The Great Divide.

RUIDOSO, NM

Let's talk about time travel for a minute. Eighty miles an hour through the desert without even trying means you can give someone an ETA of without factoring in the switch from Pacific to Mountain Time and still remain true to your word. From a gas and lunch stop in Holbrook, AZ I sped along desolate state highways, stopping only once more in Pie Town, NM.

Realty and reality.

With hosts arranged through CouchSurfing.org on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I only had part of an evening and morning to spend with my uncle Liam in Ruidoso, a ski town about an hour west of Roswell. Luckily, he's one of those guys who makes every minute count. We cracked open the growler I brought from Prescott and drank it along with his lady Jen's amazing chiles relleno on his deck with a view of the pine woods. Afterwards, we indulged each other trading lead and rhythm guitar roles on some of our recent original compositions, both of which make use of the evocative F major/ C major seventh chord pairing (I think I picked this idea up from hearing him play a couple years ago, actually).

The next morning, we went down to his law office. I burned him a CD with some of my favorite recent tunes, heavy on Blitzen Trapper and Dawes (these guys write the shit out of the undomesticated male worldview) and we spent a couple of hours talking about people's varying modes of political expression and the nature of professionalism. He shared a story about a bellhop at a hotel in Sante Fe years ago who got completely flustered when a power outage interrupted his routine of showing the suite's amenities. In Liam's words, professionals aren't distinguished from others in their field by their adeptness at a task they perform day in and day out (unless maybe they work on an assembly line), but by their ability to adapt to disruptive events. 

There is a lot of emphasis on credentials in my industry (which I'm reconsidering, along with many things at the moment). Credentials are the easy part though, and they really are a terrible substitute for interpersonal and leadership skills. Compassion, empathy, respectability, judgment and salesmanship are pretty much universally desired traits, and I feel like any time spent developing those will be well spent. In that light, this trip is as much about personal development through experiencing diverse people and places as it is a reprieve from the past two years in the corporate world.

Apart from my grandmother, who spent April in Ruidoso helping set it up, I'm privileged to be one of the first in the family to see Liam's office in Ruidoso. It's the kind of place you really enjoy hanging around. He was scheduled to take delivery of a wooden sign for his front yard Tuesday afternoon. I wish I could have stayed to help him install it, but I was shooting for an 8pm arrival time in Ft. Worth, so I had to say adios to Ruidoso that morning. 

Family special: the first DUI in Ruidoso is free!

Ruidoso is close to the Continental Divide. All the condensate dripping from Sebastian's AC runs into the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico from here on.