"Departure" by Melissa Fu

Morning fog blankets Valle Grande and Cerro La Jara.

NPS/Irene Owsley

My UK life is knocking at the door, emails are leaking in: dentist appointment reminders, tutoring to arrange for my daughter, my own teaching and mentoring jobs resurfacing. A small but perceptible shift in my heart, time to go home. Home to the life I’ve built and nourished in England over the past 18 years.

On the final day, I wake early, before the sun. I slip outside to greet the night once more. The black sky, the brilliance of Orion, the multitude of stars, the stillness, the elk whistles. I watch the sky lighten – just like on my first morning. Waiting now, not with a sense of nervousness and fear, but with a desire to hold the sands slipping through my fingers. I want to be here, awake, alert, watching it all one more time, not wanting to sleep through it all.

I watch until the light is strong enough to draw out the silhouettes of the ponderosas. Then I set my camera on a timelapse to record one last sunrise for me while I pack.

After packing, I had planned to go over to the Ranger Station to access the internet and take care of various life admin, but I decide to go to Cerro La Jara one last time instead. Driving there, I realize that for all the times I circled Cerro La Jara, I haven’t walked that path in the morning. Once on the trail, the first thing I notice is how different the morning air is from the evening. Different scents, a different quality to the light. The sun is warm on my skin, but there’s a chill in the breeze, something of winter in the air. Reversing evening light patterns, Cerro La Jara is bright on the east and south sides, with shadows to the west and north. The prairie dogs move with vigor and quickness, not yet exhausted by a day of vigilance as when I find them in the evening. A magnificent raptor soars against the blue morning sky. Let’s say it was a golden eagle.

On the northwest corner, I find red leaves with a delicate tracery of frost. The crystals are so thin they melt immediately on my touch. But it is frost. Winter creeps in the shadows.

I climb up the hill a little, straying off the path to look for dendroglyphs, carvings on aspen trees left by sheepherders. No luck. Never mind. Maybe I’ll find some next time. I will be back. Still, I relish the view across Valle Grande to Cerro del Medio, Cerro del Abrigo, and the summit of La Garita from a new vantage point as I finish my final circuit of Cerro La Jara.

Looking across Valle Grande to the caldera's south rim.

NPS/Irene Owsley

Back at the cabin, all packed up, I wait out on the porch. I’m taking in the view, the light, the air, soaking up as much of the solitude as I can. It’s a solitude to treasure and, eventually, through my writing, to share.

Tears prickle my eyes, knowing that soon I’ll leave and I don’t know when I’ll be back again. I’ll be back in my writing. I’ll be back in daydreams, in lingering over the hundreds of photos I’ve taken. But in person? With limbs and lungs and heart in the high mountain air, with the heady exhilaration of these vistas that reveal to me exactly where I am? I don’t know. But what I do know is that when I do return, it won’t be like this. It will be different again. Each visit to New Mexico is its own universe, with different people, rules, undercurrents.

Looking at Redondo Peak yesterday, I noticed a patch of aspens in the center of the wide blown down patch on the northeast side. I wondered what that patch will look like in ten years? Hopefully there will be healthy forest. There could be more wildfires. There could be managed burns. There could be other changes – infestations, wind events, type shifts as the effects of climate change continue. No one can say for sure. Still, I made a wish, no, a promise to myself to come back and check.

I do believe that promises and wishes help shape realities. We can plan wisely for the future, making different choices. We can honor the past through celebrating tradition and stories. But what we have is now. Grasp it, hold it dear. be in it. Don’t take now for granted. It’s all we have.

Now: Pine needles on the ponderosa turning rusty-yellow. Not all the needles, but the oldest ones, at the part of each bough closest to the bare branch.

Now: The faint sound of a plane up high, an occasional elk whistle, even though it’s getting late in the morning for their chorus, I still hear them.

Now: Shades of brown, tan, black, grey, fringes of green across The Valle. The grasses and forbs reaching towards senescence.

Now: Warmth on my forearm where the sun hits it, goosebumps on the underside of the same arm in the shade.

Now: Gratitude for the wealth of experience, even with its attendant melancholy. To love many places is to leave parts of your heart scattered all around the world. You’re always longing to go back. But when you return, instead of collecting the pieces you left behind, you end up leaving an even larger piece of yourself there.

A car turns up the drive, it’s Lauren and Raelyn, who will drive me to the airport. After checking out from the A-frame and taking one last photo at the Valles Caldera National Preserve entrance sign, we’ll head down NM Highway 4, going south, to Albuquerque by way of Jemez Springs. We’ll marvel at the aspens with golds and reds so intense the hills look as if they are aflame with the fire of changing seasons. We’ll stop at Los Ojos Bar and Saloon for lunch, a place probably not changed much since it opened as a bar in 1947, with elk, deer, ibex, bear, goat, and rattlesnake taxidermy on the walls. I’ll admire the bar stools made of ponderosa trunks, peer at the slightly buckling tin ceiling, and savor the Los Ojos Special, an open faced green chile cheeseburger with fries and smothered in chile. Once on the road, we’ll make a joyful detour through the Gilman Tunnels and take selfies with the Guadalupe River in the background. We’ll make a surprise stop at Raelyn’s house to meet her golden retriever, Bean, and she’ll give me a bag of freshly harvested green chile that she and her family grew. I will take this gift of green gold back to the UK and roast it, loving the smell, and freezing it in portions to enjoy on special occasions over the coming months. And each time I make a dish with Raelyn’s chiles, I will cherish every bite, knowing that those chiles were nourished by the high mountain air, endless blue skies, and summer monsoons that also nourished and created me.