Frommer's New Mexico
Chapter One
The Best of New Mexico
I will never forget when I was in second grade, standing on the dusty playground
at Alvarado Elementary School in Albuquerque, pointing west toward
the volcanoes. "We went beyond those volcanoes," I bragged to my friend about
what my family had done over the weekend. "No way," my friend replied. Actually,
a number of times I'd been much farther than the 10 miles between us and
the volcanoes, and I now know that the strong impact of the journey's distance
had to do with culture rather than miles. In a half-day drive we had traveled to
the Intertribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, where I had eaten blue, crepe-paper-thin
piki bread and gazed up at people dressed in dreamy rich velvet, their
limbs draped in turquoise. I had seen painted warriors twirl in the dust and felt
drum rhythm pulse in my heart. In short, we had traveled to another world, and
that otherworldliness is characteristic of New Mexico.
Never have I taken my strangely exotic home state for granted, nor has more
traditional culture let me. When I was a kid, we used to travel to Illinois to visit
my grandfather, and when people there heard we were from New Mexico, they
would often cock their ... read full excerpt from Frommer's New Mexico ebook
