The sun daubs the sky hot pink and orange over a row of small, undulating mountains, a few puffy white clouds reflecting the palette like a perfect desert painting. Between me and the hills are wide-open pastures of grama grass and chamisa bushes tinted green from recent rain, spindly-armed cholla cactus and fat juniper trees, their 400-year-old branches turning inky in the fading southwest light. Everything is soft, and the scent of moisture clinging to clay dirt hits my nose – a deep, earthy fragrance. Sunsets hit different in my home US state, New Mexico.
These are Los Cerrillos, the “Little Hills”, and though I’ve been a Londoner for more than a decade, I spent my childhood here in a small adobe (mud-brick) house on a tract of rural land 20 miles south of the state capital, Santa Fe. Like many, I have endured the pandemic alone in a tiny flat. So when the time came to burst out of lockdown, there was no question: I was heading straight to America for hugs, family meals, belly laughs and margaritas on the patio.
