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My Secret Place
By Emmi Whitehorse, as told to Devon Jackson
My favorite spot actually has to do with driving —the drive from Bernalillo to Cuba on U.S. 550. I like that short little stretch with the red mesas on the south side of the highway and the forest on the north, in that spot where the road kind of winds in and out. I go home that way, to visit my parents up near Crownpoint, where I grew up, about two to three times a month lately. I feel comfortable out there on that road.
Once you leave U.S. 64 leading out from Farmington, the traffic is pretty sparse. You see lots of sheep, some pronghorn. Coyotes. But it’s very different up there now, it’s changed a lot since I lived there. Every road is paved. There’s a lot more traffic, and satellite dishes are everywhere.
The drive in that one stretch, though, from Bernalillo up to Cuba, it’s very therapeutic. It’s a winding-down time for me, for getting my thoughts together. It refocuses what you’re aiming to do in life. The landscape is really quite intimidating and it makes you think you should be doing bigger things in life. I’ll be asking myself questions then, questions about what to do with my parents—how to deal with them or where I have to take them, to the clinic, to the doctor’s office. But that road right there gives you that little moment of feeling like you’re relieved from all kinds of obligations. It’s only on the drive up, though, because I usually drive back at odd hours—I don’t want to deal with the traffic. And it’s usually at night, so there’s nothing to look at.
And it’s very different from the East, where I lived for a while. There’s too much humidity out there, you can see it hanging in the air. It’s very claustrophobic. There just aren’t the vistas that you get o
ut here. It’s different from the Midwest, too. Not to be mean, but everything looks the same everywhere you look in the Midwest. There are no mountains, so it’s hard to get your bearings.
But this part of the world is just perfect. I don’t find myself running away from anything out here.
Navajo painter and printmaker Emmi Whitehorse is the official poster artist for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, which kicks off this month on July 20 and runs through August 25.
Whitehorse describes her large-scale works as having a sense of calm and beauty, much like the New Mexico landscape. Above is Mineral Wax (detail) 9' x 12'.