Cuba, N.M.

New Mexico is vast. Vast and flat. Searching for beauty here, I find myself looking for trees, for water for something lush and colorful. Instead nothing but wide swatches of brown desert. I was looking wrong. Like trying to write the story without doing the interview. The beauty lies in the rock formations, in the sky, so wide and big you feel like you could just reach up and touch it.

Three miles and 167 miles between Farmington and Albuquerque. Nothing but desert and the occasional trailer until you hit the small town of Cuba. A blip on the map that you could speed right through in a blink -- but not literally, the police live for speed traps there. I never stopped willingly in Cuba. Fate forced me to when my car broke down on the Apache reservation and the nearest tow was in Cuba. Left my car at a garage, Chris picked me up and we drove to Albuquerque to buy the parts needed to be repaired. Drove back to Cuba the next day and had the garage owner install it. Nice guy, sick of living in the city so he moved out here. He told us we should take a trip up into the mountains while we waited for him to fix the car.

Everything was green up there, like I'd never seen in New Mexico before. There were streams and trees and I was wearing ballet flats that got caked in mud. Chris and I ran around like hippies. We stopped at an overpast that offered a view of Cuba.

There's a sign in Cuba that says Natural(ly) Wonder(ful). I wonder how many people bother to stop and investigate that. I'm glad I did.