This is a blog about my novel, "The Dry Line" (see "What is this about?" over on the left). But I can't separate the novel from the place, New Mexico. And to write about the book or the place, I have to touch upon magic.
First I should try to explain that "magic" doesn't mean "fun fun fun" or "no worries." Forget Disney World--real magic doesn't wear a happy face. Magic will take you on a wild ride. Like that time on the Pecos River when I saw a raven feather twirling down out of the blue New Mexico sky. I ran to get it and claimed it as a blessing, but you know what? My life started falling apart not long after that. Some blessing, huh? Actually, turned out it was. And that's another story, for another time. I have lots of New Mexico stories I'm itching to tell.
When you come here you can feel the magic, if you're paying attention. I'm just one of many who felt they'd come home when they came to New Mexico. Another was Marian Russell, a pioneer on the Santa Fe Trail, who arrived in a covered wagon as a child. In her memoir she wrote: "This was a land of vast spaces and long silences, a desert land of red bluffs and brilliant flowering cactus. The hot sun poured down. This land belonged to the very old Gods. They came on summer evenings, unseen, to rest their eyes and their hearts on the milky opal and smoky blue of the desert. For this was a land of enchantment, where Gods walked in the cool of the evening."
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Sometimes our worlds have to fall apart, or we have to give everything up, in order to receive the blessings that make us whole. I love your description of the feather falling out of the sky, and your descriptions of the desert--just beautiful.
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