The Doorway (Patreon)

In addition to creating comics and writing prose, I shoot photography. I'm looking forward to sharing some of my work with you here!

I took this pic in the village of Cerrillos, New Mexico in early 2016. It's just down the way from where I used to live up on Gold Mine Road, in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains. From my vantage point I could see Waldo Canyon below. It cut through the Cerrillos Hills and down to the train tracks that snaked through the land.

One evening I stood underneath a rain cloud that had come in over the mountaintops behind me and hovered there. I looked out into the distance as the rays of sunset washed over the village and hills. If you allowed yourself a moment of suspended disbelief, you could swear you were staring at the landscape of Mars. It was another clue that an ancient magic still exists in this broken world.

Cerrillos is an old mining town that at one point was considered for the location of the capital of New Mexico. That honor eventually went to Santa Fe, and the once thriving and burgeoning city diminished into a quiet village. Now it's an artist enclave with a lovely state park. A place of retreat and respite -- a space to feel relief. While other such endeavors of humans staking their claim in such a hostile environment left ghosts towns in their astral wakes, Cerrillos remained. 

Maybe it's that magic lingering in the shadows of the canyon, in the hills strewn with abandoned attempts to circumvent preordained constructs of wealth, across the Galisteo Basin, and up north to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Perhaps that's what keeps it alive. 

Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Walt Disney all spent time in this part of the world. The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca and Young Guns were filmed in the village of Cerrillos itself. Lew Wallace wrote part of Ben-Hur while residing in a hotel in Carbonateville, a nearby mining camp, which during the boom of 1879 flickered, sparked, caught the fire of industry, and faded away in just a few years' time. 

They knew there was something enchanted about this place, didn't they?

The doorway in the middle of Cerrillos always stuck out to me. It literally sits there all by itself. It isn't attached to a building, yet the beams promote a sense of sturdiness. And I've often wondered what would happen should I grab the handles, open the doors, and cross over. Was there something on another side? Or would you just walk through and see the bluest sky, with white clouds gently flying towards another eventuality of formations, a future storm.   

You of course have your own theories. But here's a possibility: If you were to open the door you might find yourself in a library study, with coffee, tea and biscuits waiting. A warm hearth. Other writers, artists and explorers there mingling in the room. Perhaps Tesla, Edison, Disney, and Wallace sitting by a fireplace discussing what secrets they discovered in the desert. They might turn to you, and Tesla himself might smile, that knowing glimmer in his eyes. "Why don't you join us? Tell us, does magic still run along the arroyos, sing through the coyote call, and channel itself through the pen?"

Do you believe that could happen? As a writer, as a dreamer, as a human who pushes for progress, yet honors the past, I believe that you do.

Most of my current work is done using a Canon EOS 7D Mark II with very little editing, if any. I'm constantly looking at different cameras so feel free to tell me your favorites.

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