WHERE I LIVE -- Part Two

Some of you may be wondering what it's like to live in an adobe building. Well, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, I can tell you that.

The very thick walls make for excellent insulation, for one thing. These places hold the heat (and the cold) like nothing most of you have ever experienced. The other day it was 82 outside but only 64 degrees inside! We had to open all the doors and windows just to warm the up. Right now, for instance, with the back door closed and the front door open, the temperature in the bedroom/office is 68, and it's 84 outside. No air conditioning needed, and it's very quiet inside! If we were under siege, we might not even know it.

Another advantage is that builders can be creative. This particular house is actually roughly figure 8-shaped. That's roughly, mind you. But all the walls are curved! And check out the doorway from the kitchen to the "mud room" shown below. This sort of raised sill is actually quite common, at least in older adobes, although the openings aren't necessarily this shape. Our cat is afraid to simply step through this opening, for reasons which escape me. Instead, he usually does his "Kramer Cat" imitation and leaps into or out of the room in a headlong rush.

This 27-year-old adobe has one, well maybe two, distinct disadvantages: mice and flies. The flies are a result of nearby cows and unscreened windows, but things could be worse. The cold nights keep the insect population down, we haven't seen more than two mosquitos since September, and when a sufficient number of flies collect against the big windows, I just vacuum 'em up!

The mice are another story. The ground outside is pockmarked with holes dug by mice, voles, gophers, and here and there, prairie dogs. It's a simple matter for critters to tunnel up under the walls and slip between the gaps in the planking on the mud room floor. Our landlady calls it the "mouse freeway." Presumably the fancier contractor-built adobe homes have some kind of foundation slab or other barriers, since yuppie emigrants aren't into sharing the wealth with rodents. I maintain an arsenal of peanut butter-baited traps, but after the first week, the nightly bag has diminished to only one little brown mouse every few days.

Neither the mice nor the unscreened windows are disadvantages for El Gato, of course. See below!

But the best thing about this house is its location. Just a short walk up the valley from this location are actual green meadows, bigger trees, and solitude to die for. Yesterday evening my wife and I took a hike up that way, through the New Mexico Weight Reduction Unit pictured at the bottom of this page, past a large pile of what looked like scattered coyote fur (probably the result of a mountain lion kill), on up to where several varieties of gorgeous and mysterious birds (Western tanagers, towhees, etc.) were having a conference as the sun set.

On the way back we were walking through a meadow at the edge of the woods when I thought I spied a dead deer lying just off to our left. I turned to warn my wife, wondering at the same time why I hadn't been overwhelmed by the stench, when all of a sudden I realized it was a fawn! It may well have been an elk calf, actually (someone will have to tell me if they have spots too), being rather chunky-looking. But the animal was curled up, as low to the ground as it could be, its big dark eyes watching without moving as we stood there, transfixed, no more than 5 or 6 feet away. It was already too dark to get a decent picture (I tried!), and I had no wish to startle it with a flash, so we stood for a few moments and went on our way. This episode occurred perhaps a hundred yards from the spot where I took the picture below. The next time you hear about forest fires in New Mexico, remember this scene:

That's what's been burning!

Adios,

JHF

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM.

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May 16, 2012