A Brief Introduction
Mike Smith
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Anyone who has lived for long in New Mexico knows that this is a state just a little bit different.
Day or night, the weird is everywhere, the feelings of eerie comfort and discomfort often distinct, the openness of the plains and the hills and the deserts and towns able to make almost anyone feel like a stranger.
New Mexico is nicknamed the Land of Enchantment for a reason.
On day-lit days the desert shines beneath the sun as if radioactive: bright and gold, furry with dry, tufted grass. Open swathes of mesa-studded prairie reflect the light and heat of the sun overhead, the sky glows blue from the glare of the land, and people squint to see.
On moonless nights the dim-dark silhouettes of trucks and low-riders smear long, sweeping headlights over rain-slicked city streets. In Albuquerque, and Carlsbad, and Santa Fe, the darkened streets lie empty but for an occasional faceless body shuffling head down, hands in pockets, or the inevitable group of loud and laughing friends just free from a bar.
Day or night, past and present, New Mexico has been a place where absolutely anything can happen — from the mundane and the routine, to the strange and the unreal. The mundane and the routine are, of course, important — people need to eat, homes need to be built, stores need to be tended — but the strange and the unreal make for much better reading.
People in New Mexico still talk sincerely of a UFO that may or may not have crashed outside of Roswell, wonder if aliens are responsible for their cows dying, and guess at the origins of a mysterious hum around Taos. People still attribute certain violent deaths around the Navajo Nation to the terrifying powers of corrupt medicine men, or “skinwalkers,” and the Penitente religious sect still whips themselves to make amends for their sins. In New Mexico, the strange is a part of life, the unexpected is to be expected, and the bizarre is halfway normal.
This column, "My Strange New Mexico," is now the place to read about the very oddest of New Mexico’s events, places, characters, and folklore, from the past and the present. From the mysterious stone covered in pre-Columbian writing just outside of Los Lunas, to rumors of a SCUBA diver who dove into Santa Rosa's "Blue Hole" before turning up dead in Lake Michigan, to the mafia-related executions of an entire Las Cruces bowling alley, "My Strange New Mexico" is now the place to read about it.
Comments, questions, and suggestions for future columns can all be e-mailed to the column's author, Mike Smith, at mike@mystrangenewmexico.com, or can be posted as comments within the site.
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