This is the image I've had of the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns since I was, well, able to imagine the same thing again and again: a massive, Disneyland-scale parking lot, with the heat distorting the light 10 or 14 feet in the air; a sheer, grey-brown cliff; a huge opening at the base of the cliff, like two arcs joined at their base, the same way you might outline an eye.
In actuality you park on top of the mountain, not at the base, and even though it can get hot, there's a bit of a breeze. The hills are brown, though, at least in early June, and the grasshoppers while like ungreased machinery.
Now that I've been to Carlsbad, that old picture isn't going away. Instead, it now coexists with my image of the real place because, in my memory, they are equally real.
1 comment:
Bonnie--
Thanks so much for your compliments! I'm glad you are enjoying it. Despite what I've said about Fort Sumner, Santa Fe, etc., I liked Albuquerque, and I don't have any malice or ill will or even dislike toward New Mexico. The things about the state that are comfortable obviously don't catch my eye.
Tangentially, did you start a (non-)blog just to post comments? If anyone else reads the comments, know that you can just click the other radio button and post comments that way, if you want to have a name without creating an account, or anonymous if you don't want to be known.
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