Welcome To The Bullpen
The White Rainbow
Dave Cox
I first saw her in the summer coming from Tucson. We had left the main highway from Santa Fe near Nambe and taken the high road to Taos. The very moment I first laid eyes on her I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was totally under her spell. As I looked down on her I knew that was it. There would be no other. I was so smitten that twenty years later when I found out she had lied to me even about her name I immediately forgave her. After that long the love was too deep, the shared experiences too many, the pains too lingering. I was told her name was Taos Mountain and I called her that for twenty years; it was by accident that I found out her real name was Pueblo Peak. I didn’t care, my love had shown me and taught me too many things, too many secrets. I love her still.
I still remember seeing her rise out of the mesa like a great cathedral. In my mind this was what the gateway to heaven would look like. There is a time in the winter when the peaks are deep in their winter coat and the slopes and valleys are sprinkled with a layer of snow like a sprinkling of powdered sugar on your favorite treat and if the sun is just right she has a golden hue from her base to her peak. This truly could be heavens golden city or Cibolo, the lost city of gold.
On her slopes I learned to be a man. I tracked the elk and the deer. I met my brother Oso, the bear. She at times would cost me much pain. Have you ever used duct tape to hold your knees together just to be near someone and gently caress their back with the soles of your feet? Have you heard the gentle breeze in her aspens and blue spruce? I have seen the wind, the gentle breeze in the gold and white aspens that looks and feels like a silken cloth weaving between the leaves. She has shown me two of her deepest secrets: the full moon on the white aspen bark while the leaves were gold and a white rainbow at night.
It was after a rainstorm on a full moon night and I watched truly one of Gods’ promises. It was a solid white rainbow that crossed the entire valley. It was truly a magic moment, a few moments locked in time that is etched in my memory forever. Look it up yourself. How many people in recorded history have seen a white rainbow? She shared one with me one night while moving cattle near Angel Fire. I think of this as a secret shared between two lovers. I have seen as many as three rainbows at once cross Hondo Valley in the daytime but at night it is something entirely different.
She has seen the burning of the mountain by the sheepherders, the opening of wounds by the miners, the scars of the loggers, the trails of the many who have used her for pleasure.
She has sacred living waters. She is a giver and a taker of life. She will share her secrets with you if you are a true human being.
I had my first true spiritual experiences on this mountain. In, around, under and on her lies the essence of life itself. She can be cruel but is this really cruelty or is it just life being brought into balance? She can be the singer of songs: the living waters, the gentle movement of the deer, the leaf as it lives and dies, the eagle and the hawk guarding her skies, the hard pack snow melting and flowing. This flow is like the veins in our own bodies; her heart beats deep within her soul.
You might say, “How can this be. How can one love a mountain? Is this not unnatural; after all a man was made to love a woman”. If you say this you lack understanding. Love itself has many levels, many layers, and many desires. I can love her and love another.
She is alive and she has many children: the elk, bear, deer, big horn sheep, beaver, turkey, grouse, ground squirrel, and trout, so many creatures large and small. Her children are also the aspen, the fir and the pine, the valleys filled in the summer with flowers of all colors. The rocks even have beauty from the silver, the fools gold, the florescent moss covered rocks in her creeks that glow in the moonlight like fire from heaven.
In my spirit I began to understand my own humanity and to maybe begin to contemplate humanity itself. Humanity can be pain. She gave me pain. Humanity can be love. She gave me love. Humanity needs food, water and shelter. She has provided me all three. Humanity needs to laugh, cry and discover the depths of one’s’ soul. She gave me all these things. She made me understand the depths of taking and making life.
I first learned to pray here. I learned from a great and powerful man here the true meaning of the balance and order of this life. He taught me many things about life and how we are all part of this circle. We all live and die and depend on each other. Is not the hawk truly my brother?
I don’t know if you have ever been on mountain top before and been able to look down on the world around you but if you haven’t go find a peak somewhere and do it. You talk about putting things in perspective I can guarantee you this will. The highest peak above Taos and in the whole state of New Mexico is Wheeler Peak. From here you can understand what the word valley really means. The plains to the west seem to be endless to the horizon. The lakes are like so many water drops on a sidewalk. I did not know there were so many shades of green in the forest. You can distinctly tell the aspen groves from the oak and the pine. Just at the moment you think you are really something and have accomplished some great feat a tiny ground squirrel will bring you back to reality as he begs for food.
I hope in your life and in your time on this earth you truly find love and somehow begin to see your connection to this beautiful home of ours. If you seek it, you will find it. It took a mountain and a friend to start me on the path of knowledge, not the kind from books but the kind you get by living and observing the things around you.
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