"Progress"

Picacho ("peak"), city of Las Cruces in foreground

Just as Becca and I got out of the car near the Sunset Parking area this morning a green Subaru Forester was headed down from the lot.  The car pulled up next to us, the driver's-side window slid down, and the middle-aged woman driver said, pointing to Becca, "I have a dog just like that back home in Tucson.  I really miss her.  I'm headed back there later today."  I told the woman that Dr. K and I had lived in Tucson for years, that, in fact, Dr. K was originally from Tucson, which led us into a discussion regarding the relative merits of Tucson and Las Cruces.  The woman was from Albuquerque originally, but had gone to school at New Mexico State here in Las Cruces.  She hadn't visited for many years, and she was astonished by how much the city had grown.  She said, "When I was here Dripping Springs Road  (the paved road that curves around Tortugas Mountain) was dirt."

"They've made a lot of progress since then," I said.

"Yeah, 'progress,'" she said, picking up on my sarcastic tone and making air quotation marks around the word progress.

I told her the story about Linda Ronstadt's decade-old performance at the Pan Am Center in Las Cruces.  Ronstadt was originally from Tucson, and after her last set she spoke to the people in the audience, telling them that Las Cruces reminded her of the Tucson of her youth, and if Las Crucens had any sense they'd try to keep the city the way it was rather than allow it to be ruined like her beloved hometown.

When I finished the brief story, I said to the woman in the green Subaru, "I guess nobody listened."

"Nobody ever does," she said.

She wished us a good hike and drove away.

The trail along the western foothills

Looking out for critters

A really late-blooming Ocotillo

I've ID'd this plant in the past, but I can't find it now

Waiting for the pokey Packrat