My dear old friend, Jim Terr in Las Vegas, New Mexico, lived through the Hermit’s Peak fire this summer which swallowed his town in smoke—although the fires themselves were kept away by the heroic months-long fight of the firefighters. I didn’t realize until Saturday when Jim gave me the Souvenir Edition of his newspaper, The Hermit’s Peak Howler, that the firefighters and their engines had come to us from all over the West: Missoula, Montana, Cascade, Montana, Pallas, Aqua-Force Wild Land and Worland, their crews staying for weeks at a time in Las Vegas hotels, fed by local restaurants such as Charlie’s Bakery and the La Castaneda Hotel by the train tracks, recently completely restored after years of ruin by an inspired investor/designer—Allan Affeldt—who understands that renovating a hotel central to the life of the town inspires and invigorates many small, previously struggling local businesses. There are no big box stores in Las Vegas (they hover on the outskirts), no Starbucks on the Plaza, which makes it—as a new friend in an antique store there told us—“The best town in New Mexico to move to, offering what Taos and Santa Fe offered years ago.”
The silver lining then, as Jim mentioned, is the renewed sense of optimism in the town—even while the immediate countryside, devastated by the three hundred thousand-acre fire and then by flooding in the burn scars (a result of burns the Forest Service never recognizes), caused a headline in the UK Guardian, “Nothing to go back to: the way of life lost to New Mexico’s historic fire,” adding that the fire tore through “centuries-old rural communities, displacing thousands.” This is, of course, the result of global warming and a decade of severe drought which the Forest Service failed to notice when it set its prescribed fire six months ago that rapidly raced out of control.
Our new friends, the husband and wife who run the big antique store on Las Vegas’ main street, are not dismayed by what has happened; in fact they radiate hope. While showing me a rare 1940’s Zuni Needlework necklace—not needlework but tiny turquoise chips inlaid in silver—they talked about the resilience that marks out their little town. Then, while persuading my somewhat reluctant friend to buy a Taxco silver man’s necklace—there is such a thing, turquoise symbols of Mayan origin inlaid in silver—they told us about the many businesses that have revived since the fire or appeared brand new such as the Buffalo Hall & Cowboy Café where we’d just eaten huge green chili and barbecue hamburgers in an enormous bar, pool hall, and soon to be dance hall, to resound one day with the heel tapping of country western dancers—some day not too far in the future, I hope. They didn’t mention the little roadside stand with the Hawaiian name—Ohana—where we’d eaten the best coffee ice cream I’ve ever had, which provided Jim with his afternoon caffeine.
For me, the white roses on the altar Sunday morning in honor of Queen Elizabeth II and the five-mile-long train of mourners waiting to pass her coffin in Westminster Abbey all speak the same hope of continuity in the midst of enormous change and the kindness of strangers.
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