Elizabeth Anne VanderPutten - Introduction to My New Mexico

This is My New Mexico -- a land of miracles and manageable splendor. What follows is personal and subjective. These are my impressions of what I saw and learned and often what I felt and thought. This is my portrait New Mexico.

I wanted to begin to know New Mexico; to see the art and history of Santa Fe and Taos and Jemez Springs; to visit the old Spanish villages on the Turquoise Trail and on the High Road to Taos and the old mission churches all along the way; to tour the centuries old Taos Pueblo and the even older home of the Anasazi - the Old Ones -- in Bandelier National Monument; to drive through Cibola National Forest and Santa Fe National Forest and the Carson National Forest; to photograph Grande Valle and the Jemez Wilderness. I wanted to visit Albuquerque and see if it is a place to which I might like to retire (and found that somewhere on Manaul or Indian School Road up against the Sandia Mountains east of Tramway might be nice) and I went to visit friends and relatives.

This trip in September 1999 was my second to New Mexico. The first was some years ago. That time we briefly visited our best man Dan McKinnon III in Albuquerque, who went on to become a State Supreme Court Judge -- the "Justice of Jazz" as he was dubbed by his colleagues on the Bench. We went cross country skiing in Taos that time, but I really did not see much more.

This trip was also to see my New Mexico family -- my step-daughter Kati (nee Kathi) and my grandson Stephen, to see Dan again and his wife Eleanor, to have brunch with my uncle Bob and aunt Doris who have retired and moved to Rio Rancho near Albuquerque, and to see the future retirement spot of my friend and colleague Dr. Barbara Butler.

Elizabeth Anne VanderPutten - My New Mexico

Introduction to My New Mexico