Thursday, October 25, 2007

The American Southwest...


Outside the window to my left, I see very little. I see some concrete, some airplanes...and some more concrete. New Mexico is one of those places that is the home of beautiful mountains, the Taos ski valley, Georgia O'Keefe, and a place as flat and endless as this.

Albuquerque may be kind of a barren looking place, but it does hold the honor of being the only American city who’s name contains three 'U's. It also holds the largest Hot Air Balloon gathering in the world. The Road Runner is the official state bird of New Mexico. In fact the Roadrunner and the Coyote are both New Mexican, which would make sense in their world of rocks and cliffs. That’s kind of what New Mexico looks like. I’m sitting in the airport in Albuquerque, en route to Santa Fe, creepily just killing time. Among other animals, I know that Jackrabbits exist in new Mexico, but according to a postcard I saw while roaming through an airport gift shop, waiting for my colleague’s flight to land, the Jackalope also really exists. Well, the postcard didn’t explicitly claim its existence, but it didn’t deny it either. The front of the postcard had what appeared to be an actual photograph of a Jackalope and the back had some mysterious statement like:

“The Jackalope is said to be a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope. They say it sings in the night with the eerie voice of a human.”

Nowhere in that short, strange description does the postcard mention that the Jackrabbit is a “folkloric” animal. Like Nessie and Bigfoot. The Jackalope is fake, but the Roadrunner is not? I'm not sure an urban gal like me is cut out for all the craziness of the American Southwest.

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