I’ve been riding a lot this week taking advantage of an ease in weather, passing through Tijeras canyon between the Sandia and Manzano ranges, and breaking out into the open country of the piñon and juniper sprinkled east mountains.  At its best, Albuquerque has a feel of being a small community, but also a rural city, enmeshed in a perimeter made of open spaces and mountain vistas, and interlinked with agriculture, pueblos, and country living via green corridors.  To bicycle out into these unique spaces of the American West is simply wonderful.

Yesterday I took a route through Cedar Grove, breathing in the cleansing scent of pine, admiring the long view north toward the white capped Pecos Wilderness, the Jemez, and the Sangre de Cristos.  Country manners prevail on the road as hands go up to extend greetings between passersby.  The spaces draw my imagination out and I become all breathing and legs.

These landscapes at the wild, rural and urban interface are an important part of urban sustainability.  The open country of the east mountains, the agriculture in the south and north valleys, the pueblos, are all integral in a healthy culture that recognizes value in diversity.  Out here I am at a lose for words but my mind opens to an intelligence beyond human making, one that endures in the land itself.  My heart beats to the rhythm of a continuous renewal of life.