I, too, would love to hear about the readers to of your blog. I think its amazing that people from all over the globe are interested in what you have to say.

I live in the same city as Mr. Hester, a little closer to the Sandia Mountains he speaks of; looking back towards his part of town I have a beautiful view of the (inactive) volcanoes. We both lived in a little city, Carlsbad, that also has a river running through it (the Pecos) but is most well known for the Carlsbad Caverns . The Caverns are a wonderful place to visit, with an underground temperature of 56*F and 117 known caves within the area of Carlsbad Caverns National Park! I encourage everyone to see that amazing wonder, as well as the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in October.

You might ought to be politically correct and use the term “Native American” to refer to those people who were indogenous to the North American continent before the Europeans came. There may be some people from the Indian subcontinent who might be offended by the characterization of “setting up their wares” in front of businesses.

Also, honesty demands that the negatives also be mentioned. Man! Albuquerque, like most places, does have negatives, expecially before acclimation becomes full blown. The problem that people with sensitive skin have in a dry climate, sore and bleeding sinus’s, dry skin, adaption to the blowing enchantment are to mention only a few. The requirement of a year adaptation period before a new arrival can honestly and truthfully see the benefit of the beautiful scenery around him. Running outside in shirt sleeves only to find out 30 minutes later that it is really frigid cold out there is another. Like they say on Fox News, let’s be “fair and balanced”.

I believe you have used this word before. I keep running across it as I surf the various websites connected with KAFB, the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, UNM, and others. What is the bosque (woods)? I have primarily seen it used in descriptions of the western quadrant of Albuquerque. That is one term that I don’t remember hearing or running across when I was out there. Can you tell me exactly what is the bosque (woods)? The only woods I remember seeing in the Albuquerque area are on the eastern side of the Sandias and in the mountains and in the mountains around the Santa Fe, Glorieta, and Las Alamos areas.

Several Hispanic friends, who lived in the Belen area, with whom I worked on the base at the Goat Farm talked a lot about the Bosque Farm(s) which I supposed was/were somewhere around Belen. I just assumed it/they was/were merely a name, and it did not have anything to do with the river, woods near the river, or even a Spanish word for that matter. In retrospect, they used many Spanish words most of which I didn’t understand, but they were good, hard working, and honest animal(sheep) handlers. I really respected them for that.

It was in August the first time I rode my bike across the Rio Grande Central Avenue bridge(Route 66). That first time I wasn’t too impressed because I never saw any water much less any woods. For a time, I kept asking, “Where’s the water?” I was like the writer of the Book of Jude in the Bible who described the “clouds without water” that came from the Arabian desert across Palestine during the dry season which brought very little rain. For a time I thought New Mexico had rivers without water. As I biked farther and farther away from KAFB, down to the Belen area and beyond, I noticed that the area near the river was a distinct greener, and there seemed to be more farming going on, but I never really saw what I would call at the time full grown trees and forest that I had been familiar in Alabama, except in the area of the city near the Albuquerque Zoo and park near Old Town. I simply thought that those trees were like the populars on KAFB and the Radiobiology Lab (Goat Farm), that had been planted and watered profusely over the years. I never dreamed that there was forest their at the time of the Spanish explorers or during the time of the original native American settlements. All of this was a part of my acclimation experience during my first year in a strange new place. During this first year, I hated everything around me, thinking only that I was a prisoner in a very strange land. As my sinus’ swelled, cracked, and bled at the most embarassing times and as my lung capacity improved so I could bike without difficulty in the mile-high thin desert air, I experienced much hate for this strange new land. After about a year as my body became accustomed to the dry climate, and I achieved some degree of physical stamina, I learned to love the climate, the weather, the scenery, and everything about my surroundings there. I miss it now even after 40 years. Thanks for explaining the bosque woods to me. It clears up a lot. Why couldn’t you have explained it to me in 1965 when I was going through one of the more critical, mind changing experiences of my life? That is the way that one very often must learn. It is called adaptation. Google didn’t exist then. I couldn’t just google it on my PC. I would have looked like a nut if I tried to write a program on a deck of punched IBM cards and entered them into our IBM mainframe at the lab, even if it had been allowed. Even our fancy computers in those days didn’t know anything about the bosque woods although I was so enthusiastic over them that I didn’t think there was anything that they couldn’t do.