Seeing Things Change

And Finding the Best Place for Observing

Passing by Ghost Ranch. Charles R. Wolfe photo

We learn about history by reading it in school; we learn to see it when we travel, and for Americans the place where we see most clearly the impact of time on a landscape is New Mexico

J.B. Jackson, “Looking at New Mexico”

If you’ve not seen a friend for some time, what do you discuss? When you go back to your hometown after time away, what do you see? Finally, when you see a new place, a new city, what do you imagine?

The answer is the universal discussion with oneself or another about how things have changed.

As John F. Kennedy and countless others have said, change is the law of life. But enough about near-idioms and trite phrases. Back to cities, and places.

People have asked, why did you move to New Mexico? Why not go back to England, where you had found a house in the namesake of your mother’s hometown?

A former co-worker said on social media that “you never struck me as the New Mexico type.”

At a recent gathering of friends in Los Angeles, a high school classmate, keyed by my early reveal of my pending move, toasted “do-overs.” This was a short form, perhaps, of Stephen Hawking’s adage that “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

So yes, new place, and more change. But for me, the reason is—more than anything—nothing new. It’s not so much about the change itself, but seeing—and interpreting what it looks like.

That’s why landscape essayist J.B. Jackson—who championed the cultural landscape like no other—summarized many years ago the starry-eyed pilgrimage that now has one more disciple.