Isn’t New Mexico all desert?

I mentioned previously that I am a “Jersey girl” and while growing up, I could see the Twin Towers in New York City.  Later in life, I lived in Central NJ, closer to Princeton where my mail went through main branch of the Trenton post office.

This is the NY City skyline that I grew up with. It's what it looked like prior to September 11, 2001.

Coincidentally, the first anthrax letters were postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, on September 18, 2001—just a week after the September 11 attacks. At the time, none of us could have imagined that something so terrifying would pass through the same postal system we all depended on every day. More letters followed on October 9, again bearing that same Trenton postmark. These later letters were addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, two of the most influential members of Congress at the time.

The letter to Senator Daschle was opened by his aide on October 15, triggering an immediate shutdown of the government mail system. The Leahy letter wasn’t even found until November 16—it had been sitting in an impounded mailbag after being misrouted because of a misread ZIP code. By then, a postal worker at the State Department facility where it ended up had already contracted inhalation anthrax. These Senate letters contained about a gram of highly refined, nearly pure anthrax spores—far more potent than the earlier mailings.

Here's a copy of the note that was inside one of the Anthrax laced letters.

Here's a picture of the letter addressed to Senator Daschle which was found to contain deadly amounts of Anthrax.

While the nation was focused on what was happening in New York and Washington, many people didn’t realize that New Jersey was living through its own part of the crisis. One of those contaminated letters had passed through my post office. I remember how surreal it felt: this small, everyday place—somewhere I had stood in line countless times—suddenly became part of a national bioterrorism investigation.

For about eight weeks, no one in my neighborhood received a single piece of mail. The post office was shut down completely, and we were essentially cut off from one of the main systems we relied on. When mail service finally resumed in Mercer County, everything arrived in sealed plastic sleeves. Each sleeve had a notice explaining that the contents had been irradiated to kill any potential biological agents. It was unsettling to hold something as ordinary as a phone bill or a birthday card knowing it had been treated like hazardous material.

Life in 2001 wasn’t set up for disruptions like that. There was no widespread electronic bill pay. You waited for your bills to arrive in the mailbox, wrote a check, and mailed it back. Suddenly, none of that was possible. The governor eventually had to step in with emergency legislation so we wouldn’t be penalized for late payments—because there was literally no way for us to send or receive anything.

The FBI later described their investigation as “one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement.” For me, it wasn’t just something happening on the news—it was happening right in my own community, reshaping the routines of daily life in ways that were both strange and deeply unsettling. Even now, I don’t think people outside New Jersey fully realize how close to home those events hit for us.

Now you might be saying what does this have to do with a desert? Well, when I mentioned to my students that I would be making my annual trek to New Mexico for the Balloon Fiesta, the questions started. Many of them had never traveled outside of the greater NY area and they had little knowledge of anything west of Pennsylvania. This meant that traveling to New Mexico was a completely foreign idea to them. The stereotypes were real and I had many questions to answer such as why would I ever want to go to the desert in October? They were also curious about cacti, rattlesnakes, the water and whether I had updated my passport.

To refresh your memory, New Mexico is west of Texas and New Jersey is so small on this map, you can hardly see it. It's east of Pennsylvania and north of Maryland.

Prior to September 11, 2001 security at airports was very different. After that date, especially within the next 6 months, what you see in this picture was not uncommon.

Traveling at that point in time was very different due to the newly imposed restrictions at the airports. Removing shoes and outerwear for the TSA was a new thing and I had not experienced security at the airport like the post 911 security previously. I had never imagined that I would be seeing armed guards with machine guns at any US airport but that’s how the world had changed. Since I flew out of Newark, NJ, the view I had known throughout my life had changed forever. The towers were gone!

The New York skyline today.

Fortunately, once I was in the air and headed west, I was on my way to my beloved NM where the sky seemed endless. Yes, there are some areas that have a desert-like climate, but not in central NM where I was headed. Albuquerque is approximately one mile high, and the air is clear. The Sunport is extremely welcoming with adobe walls and Southwestern décor complete with sculptures! The Sandia mountains were on the east side of the Sunport and they looked like a movie set to this Jersey girl! The Sandias stood approximately 4500 feet above Albuquerque (ABQ). Mount Taylor is an extinct volcano about 80 miles west of ABQ and it’s 11,300 feet tall, readily visible to the west. ABQ is considered high desert, however there are many different influences in the climate throughout the state depending upon the elevation.

Albuquerque NM in the foreground and the Sandia Mountains to the east in the background.

Mount Taylor as viewed from Albuquerque, NM looking west

New Mexico, fifth largest State in the Union, with a total area of 121,412 square miles, is approximately 350 miles square. The State's topography consists mainly of high plateaus or mesas, with numerous mountain ranges, canyons, valleys, and normally dry arroyos. New Mexico abundant sunshine, low relative humidities, and a relatively large annual and daily temperature range.

Do these images look like a desert to you? Not to me either and I just stopped explaining that after a while. I found that I felt most at home in New Mexico and had decided that when I retired, I would move there.

More reasons behind my decision will be coming soon. Perhaps one of the best reasons is that I landed at Tanner Tradition, in Ruidoso. I am surrounded by beautiful authentic handcrafted Native American art and jewelry. Warm, genuine people and the Sierra Blanca Mountain range. The closest desert is in Alamogordo which is about 50 miles south of here and 2600 feet lower in elevation!