To persons standing alone on a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. Begin with the crack of dawn, that sudden, silvery occasion of the horizon when the first chill sliver of day slips beneath the shell of night and blinks on far away and silent, like a porch light in a fog. Begin in Truchas, Cordova, or any of a score of villages scattered over the northern mountains, where the rude walls of old adobe churches shimmer in the pearly flicker of dawn, while in hushed interiors men and women born to brightness and faith utter soft rosaries in Spanish, then light candles of propitiation and give thanks. Or on the arid flatlands of the south among communities of mesquite and ocotillo, where yellow lamplight beckons in windows of houses lining the new underground railroad, welcoming weary travelers of the night seeking refuge after the harrowing crossing from Mexico. The crack widens, the shell lifts cloud by cloud.
Boisterous light spills in to fill the void.
Sleepy and irresolute, I angle against a fender of the old Dodge sipping coffee and observing the swift execution of New Mexico's peerless Sistine sky. The violent light. As I gaze east the sun lunges into a notch on the ridge below Sandia Peak and detonates over the valley. Blinded, I spin away. Craning my neck, scanning the blue and the radiance and the fearfulness of it all, I wonder if I may be gazing into the eye of God.