My Secret Place - September 2009

By Lee K. Abbott, as told to Devon Jackson

I was born in Panama in 1947 but grew up in Las Cruces, after my father retired and moved our family there in 1952. I graduated from New Mexico State University twice, and left New Mexico in 1975 to teach. I’m now in my 20th year of teaching at Ohio State University.

There are a lot of places I like in New Mexico, but the place my wife, Pam, and I are wedded to is three miles west of Lincoln. It’s a place we bought in the mountains near Capitán. Pam grew up in Roswell, and back in 1993 she discovered this place that was for sale, which was odd for that area, because so much of it belongs to the state or the federal government. It was just one bedroom and one bathroom.

She had a Polaroid camera and took four pictures. I had just come into some money for a literary prize and had been planning to use it for one of my sons, for school. When I told him about this place and asked if he’d be OK about our buying it, he said do it. We drove out there at Christmastime in 1993. I’d never seen it before then. So I bought a house having never even seen it. The first time I’d seen it was turning the key in the lock. It was a thrill. There’s a sense of solitude and an incredibly physical beauty there. It’s in the Río Bonito Valley.

The front door sits at 6,000 feet and the deck looks east about five or six miles, and it’s in the middle of BLM land, and there are mountains to the left and right—to the north and south. There’s a forest of piñon and juniper. I go into mañana mind as soon as I get off the highway. It’s gonna be the place we hole up in once I retire from here. Pam says it’ll add 10 years to my life, having that house.

Everything I learned that’s important to me happened there. It’s wonderful. I can do as much or as little as I want. I can take naps, I can read, I can write. We go to Roswell every weekend. I play golf. I go to Las Cruces to see my buddies. People come and visit us. It’s green in Ohio, and a pleasant place to be, but there are no vistas. And I have a great deal of fondness for the desert. I’m a Westerner. I like being able to see for 100 miles. I love being able to see tomorrow coming at me.

Lee K. Abbott’s most recent book is the short-story collection All Things, All at Once: New and Selected Stories.