“Homecoming”
01.15.08
by: Nathan James

Fishbone was founded in 2002 in Orange County, California. From 2002-2006, we served clients in both California and New Mexico from our Newport Beach offices. In 2007, we established a New Mexico office, and I moved back here, splitting my time between the two states. Now in 2008, we have closed our Newport Beach office, completing our transition home.

Recently, a new client asked me why I moved back, after spending 11 years in a place with a beach and enough wealth and glamour that they make TV shows about it.

What makes New Mexico home? I wasn’t born or reared here. My wife is a native, my in-laws and one of my parents live here, but family isn’t what makes New Mexico home. America’s 47th state is where I belong because it is the one state I have lived in (among eight) or visited (among 35) where I can’t imagine being happier somewhere else.

Where does this contentedness come from? I would say the New Mexico land and sky, but even our breathtaking vistas are not enough. Other states are beautiful too.

Truth is, I don’t feel merely contented here. I feel rooted – which is odd, because my family roots are in Kansas, and, before 1854, in Wales.
So how does a place create a sense of roots among its immigrants?

For me, the answer came unexpectedly, during a trip to Fort Union.

Those who went to school here know this state’s unique history. But I went to school in Arizona, Georgia and New York, so since moving here last year, I’ve made a point of learning New Mexico’s history, by reading and visiting points of interest.

Fort Union was a strategically important outpost during the Civil War (yes, the Civil War was fought in New Mexico), but its heyday was as an outpost during the Indian Wars (yes, they were called wars and fought as wars), providing protection and supplies to settlers migrating west on the Santa Fe Trail.
You can still walk along the wagon wheel ruts carved into the prairie by the Santa Fe Trail as it passes by the forts – plural because there were actually three Fort Unions built on that stretch of plain at different times.

It’s an astoundingly beautiful slice of God’s earth. Blue, snow-capped mountains cradle a golden valley woven through by a green ribbon of river.
It’s quiet. The wind often blows. As you stand against the ruins of the fort, antelope tread peacefully within a hundred yards.

That is where it hit me, in a rush of understanding: the people of New Mexico’s history – the Native Americans defending their land, the Spanish explorers and settlers, the American soldiers and settlers – are all still visible here, still audible, still active. They etch the faces, memories and genealogies of current-day residents. They occupy the ruins of 11th Century pueblos and 19th Century forts. They whisper through the bosque cottonwoods and laugh along the river paths of the Pecos and Rio Grande.

I first moved here in 1991, with nothing but a suitcase, knowing no one. I was a refugee from Manhattan, where I’d spent six years sequestered in small, often dark apartments, and riding through dark, often smelly subway tunnels. To emerge from that intense urban environment into New Mexico’s intense sunshine and immense blue sky literally made me hoot with joy.

No, I’m not from New Mexico. But I most definitely belong here.

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