The Road to Taos

It's been 27 years since I first saw the Rio Grande River coursing through the center of New Mexico, on its way from Colorado's San Juan Mountains. With my car windows open and the radio turned off, I occasionally heard rushing water and glimpsed the glistening river as it catapulted through the ancient stream bed and I sped along interstate 25 towards Taos.

When I drove the 'road to Taos' with my best friend, during our first travel adventure together, the river rolled along to our left as the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo mountains rose majestically beyond our passenger window. Brilliant sun cast sparkles across the Rio Grande and crisp spring air filled the car.

I returned with my family several years later, and we drove through a flat, sage-brush topped landscape on our way to the Rio Grande Gorge - a seemingly bottomless rock cavern in the midst of high desert, and waded, elsewhere, in the shallows. Then, last October, as my husband and I traveled from Santa Fe to Taos, the rushing river greeted us again, a permanent fixture in an ever-changing landscape.