From Roswell, I took Highway 380 west, eventually merging with 70. Somewhere near Picacho, New Mexico, I laughed out loud in my helmet.

The name reminded me of when my boys were little and obsessed with the Pokémon card game and cartoon. One of the characters—Pikachu—sounded close enough to this dusty town to trigger a flood of memories.

Grammyland and Pikachu

I thought about the endless games, the breathless show-and-tell moments, the way their entire world could be held in a plastic binder. My mom never learned to play the game with them, but she made sure they had stacks of cards and a place to spread out.

We live in North Carolina and my parents lived in Ohio at that time. Mom and Dad would take the boys for summer breaks and school holidays, and the boys came to call it Grammyland—part chaos, part Disneyland, and all love. Swimming, karate, zoo trips, meals served in front of the TV (which their mean mother would never allow).

Later, when my parents moved to a Las Vegas suburb, the spoiling continued for a few more years—until the boys hit middle school and decided they’d rather spend summers at camp or with their friends. But for a while there, it was magic. The love they feel for each other still is.

Soon after Picacho the land started to rise—slowly at first, then with more intention. The scrub opened into something greener, the sky still stretched wide, but the road itself was changing—more curves, more climb, more places where you could feel the temperature drop by a few degrees in the span of a mile.

Horses and the Harder Truths

Civilization became more dense when I passed Ruidoso Downs, a Quarter Horse racetrack tucked right against the edge of town. Even from the road, I could see the grandstands and the long, narrow oval stretching into the distance. I was always what’s called a “horsey girl,” reading any book with a horse on the cover and riding a chestnut mare over fences—back when my parents paid for it.

Most of what I know of racing is from the Thoroughbred world, where off-the-track horses could end up in show barns, if they’re lucky. Very lucky.

Quarter Horse racing has its own version of that same throwaway ethic as all blood sports: breed many, discard most. The industry lauds horses in marketing as “noble beasts,” which they certainly are, but the reality belies the pretty language. When speed is the only thing that counts, animals that fall short are often quietly “wasted” to use the industry euphemism. I didn’t dwell on it as I passed by, but I felt it in my gut.

Ruidoso's landscape doesn’t shout the way the Rockies do. It doesn’t roll like the Appalachians either, lush and layered and humming with green. The Sacramento Mountains, a high-desert range shaped by tectonic stretching, created uplifted blocks and dropped valleys. The cliff faces reminded me of a microscopic picture of a man’s curly beard with plenty of skin between the follicles. They’re high enough to catch snow and satisfy winter sports fans, rising out of the high desert like something coiled and watchful.

I was completely under the spell of the mountains—so much so that I could overlook the fact that the town itself was an upscale tourist trap, catering to visitors with art budgets. But the setting? Unbelievable.

​​A Room with a Ridgeline

Dad called just as I’d checked into my room at the Hotel Ruidoso. I’d snapped a photo of the closest ridgeline and texted it to him, but that wasn’t enough. “Let’s FaceTime,” he said. So I stepped outside and walked around with the camera pointed uphill, letting him catch the way the light caught the folds of the mountains.

He felt the romance too. His face lit up like he could feel the air through the screen. I think we both needed that.

The next morning over breakfast, I was surrounded by a high school golf team from Carlsbad, New Mexico. The kids created an air of palpable drama. I couldn’t tell who was flirting with whom or who was icing someone out, but it was happening. Growing up in the pre-digital age, we were much noisier than these kids, who were texting each other instead of speaking.

I took one look and thought, Thankfully I’m not raising teenagers anymore. I was really bad at it, as you’ll eventually learn.

This was the point when I started noticing sports teams in all my hotels. Year-end school tournaments, I guess. We never traveled overnight for high school sports. Not even the boys’ teams. I know, I know—community spirit and all that—but I’ve got opinions. Bigger sports budgets shouldn’t come before smaller class sizes or paying teachers what they’re worth. Do all parents think their kid will get a college scholarship? Is that what this sports boom is about? Given the price of tuition, I can see where they’d at least give it a try.

I rolled out of Ruidoso feeling good. I wasn’t in a rush. The air was cool and the road called softly. I had a reservation waiting in Duncan, Arizona—a town I picked half on instinct, half on the promise of a decent bed and no chain stores.

When the Sky Breaks Open

I never would have guessed that three months later, the same ridgeline I’d FaceTimed to Dad would be on the national news—flash‑flood sirens, mud in the streets, three lives lost. The Rio Ruidoso rose from just under two feet to over twenty in less than an hour.

Three years ago, I’d been in a similar situation in eastern Kentucky, where I attend a writer’s workshop each summer. We’d experienced rain off and on all week, but somewhere between one and two in the morning of July 28, the area experienced a 1,000-year rainfall event. This doesn't mean it only happens every 1,000 years, but rather it is a statistical term describing the low probability of such an intense rainfall. The waters had nowhere to go, trapped between ridges just hundreds of feet apart.

Troublesome Creek, which bisects the Hindmen Settlement School’s campus rose more than twenty feet, taking my motorcycle with it. The program director had woken me up to say I should try to save it—only three months old—but by the time I reached it, the water had risen high and fast. I barely jumped to safety before my bike tilted and floated away with the current. Hindman is a small town of 600, with 39 of them losing their lives that night.

I know what floodwater smells like, especially when it’s been sitting in ditches for a week—ripe with rot and diesel and the lives it swept up. I didn’t lose my life in Kentucky. Just a bike. But I carry that night with me—a reminder of how quickly the ground can shift.

Not just under my tires. Not just in the forecast.

Just… everywhere.

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