santa fe refugees

we re all refugees out here in the desert from someplace else. as my friend Ramon asks whose out there with you jamie, all gringos, and i say somewhat reluctantly , yes only gringos. julie speaks Spanish and so does of course ramon whose from Mexico, but that's about the only spanish i hear, outside of our housekeeper blanca. some of us have a real connection to this place, i grew up in scottsdale Arizona when it had only one solitary paved road , the rest dirt and mountain men and Indians actually gave to my fathers little laundry to get there clothes cleaned. we ve got displaced Texans, Bostonians, chevy chase Marylanders, Floridans, Minnesotans, Connecticut, new yorkers, Californians, and the list goes on and on, but i ve never met anyone who is from new Mexico, and it seems a little strange, just like Ramon asking where are the Mexicans? well they most be somewhere because when the weather is good its Hispanics working on the houses and buildings out here, and then at the end of the work day, they re gone and I'm stuck with the gringos. yet for all this there s what i call the new Mexicans, these refugees like myself and julie and my amigo jack who have e taken the place to heart and mind and marrow and cannot leave it, and feel the land, and the sky and the spirit of new Mexico and it sings through us and we cannot leave it and we take the solitude and the desert as a blessing. it fills us up like no other place and we want to add our our bones to the bones of the tribes that have come before us and it would take heaven and earth for us to leave. in jacks case he moved to California and now cannot sleep, hes in mourning and the tear so bad in his soul, he must find a way back to us, to the skies he loves ,to the open grandeur of the vistas, to his beloved four corners and eternal sunsets. we are not from here but we are new Mexico, and so we say bienvienidos jack welcome again.