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By Steve Komadina
Where To Next?
As November draws to a close and the holidays will whisk December aside in a flurry, we ask what is next for our little horse world of Corrales. As many of us age we are amazed at the speed with which each day and week and month slides by.
Wasn’t it just yesterday we were worrying about Y2K?
Just as every day seems the same in Corrales, it has many subtle and not so subtle changes taking place continually. I often wonder what the village will be like when my great-grandchildren live here as parents. That granddaughter who rode her pony at the farm in the 90s is now the mother of two children! The circle of life continues with the gold in the cotton woods and the return of the sandhill cranes and geese each year. The river rises and falls with the whim of El Niño and raptors look for their lunch along the bosque.
An intriguing question is whether the land is stronger than the people in Corrales?
How long would it take nature to retake the village were we to disappear? When would all evidence of our existence be gone?
Most are aware that there was a bustling civilization in our village prior to the “discovery†by Coronado. Pot sherds can still be found as reminders when fields are turned, or a new foundation dug. What would be left in 100, 200, 500, 1,000 years if we all were wiped out by biological warfare agents?
I see patients daily recovering from COVID. Last week, a doctor I had employed to join me February 1, died of COVID after a mild disease of a few days. Mark was healthy, vaccinated, young, and with no co-morbidities. What is this crazy virus?
I am given to much reflection as to the nature of our “civilization.â€
I have traveled the world and visited many ancient sites and have wondered who they were and what caused them to disappear. Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, primitive cave art in Torres del Paine in the Chilean Patagonia, Egypt, Turkey, the Temples of India and Nepal, Central American ruins, Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, the home of australopithecine, and even our own Chaco Canyon.
Are we on the brink of another mass kill off of the human race? Will Corrales have a future beyond the memory of my offspring?
Lots of weighty questions for the end of the year.
I do know that man is the most dangerous of the animals and to be feared the most. The evils of government are testified in history. Time for each of us to reflect on how we can do our small part to make the world and Corrales a wonderful place to live and even die.
Here is my prayer for each to have a joyous December and then resolve to not let the governments of the world destroy us in 2022.