Adobe Town Some time ago, on a wild goose chase, I drove from Santa Fe to Las Vegas, then over the Sangre de Christo mountains, through to Taos. The Sangre de Christo are real mountains. The desert scrub population recedes to pine trees and for a while, depending on the time of year, you'll pass by patches of snow. Snow crowns the summits and from the distance they appear as glaciers. At higher elevations weather can be extreme; sometimes varying 60 degrees in the same day! Winter days hover in the teens, spring winds frequently blow, summer days may approach the upper 90's and thunderstorms occur from July to September. My mind wandered to the ancient Indians who settled here thousands of years ago. To the Spanish colonists who established frontier towns in the 1600's. Then, I was brought back to more modern times at the scene of this old car, outside of town. It made the wild goose chase worthwhile… And reminded me of a writing by Will Durant (1885-1981): "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record. While on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians ignore the banks for the stream."