Reading in Nature: A Journey of Growth in Albuquerque

How one morning's adventure in search of a place to read in Nature gave me a new appreciation for my own journey in Albuquerque.

This morning I woke up feeling refreshed and made the intention on having a good day. I’ve been devouring many new writers that I’ve discovered recently, absorbing and trying on new ideas and new perspectives. One of my new favorite writers is

Ayanna Nicole

whose writing is as delicious as Southern home-cooked soul food and I can not get enough. I highly encourage my readers to absorb themselves in her incredibly tactile and colorful writing.

In one post titled “The Luxury of Reading While the Earth Holds Us” Ayanna discusses reading in Nature, for example, at a park at the edge of the water. In that spirit I set out to continue reading Man's Search for Meaning in Nature as opposed to my usual reading spots of the numerous coffee shops around Albuquerque. I am determined to write a full reflection and discussion on this book and hopefully soon. It is in this spirit of adventure that I set out on my day.

Over the past week, the boiling and stifling heat from the summer has died down. Aiding in the early feeling of the upcoming fall season, today the clouds smeared across the sky in a light haze, a significant departure from the solid white and hard-edged clouds standing in front of the heavy blue sky of New Mexico typical of the late summer monsoon season. The fall season in New Mexico is the best time of year and makes New Mexico the best place to live during this season: Green Chile roasting at every super market, the State Fair, Balloon Fiesta and the lights and Luminarias during the Christmas season.

After running a few errands, I thought of eating the most New Mexican meal ever in preparation for my luxurious reading in Nature. I head to Frontier for a breakfast burrito and sweet roll. As I driving through Nob Hill, the neighborhood surrounding the University of New Mexico, seeing the beautiful stucco homes of this area, it reminded me of two ideas which are in constant tension in my mind. How many of the most aesthetically beautiful urban areas are overwhelmingly liberal, and this was where I used to live before we moved to a farm in the North Valley on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

I thought about stopping to read at Bataan Park after breakfast, a huge grassy area with towering and thick elm trees shading the entire park. My sister and I used to cross this park when my mom or step dad would give us some pocket change and we would buy snacks and Pokemon cards at Walgreens.

Two significant buildings stick out to me as I drive, a Bart Prince home that looks like a metal space ship placed atop an average Nob Hill House, and Monte Vista Elementary where I spent my first few years of Elementary School. The school itself is almost unchanged, but the school yard now has basketball courts and a gymnasium and when I attended it was nothing but a hard sand lot covered in large pebbles that stuck in my knees every time I fell during the multiple recesses that we had each day.

Nob Hill has every flavor and spectrum of life all coexisting in one small geographic area. Every time I dream about living in a big city, I visit Nob Hill and I am cured of that ailment. I arrive at Frontier, a New Mexico staple located directly across from the University and with its own place in the Food Pyramid. Frontier started in a small corner of an early version of a strip mall and slowly took over each store of the strip mall, adding more and more seating oriented in a long hallway. I walk to Frontier and notice how this every surface of the corner of Cornell and University is covered in a thin layer of black street grime. Walking in the Nob Hill area makes me feel like I need to take my shoes off when I get home.

I order a breakfast burrito and a sweet roll, and cover my breakfast burrito in their house chile which is more like a salsa than chile but its an essential piece of the experience and still as delicious as ever. Half of the joy in Frontier’s Breakfast Burrito is that its a connection to all of the times I ate that exact burrito in high school and college and nothing about the experience has changed except Frontier is now closed from 12 AM to 4 AM.

After breakfast I look online and find a coffee shop with an outdoor patio to do my reading, a compromise in my mind and a good solution to the desire to read in Nature. As I drove through downtown I am overwhelmed by all of my childhood memories like when I helped collecting parking fees at a parking lot near the Convention Center. I would always see this Burger King sign in the sky while I was working and I felt like it was calling me like a beacon in the sky but I never left my job for the short walk. For some reason this experienced imbued that particular Burger King with a super-natural attraction deep in my mind which still exists to this day.

Driving past the Hotel Albuquerque reminds me of how growing up, all the best things in Albuquerque were in some subtle and unspoken way, off limits to the people from here. Despite the superficial reasons of tourists and traffic, the deeper reason that I don’t visit the nicest places in New Mexico is because I feel like it’s for the newer and the better people.

But like all things, people grow and cities grow, and the culture grows along with it. When I was younger Albuquerque was a smaller, “big city” that still had a rural feel to it with the entire city being shaped around the irrigation ditches and acequias that are hundreds of years old. The north valley was filled, almost 50/50, with green irrigated fields and houses with plenty of space between each neighbor. I loved riding my bike along the ditches looking for toads and crawdads. But Albuquerque continues to grow up and now these green pastures are starting to fill with custom homes and the acequias are becoming dry, tiny river valleys of broken concrete.

As well as an newer art landscape, one aspect of Albuquerque that we are starting to have is our own home grown creators of this generation. Growing up I always lamented how we didn’t have celebrities from Albuquerque on a national stage, although we did have boxer Johnny Tapia and NFL Linebacker Brian Urlacher. Two of this generation’s local artists that I look up to are Johnny James and Carlos Contreras.

Johnny makes hilarious jokes and skits like saying “or what" after every question or calling people “pee-pee hearted" when they get mad which was the worst thing to be called when I was in Elementary School.

Carlos is a local Albuquerque artist with a very specific style of painting using letters and words, almost like hieroglyphics. A few years ago, I remember being inspired by one of his paintings that described Albuquerque, and growing up here, with the line “Too much land to know what to do with”. That was the beginning moment of my journey of learning to embrace being from Albuquerque.

Courtyard at Blackbird Coffeehouse near Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque, NM.

After that great big adventure, reflecting on the past and where I am today, I arrived at my destination: Blackbird Coffeehouse. Blackbird is located in a historic and cozy court yard directly across from Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza. The courtyard is filled with plants, a water fountain, and shops of every stripe including a photography studio. I’d be a happy man if I could figure out a way to live my life drinking coffee, reading, and writing in the amazingly diverse coffee shops around Albuquerque.

Now it’s time to read Man’s Search for Meaning while surrounded by Nature in a lush courtyard in Albuquerque.