Remembering Sandia

The other day without provocation an

image popped into my mind. This hap-

pens, you know, to both young and old.

Only, the older you are, I have noticed,

names of images of which you are some-

times reminded may tend to escape you.

Give me a moment, I tell myself, and even-

tually it will come back to me. It has to,

because the vision, although more than

thirty years old, had a profound impact

on me at that point in my life. And I was

right, the name arrived. It was a mountain

I admired which towered over the landscape

of Albuquerque, New Mexico where I lived

at the time—Sandia Peak was her name.

There were days back then I could sit and

and reflect upon that massive mound for

hours, watching golden shafts of sunlight

pierce the steely clouds as light and dark

danced and commingled on and around its

steep vertical climbs. Wondrously magnifi-

cent, the workings of nature’s ever-changing

panorama spread out before my eyes. Now,

here is why that scene had such a profound

effect on me—It was because of The City of

Albuquerque: A place of stark contrasting

social standings, a place where wealth and

poverty reside, where both charity and ne-

glect thrive side-by-side, where the home-

less, the alcohol and drug addicted, the prosti-

tutes and thugs permeate street life day and

night, where cops patrol in numbers, and per-

petually give chase in what seem a futile at-

tempt to retain a semblance of law and order.

Seems to me, the Beauty of what life could be

was towering over the Beast of Albuquerque

streets. Was anybody paying attention, I would

often wonder? Stop and look up. Hope rises

before you, a bit of heaven on Earth, I’d say.

And, standing from the dawn of time, she shall

remain long after mankind’s reign—solid and

majestic in her standing. Today, as was the case

with me back then, I pay homage in remem-

brance…Sandia Peak is her name.

Chris Hanch 5-24-19