My husband has had what you might call a “state-crush” on New Mexico for a while now. He has relatives there, and some fond memories of visiting them when he was growing up, and of how beautiful it is around the mountains there. He’s also a fan of Hatch peppers, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that those come from there. From time to time, he would talk about how great it would be if we could move there someday. I would nod and be like, “Sure, sweetie.”
I’m an Oklahoma girl, a fact which seems to become more cemented with each passing year. In my teens and twenties I naturally expected that I would leave some day, but here I am at 40, and I’ve never left the state for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I do still daydream about leaving and having adventures elsewhere. One of my biggest dreams is for us to get an RV and take our sweet time exploring the entire continent. Sometimes I entertain thoughts of moving down to Texas, around Dallas where our long-distance church family lives. But I think in my heart of hearts I’ve always figured whatever we did or wherever we went, we’d end up settled back in Oklahoma. Most of our extended family lives here, after all.
I gotta say, though, the idea of New Mexico is growing on me. Specifically, northern New Mexico — not exactly Breaking Bad territory. We recently did a marathon watch of the TV show Longmire, and although it’s ostensibly set in Wyoming, it’s actually filmed around the mountains of northern NM, and it really does look beautiful there.
As I get older, I also fall more and more in love with the idea of buying some land — not a huge amount, just a handful of acres — and building up a little homestead. I always imagined doing that somewhere in Northeastern Oklahoma, but surprisingly, northern NM has acreage for sale that’s no less affordable, and most of it has gorgeous mountain scenery to boot. And New Mexico is right next door to OK — we’d still only be a long day’s drive from family.
Of course, all of this is just dreaming at this point. We’re still a few years away from being realistically able to do something like this. And I still really want to do that RV road trip. But at least in the meantime, my husband can have the comfort of knowing I’m starting to share his New Mexico daydreams.