Return to Ghost Ranch

By Leigh Cook

Trebor would spend the first evening at the ranch.
Stieglitz offered to fly us. He had a friend in the city. I was
still in Doctors when I spoke to him on the telephone. I’d
resolved to decline any favors he might substitute for what
I really wanted, so I lied and said I was terrifying of flying.

Everyone said I should rest, except Trebor, who wasn’t
much for imposing. So we stopped in Indianapolis and St. Louis
to drink when we might have been resting.

I enjoyed myself in Indiana. In St. Louis, I met a man.
He reminded me of things, so I pulled Trebor into the toilet.
We left after returning to the bar.

Nigh on 60 hours from New York. We were in the thick
of New Mexico when I remembered what I loved about it.
Infinite silt layers atop one another made the rock that constituted
every orange mesa look like it protruded towards
the sky, though really the rain and the wind were oppressive,
the mesas shrinking.

The sky, like the rock, was none I’d known before.
Not quite a smell but a consistency; the molecules in the air
must have been different; the atomic composition of the atmosphere
must have been different; the energy that pervaded was
certainly…
‘What’s my next turn?’
My eye wandered from our route on the map. The third
map. A million times folded like the others. Now there were
two destinations within the same square inch.
‘Turn onto Red Dirt Road.’
Trebor laughed. I tried to laugh but couldn’t.
The convenience stores were all new in Abiquiu. But I had
been around in 1929, and by way of Marsden Hartley I knew
of the first to pop up in town.
Abi’s was as I remembered but for the young man working
the counter. Wooden shelves stuffed with odd commodities.
They splayed perfect arrays of household items, indigenous
foods and beverages, herbal remedies, and knickknacks.
My arms were a bundle of postcards, sage, and Latin torts
when I reached the counter. I even found some cheap paintbrushes.
Trebor was waiting with a carton of cowboy killers.
‘They’re cheaper here,’ she mused.
The young man rang up my items.
‘Mrs. O’Keeffe?’

A pang like fear or nostalgia. I turned to the familiar voice.
My first inclination was to hug the storeowner. Broad,
bronze, and possessing an eminent warmth, he had been there
when I first discovered the ranch. In increments he witnessed
my escapades. Between soirees and exhibits we’d stopped at his
convenience store for cigarettes and wine bottles. Near the end
of my first time in Abiquiu, he asked.

Was I the fabled painter at Ghost Ranch those days?
His name was Hanko James. His father had built the house
that became Abi’s in the early century, and I realized then what
I’d known already. Hanko was a native New Mexican, bright as
the mesas at sundown. I thanked him for his desert country.

The present Hanko chuckled.
‘It’s OK if you don’t remember me.’
‘Mr. James. How long has it been?’

‘I wouldn’t remember except that it’s been about five years
since we amped up this shanty, and that was shortly before you
stayed around here.’
‘I’m back for a short while,’ I said, and my smile was genuine,
though for impertinent reasons quite difficult to muster.
I turned back to the young man, now agape at the counter.
My name had reached the ears of the locals I supposed.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
I turned to Hanko.
‘And thank you, Mr. James. I am sure to see you again
soon.’

With a nod I turned and followed Trebor through the
doorway to New Mexico.

Leigh Cook is an undergraduate English and Philosophy major at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her interest in neurodiversity stems from her individual struggle with depression. In 2015, she spent five months in a therapeutic wilderness environment that inspired her pursuit and advocation of wilderness therapy. She hopes to become an author and perhaps an artist, and despite her decision to stray from a degree in clinical psychology, she likewise aspires to share the ineffable experience of nature with others.