Highway 3, New Mexico: Red and Yellow and Blue and White

Highway 3, New Mexico

New Mexico's Highway 3 isn't all that long, but it reveals surprises. Nice surprises.

Red, red rock, red dirt.

Highway 3, New Mexico

Yellow troops of autumn flowers that mass along the road, like you're in Oz.

Highway 3, New Mexico

Gentle upswellings of road, then down again. Soft curves.

Villages: Ribera, Pueblo, Villanueva, Encino, Duran. With hidden communities veering off the highway on gravel roads.

San Miguel del Vado Catholic Church, Highway 3, Ribera, New Mexico

White and gray-lined clouds standing by in a crisply blue sky.

Highway 3, New Mexico

A slide show:

 

#30

Highways 54 & 3, New Mexico: Duran Green Eyes

Highways 54 and 3, Duran, New Mexico

I have passed this building so many times in my lopes up and around New Mexico this year.  These eyes. One of the most striking features of the village of Duran.

I didn't know the history of the building or the town until I read this: The Last Hanging Crime: Duran, New Mexico. Well told.

Yet another reminder of how we sometimes pass by a spot in the universe that practically shimmers with the ectoplasmic echoes of personal histories - dramas that were so cataclysmic for those involved - but of which we are unaware. 

Highway 3, New Mexico: Thump, Thump

Highway 3, New Mexico

I was driving down Highway 3 from Interstate 25 toward Duran.

I wasn't all that far from Villanueva when I heard a soft thump on my car's underbelly. Noted it and didn't think too much about it. But then there it was again. .

I glanced in my rearview mirror for a clue, but saw nothing.

But then as I looked more closely on the road ahead, I saw it. Saw them.

Grasshoppers, lots of 'em.

Hahahahaha! 

Reminded me of that year when my daughter was in a play in Arrow Rock, Missouri. We spent a lot of time on the road between Jefferson City and Arrow Rock. There was a lot of rain that year, and as rehearsals and then performances proceeded, we began to see long stretches of road with squashed frogs on them. Turtle refugees crawling across the asphalt. Streams rising. All of which were omens of the 1993 flood that followed.