Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective in New York City and were totally taken by the fantastical colors and forms that we assumed she had fabricated onto the bland, lifeless landscape of the desert southwest.  In O’Keeffe’s words, “what is my experience if it is not the color?”

So we decided to go to New Mexico to see the places that inspired her inventiveness – and quickly realized that we needed to keep coming back to get the full picture.  Two years later at the Taos Art Festival we saw another artist’s work of a sierra lighted by an equally impossible combination of abstractly shaped purples, oranges, maroons and reds. 

The next morning before daybreak Marsha and I drove to the bridge at the Rio Grande Gorge outside of Taos. Now, in the darkness, as the sun rose we saw that very-same multi-color medley wash over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

What is our experience if it is not the color?

Aha!