{"id":492,"date":"2005-01-24T09:11:28","date_gmt":"2005-01-24T17:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/?p=492"},"modified":"2006-10-18T18:06:39","modified_gmt":"2006-10-18T22:06:39","slug":"desert-latitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/2005\/01\/24\/desert-latitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert Latitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Kibbe
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\nNot all of Albuquerque was endless desert skies <\/a> and appealing adobe, <\/a> the waxing moon rising poetically each night over the rugged Sandia mountains in the impossibly blue high desert air.<\/p>\n

Earlier this winter, the downslope neighbor had read my father the riot act after the septic pumper backed around the lone pi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122on and onto her property while preparing to pump his system. Crushing nothing but scrub, but violating her invisible boundaries and offending her sensibilities by crushing…… well, something, I’m sure. Hard to tell with scrub chapparal. Delicate, slow-growing ecosystem, but it generally naturally looks pretty crushed anyway.<\/p>\n

To take responsibility for future actions, however, my father set about finding his property lines, in the otherwise unfenced, unmarked rolling terrain of their neighborhood at the foothills of the Sandias. A plot plan quickly led him to the northern two survey markers down one long side of his house, and in a recent visit, my brother helped him relocate a short stretch of fence to allow the septic truck to turn before the pi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122on, still on Dad’s property. But despite measurements and trigonometry, Dad had been unable to locate the southern two, covered, presumably, in the shifting topography of a dry wash arroyo.<\/p>\n

Sons love to be helpful to fathers they love and admire. And they like to show them up, too. So on our own recent visit, I took advantage of the useasonably warm blue-sky day to get outdoors and wander a bit, enjoying the desert sun and pi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122on-scented air, and hoping to find that which had eluded Dad.<\/p>\n

The downslope neighbor’s son was rumored to have surveyed and staked the southwest corner, thus completing their perimeter defense. I did my own calculations and found a bit of pipe — which otherwise had no earthly reason being in the arroyo — sticking up a few inches out of the pebbly sand of the desert within a foot or two of where my cruder methods placed that corner. My “spot” was less to my father’s advantage (and also under a thorny bush), so I deferred to the greater precision of a level transit (and the thornless open earth) and accepted their verdict.<\/p>\n

The last corner was never found. But I did find my father’s discrete wooden stake gratifyingly exactly where I first looked, though I calculated the SE corner marker to be several yards further away from the road. I got Tricia to come out and help me sight that line down to the SW plumbing pipe corner — a line which was suprisingly close to the south side neighbor’s house — and we began to look along that swath of scrub for the last marker.<\/p>\n

About that time, though, that neighbor came out to see if their mail had come, and wondering who we were and what we were doing, came over. After introductions and explanations, he acknowledged a similar interest but launched into a long rationale involving legal setbacks and why it couldn’t be that close to his house, and then marched north about 10 yards into the arroyo (and my father’s land) to show us where we SHOULD be looking. Very friendly, mind you. We politely listened, and then gave up our search, rather than rub his nose in our theoretically more rational accuracy.<\/p>\n

The previous day we had driven up to the crest of the Sandias (10,678′) and taken a brief hike in the snow 1\/4-mile or so along the precipitous rim, until we’d come to a point where we could look down into the foothills and my parent’s neighborhood a mile or so below, and hopefully see their house. I took a telephoto image, which I could then also digitally zoom in on, and indeed, we could hazily make out their drive, and the neighboring houses. But from roughly a mile away, the land looked so spacious, ample beyond words. Houses dotted innumerably about, yes, but sharing that vast openness the western desert offers.<\/p>\n

I thought of that contrast — the lack of borders from the perspective of distance, the rationalized but irrational, greedy protectiveness of humans in close proximity — as I trudged back into the house to report my failure to my father (I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved). And I thought about the age-old adage that good fences make good neighbors. Here I’d admired the neighborhood’s lack thereof (the one my brother had helped move was just a very local ex-dog compound of the previous owners), but it seemed that the sense of borders was very strong indeed, and that the unmarked uncertainty led to broad, pre-emptive, antagonistic assumptions.<\/p>\n

Anybody remember The Guess Who? (No, not the more famous band one Guess short of that……). And their hit song Share the Land? http:\/\/www.lyricsdir.com\/g\/the-guess-who\/share-the-land.php<\/p>\n

“Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand
\nMaybe I’ll be there to share the land
\nThat they’ll be givin’ away
\nWhen we all live together”<\/p>\n

Another 60’s lyric rendered absurd. But I’d loved that song, and I could hear it, distantly, as I stood atop the mortared mound of rock that is the Sandia Crest official peak elevation marker and taken a panorama <\/a> the previous day. I’ve never believed in communal property — sounds oxymoronic, frankly — and I have an abiding respect for (some would say worship of ) privacy. But I wondered why I’d been so interested in finding those markers. Let them go unfound. They’re there should they be required to inform some future discussion. But to learn to forget them would be the true accomplishment. Reacquire that higher perspective. And learn a new adage. Good neighbors make needless all fences…….
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Adam Kibbe View larger image Not all of Albuquerque was endless desert skies and appealing adobe, the waxing moon rising poetically each night over the rugged Sandia mountains in the impossibly blue high desert air. Earlier this winter, the downslope … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}