Epiphany 2012

Today is the 100th birthday of New Mexico statehood; I arrived just after their fiftieth. About 1982 I met a woman who traveled east from the Territory of New Mexico in September 1911 to enroll at my alma mater in Virginia. She said it took five days by train.

This afternoon, we chipped much of the only native piñon that had grown on our property. It probably was well over sixty years old when it died in the drought of 2005. Having weathered for the past six years, it offered little resistance to the blades.

Now it will mulch those plants still surviving the continuing drought.

New Mexico is a tough place for trees. We lost much of the ponderosa forest to epic wildfires in the Jemez last summer. Before that, it was the piñon—ironically, our state tree.

So we celebrate our statehood centennial in exceptional drought, having lost most of our piñon forest. Our state flower, the yucca, didn't even bloom last summer.

We do have a state fossil: the coelophysis. It is doing well, as extinct animals require no water.

NOAA warns that La Niña will set us up for a dry spring. At this moment, at least, the snow pack is good, so perhaps April will bring some wildflower blooms.

O, fair New Mexico, we love, we love you so...

But it is heartbreaking to see these changes.