Wild Research from the Wilds of New Mexico

The below video includes a rapid review of two books published in recent years. The location? Below the Sawtooth Mountains in the state of New Mexico in the USA.

One is a non-fiction book about a young, restless woman determined to calm her soul by hiking a long and arduous trail in the western United States – the Pacific Crest Trail.

The other fictional book is about a multimillionaire author in the European country of Monaco. His wife has been slain, and he is the suspected killer. While on the run, he’s trying to find out who committed the crime.

Both books are easy reads.

Wild – From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

Research, by Philip Kerr

My friend from high school days, Anne, recently introduced me to her friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico – Lee and Brooke Swanson. They told me about a recent documentary made in the closest town to the property shown above.

This above property (purchased thanks to my sister and her former husband) is in Catron County. In the USA, counties are primary geographical sub-units dividing states. Catron County is sizable. Very sizable. (Although there are 28 other larger counties in the USA.) It has an area of 6,929 square miles (17,946 square kilometers) – larger than the American state of Rhode Island, or the state of Connecticut, or the state of Delaware, or the District of Columbia (DC). Catron County is larger than several countries, including Kuwait, Swaziland, Gambia, Cyprus, Singapore, Mauritius, Seychelles, Jamaica, Kosovo, and Cape Verde. It’s larger than East Timor or the Bahamas or Gibraltar. Or Bahrain, Qatar, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. It is larger area than the following countries combined:  Lebanon, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Mauritius, Malta, Andorra, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Bermuda, and Barbados.

So what? It’s large.

Here is so what: the population density is one person per two square miles. My nearest neighbor lives three miles away, and the nearest town is a dozen miles away. That local town, Pie Town, has a population of 22 people. My new friends told about the documentary titled the Pie Lady of Pie Town. It’s about camaraderie and resourcefulness, about building a business based on dreams rather than financial projections. It’s about joys and frustrations of living off the beaten path.

For a small locale, Pie Town has also inspired quite a few books, including Pie Town, Welcome Back to Pie Town, and Pie Town Woman, not to mention From Pie Town to Yum Yum and 331. I once met an author in the pie store who told me of research for her latest book – including what wine Eleanor of Aquitaine served at her 12th century wedding in France. That was not a conversation I expected in a town with 22 residents in a county with fewer than one peson per square mile. But that’s the magic.

Size and remoteness of rural towns, I learned, have little impact on residents’ love of books and reading.