Insane but beautiful.

Discovered today one of the more magical parts of New Mexico. Little towns that are 400 years old. Ruins of churches that look more like Morocco than New Spain torn down in 1680 with stones used to build surrounding houses people still live in. Tiny little towns where people's families go back centuries. Church graveyards with hand-made markers, names scratched into rough-hewn stone. Each town has a church, or more than one, but one town has a store, the other down the road has a post office, while neither one has both. Where the lady who runs the post office is the mother of the person I'd been trying to get on the phone. And then that charming, quirky little railroad-era town at the end of the road where the Forest Service has set up their base camp, 'cause that part of the world is on fire.

It was important for me to go. All I got out of it was 30 seconds, but that was enough. I won't bore you with why. But now I *know* where -- and what -- places like Escoboso, Chilili, Tajique, Torreon, Manzano, and Mountainair *are*. Each one, one of a kind. Our signal and my voice reach these places, each night. We *can't* ignore them. And they're too special to simply let burn down.