Travel/Adventure
Fire, Snakes, and Locusts
A summer in Madrid, New Mexico
There are several mountain ranges in northern New Mexico and I have been to all of them and lived on a couple of them. Everyone knows about the majestic Sangre de Cristo Mountains that begin southeast of Santa Fe and extend all the way into central Colorado. To the south/southwest of the Sangre de Cristos are the Sandia Mountains. Albuquerque sits on the western slope of the Sandias.
Sandia, by the way, is the Spanish word for watermelon. Once Paul Simon’s Graceland album came out I stopped referring to these mountains as the Sandia Mountains. From then on I called them the Watermelon Mountains. I am not going to explain that but I have a feeling there may be a few people who understand.
Very few people are familiar with the Ortiz Mountains (named after some guy named Ortiz). These small (tiny by northern New Mexico standards) mountains are located between the Sangre de Cristos to the north and the Watermelon Mountains to the south. All the local native people knew about these mountains, however, because that is where they had been mining turquoise for thousands of years.
If you are in Santa Fe and want to drive south to Albuquerque there is a 99% chance that you will take the Interstate highway.
