My father once lived in a small hippy town in New Mexico where the locals liked to make clay pots and sell them, grow pot and sell it, and talk about the 60s while they all smoked pot and admired their pots.
Then he moved to a remote mountainous region of the state which was quite different. Here the locals liked to spend their time firing off automatic weapons, talking about overthrowing the government and getting rid of the blacks and Mexicans, and admiring each other’s rifles.
Surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of nothing but mountains and forests, it was quiet here but for the nearby howls of coyotes by night and sometimes the distant echo of gunfire by day. My father lived for thirty years among the mountain lions, bears, elks, chipmunks and militias with a simple off the grid solar system that provided enough power for a single bulb and a well that gave him enough to drink of what he claims is better than any Alpine spring.
The arid, high altitude climate of Catron County makes coming here off a plane feel like landing on an inhospitable planet. My eyes and mouth feel as if they’ve been swabbed with cotton and my lips begin to crack and peel. For this reason, it’s difficult to sleep here. My father’s schedule doesn’t make it any easier. He goes to bed at 6:00 pm and wakes up at 2:00 am. We get up and drink coffee that he boils over a wood stove and then we start packing boxes. I’ve returned from Turkey to help him move and we might as well get an early start to it.
His nearest neighbors are a couple miles away. I’ve met some of them. Of others I’ve only heard stories. One of his best friends in the area lived in a tent at 9000 feet elevation and accidentally shot himself in the head. I didn’t believe it until I met him and saw the hole between his eyes. The other neighbors are a bit more extreme.
The nearest gas station, on the highway about an hour drive from my father’s place, has kept up a sign for the last four years that says, “Dear Santa, Thank you for Trump,” which replaced their previous sign of “Obama go home (to Africa).” I also picked up a newsletter published in the region that featured a long article describing the science behind the “Corona Virus hoax,” and going on to detail how Bill Gates is planning to develop a mandatory vaccine that will contain genetic material of Satan of which anyone who receives it will no longer be eligible to enter Heaven.
Religious fanaticism seems to be a big part of the culture here and for as long as I can remember it seemed everyone I met was certain the end days were imminent. The year 2000 was a big disappointment, but it seems rather than wait for the year 3000, every year is now the final one.
Years ago the county passed a resolution requiring mandatory gun ownership. Many people have more than one gun, in some cases more than a hundred. Federal agents once arrested a couple of neighbors for terrorism, confiscating weapons, explosives and ammunition in the raid. In the current political climate, guns again are being stockpiled as many in the area are convinced that firepower will be necessary to defend themselves from attacks by either the United Nations, Antifa or Black Lives Matter.
It may seem unreal that millions of people in the United States believe democrats eat babies and that Barrack Obama is Satan, but after thirty years of being exposed to ideas such as this in Catron County, I am not surprised at all that people are capable of believing almost anything.
Catron County is a strange planet, one of wild beauty and even wilder beliefs, but it is one which is now just a speck in the sky. My father and I packed the last of the boxes into my car and left early on a snowy morning in which the moon shined brighter than the sun.
From living in a 1980s hippy haven to being a mountain hermit in militia country, he has now come to find himself living in an Albuquerque motel with a nice Breaking Bad vibe to it.
That’s only temporary, of course. Unless, that is, he takes a shine to it.
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