Recounting a Woo-xperience in Northern New Mexico . . .
. . . while living on the remote, rural West Mesa of Taos County
ⓒ J. D. Barbato, Taos West Mesa
Watching a 32-second video of Tucker Carlson commenting about supernatural beings residing under Earth’s oceans and underground reminded me of a woo-xperience1 I had while living on the West Mesa in Taos County, New Mexico.
My pit-mix fur-boy Kimba and I had recently moved to a quarter-acre plot in Two Peaks. Two Peaks had a reputation as an outpost for rebels and renegades and people who just wanted an affordable, if rough, homestead and a plot of their own. Our homestead, 6 miles in from the highway via unpaved winding roads, was raw, with no amenities—nope, not even running water—but more challenging was my not having known a single soul in the sector or one anecdote of mesa lore.
Still, it wasn’t exactly my first rodeo in rural living. I’d lived in Terlingua, Texas, and around the rest of Brewster County for a good clip of years, and I knew proper and neighborly etiquette, just good manners, really: Don’t drive up to a domicile. Stay on the dirt road and holler out to whoever you’re needing to connect with. Regardless of whether you and another local like each other, you give the slight-head-nod acknowledgment should you pass each other on the road, and you stop to help or otherwise render aid if they are stuck in any way.
They reciprocate. You reciprocate. On it goes till one of you moves or dies.
So even though you might not in truth and publicly established fact have liked each other, no one was harmed in the making of that south Brewster County, Texas, motion picture. In a manner of speaking.
ⓒ J. D. Barbato, Taos West Mesa
One night, in complete darkness save for a dim lantern inside, with no fence or other barrier to the dirt road outside at that time, Kim and I were startled when a vehicle, with headlights full on (the nerve!), conveying 4 adults and 2 kids, pulled right up to the porch.
Kimba sprinted to the thankfully locked door, jumping and a-growling and barking his otherwise smiley head off. I followed him to the door and raised the shade, then greeted my surprise visitors with a neighborly, “What the fuck, yo!”
Germane to the rest of the story is that I was, am, and always will be a big fan of Archangel Michael. Yes, I believe in him, don’t care whether anyone else does, and he’s come through for me countless times. I have a hundred holy cards of the one shown above.
Not that I think Michael looks like that, but my personal feeling of his image—tall, lanky but strong, a rugged blue-collar face2—wasn’t depicted anywhere. From what was available online, I chose to buy these. I give them out when appropriate to do so.
I had put one each of these holy cards on every window, including the window on the door. There wasn’t a window on the west side of the house, so I’d tacked a card on the inside back wall.
WE NOW RESUME OUR TRUE-STORY TELLING . . .
So after I said, “What the fuck, yo!,” an unidentified livid female screamed, “Your dog ate our Chihuahua!”
I said, “Are you out of your frigging mind? I FEED my dog, and good food, not that shit on the supermarket shelves. And I give him chicken every morning. Furthermore, I’d have know if he’d eaten a living creature. Telltale signs would’ve been visible, and his breath would have turned foul.
And who the hell are you all, anyway?”
“We live in the house down there,” the banshee said, pointing south in the dark.
“We saw your dog3 poking around!” said the main guy, who I guessed was the accusatory stranger-lady’s husband.
“No way!” I countered. “It’s rare that my dog is off the leash outside without me, and the one or two times he was, he went the opposite way, and I could still see him.”
“Your dog ate our Chihuahua!”
“No, he did NOT!”
This exchange went on for a 10-minute-ish eternity with the family I’d dubbed the Robespierres until the she-devil looked over my left shoulder and was apparently somehow stunned into silence. She looked scared and urged her he-devil mate to be quiet.
“Let’s go,” she insisted.
“No,” said the husband. The wife literally turned his head to look over my shoulder.
And just like that, they turned and left the premises.
ONE WEEK LATER . . .
I shrugged off the incident but vowed to make myself become known as the scary lady of Two Peaks. Really, more like the mobster “Vinnie the Chin” Gigante walking around in his bathrobe and slippers in NYC’s Little Italy, pretending to be nuts to beat a RICO charge.
That kind of scary.
Anyway, I needed a little respite from the mesa, a way to be around people without necessarily having to interact with them or carry on a conversation. So I took my laptop to the Town of Taos, 16 miles away, and parked my ass in a seat at a table at the Coffee Spot to work on whatever editorial project was on the agenda at that time.
I’m having my fried egg and cheese on an everything bagel and my cawffee and working and I overhear a conversation (recounted to the best of my ability after nearly a decade).
“Yeah, it was in Two Peaks, on West Sage Road, a block north of Milky Way,” some guy said. “Jack4 and his wife went to confront this lady whose dog ate their Chihuahua.”
I recognized myself as “this lady” and a resident of West Sage Road, the caregiver to a dog who did not eat a Chihuahua.
“So he and Crystal were arguing with the lady for a while, until Crystal saw something that scared the shit out of her. She said this really tall, lanky, rugged-looking guy appeared behind the lady out of nowhere.
“He was, like, freakishly tall. Crystal saw him smile and shake his head no. She made Jack look over at him, then they bolted, freaked out of their minds. It wasn’t natural.
“They won’t even look at that lady’s house now. A giant out of nowhere. That’s some crazy shit.”
Indeed, it was, is, and ever shall be. In every incarnation of mine on the planet.
Defined by me as an unexplainable experience. I’m pronouncing it “woo-sperience,” giving the x an s sound. I didn’t sub a letter s for the letter x because it’s more important to get across the notion of an experience. (The contortions of language! ⚠️)
I can’t explain what I mean by a “rugged blue-collar face.” I think of the construction workers I’ve known and dated. Appealing (at least to me but usually to other women, too) but no manicured pretty boys.
This is a whole other related story, about Kimba’s doppelgänger on the mesa. See below for a photo of them meeting each other for the first time. Not sure if it was weird to them, but it sure was to me. The upshot is that it exonerated Kimba and proved I knew my dog and wasn’t lying.
Names changed to protect the mistaken.
All photos © J. D. Barbato.
Wow! Fabulous and great pics too!