Coming to New Mexico--What's Your Story? (Albuquerque, Santa Fe: college, closing, living)
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NM chose us. This was not the state we intended to move to.
We had visited Tenn. and fallen in love with the state and planned to move there. My husband put his resume on Monster dot com, stating he was interested in locating to the southeast. The very next morning, he got a phone call from a recruiter in ABQ about a job. So he decided to call them back and see what they had to say. The rest is history.
Actually, I need to go back about 15-20 yrs. We had talked about moving to AZ and had done some research and then put it on the back burner. When NM called, it was fate. Several other things happened to make us realize NM wanted us.
While cleaning out the barn, hub was carrying a box of old magazines to put in the trash and one fell out. (It was not the one on top). It was a 1980 something Nat'l Geographic, with multiple articles on NM in it!
A week before we left Maine, we went for lunch at our favorite chinese place. We all got fortune cookies with very similiar messages...a wonderful new adventure awaits, ect, ect.
Then we get out here and settled into a rental home and I make arrangements for a phone. The guy comes and gets the line hooked up and I get my new number. Well , the last 4 digits of our phone number are the same as the number of my husband's new work truck!
Call it fate or karma, but NM definitely wanted us.
If you expect "economic opportunity" in NM, you may be disappointed. The economy hasn't tanked like it has recently in a lot of places, but that is because it has not boomed. Traditionally, wages for most work are pretty low here.
I've been here 2 years and I chose it for good climate (I like dry, high altitude, clean air, moderate temps, etc) and affordability. Every *nice* area in the western US has shot up in price in the last decade or two, but NM is relatively cheap... not compared to midwestern towns, but certainly compared to anyplace on the east coast, or CO, AZ, CA, OR, WA, etc...
I live in Alto (next to Ruidoso). My wife and I had planned on moving to Silver City (I'd been visiting there since the late 80s), but we found that it had been californicated (pricewise... I don't mind Californians otherwise). When people with lots of money decide that a town has become desirable, it quickly ceases to be affordable. I've seen this happen in every town I've liked in the western US. Ruidoso has been traditionally a Texas tourist town, and Texans have a different concept of land prices. Ruidoso was cheaper (though more affluent), is a prettier town (pine forest vs desert and junipers), closer to bigger towns than SC, and also much better for her work... so we moved here. It is changing though, and unlike most of the country, the prices have continued to rise.
I love it here... it ain't perfect, but it has exceeded my expectations.
I almost feel like the METOO KID as I have read these great posts.
I tell people my heart has been here for thirty years, it just took that long to get the rest of me up the mountain!
Before I had family, children or career, I skied and hiked the Sacramentos. I always wanted to stay forever, but always had to return to my busy, busy life.
Life went on. Living in Oklahoma and thinking I was in my last house, my husband came home on evening and said, 'Do you know where Alamogordo, NM is?'
I said, 'Right down the mountain from the place I've always wanted to live.'
The dream that had been almost, but not quite forgotten had just been granted.
Born and raised in SoCal, my husband and I bought some property here in NM about 3 years ago on a whim, just because it was pretty and we wanted someplace to go camping and such.
Plus I have family ties here, mostly in Hillsboro, Hatch and Las Cruces. They have been here for generations. So it's kind of 'the motherland' for me.
Then the SoCal housing market dumped and hubby was looking at no work for a long time (he's in new home construction)
So we managed to sell our house in California, and are now building on our 'vacation' property up here in the Sac's.
I have visited New Mexico several times. On one winter trip thirty years ago (van trip= long drive) to relatives in Arizona we stopped at the White Sands Monument and I got up just before sunrise and watched the dawn over Sacramento mountains and the light across the Desert. I though, “I like it here”. On another trip for a job interview at Los Alamos in the winter I looked around the snow covered morning and said, “I like it here”. Then there was the transcontinental motorcycle ride in mid summer (It was 98 deg in Needles, California when I started that day’s ride) and the next morning I was really cold sleeping on a picnic table neat Grants, NM. I said, “I like it here”. Riding north through the Sanger De Christos Mountains had the same response. The last trip was five years ago already and we toured the southwest part of the state. I really liked the Socorro area.
With the incredible inflation in travel costs we have not been to NM since. My wife is reluctant to leave here friends around here (southern New Hampshire) so I guess I’ll not make a permanent move but I darn well will set up a snowbird situation. NH no longer elicits the response of, “I like it here”.
I dont live in NM (yet), but definitely plan on retiring there, which is many years from now. I, too, felt a strong pull to NM. After several visits it just reassured me that NM will more than likely be my future home.
My story is the same as what I've read from all of you who unabashedly pour out your feeling. I'm an army brat and have lived all over the Country and Germany. I first came to NM about 6 years ago with a friend to watch the Arabian Horse show in ABQ we call The Nationals. We drove up to Santa Fe and Taos before stopping at the horse show. We almost didn't make it to the show, we loved being in those two towns. Fast forward two years and we brought our husbands to the show and again spent time in Taos. Last year my husband and I came back to the Carrizozo/Alto/Ruidoso area and fell in love with the area. As I recall as we were driving up from El Paso I could tell my husband was a little more than skeptical, then he saw Ruidoso and the mountains. He finally understood what I've been feeling for years. As many of you said it is a spiritual feeling, quest. Anyway I've told my sons to follow your heart, one is in San Francisco and the other is in China for the summer working a job as an intern. It's time I take my own advice. So.... it's good to have a goal. One more year and the younger son graduates from U Of Minnesota. then maybe... Keep your stories coming.
My wife and I have at least one grand adventure left in us. Nothing or nowhere can replace or overshadow the magic that was Hawai'i for us, but NM is a new flavor of beautiful...an intriguing and unexpected "scenic drive" we chanced upon and liked. We need the challenge and the change. Life is flux.
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