Crayola Skies and Chile Heat

My home is covered in a blanket of sky that can only be described as Crayola Sky Blue. A place where for a period in spring the oceans of juniper trees release their pollen and make half of the town sick. In the summer, everything slow downs and everyone just goes with the flow. The fall brings chile to make the food so hot I’d like to say my mouth is a regular in the burn ward. Winter brings snow, something that my mother always welcomes with a bag of salt. A place where chile roasting means devilishly hot food and mad dashes, that would put Usain Bolt’s world record to shame, for the only bathroom in the house. Its a place where seeing coyotes running around in parking lots isn’t all that rare and prairie dogs are more common in parks then dogs. Stucco walls with viga roofs seem more homey than brick. It is a place where the buffalo do not roam. It is often called the land of entrapment or enchantment depending on who you ask. I can’t see myself calling a beach or a forest or a green pasture home, but rather the only place I see calling my home is the dusty, dry, mountainous, desert that is New Mexico.