Ocate

I first heard of Ocate during a one person show in Fort Collins back in 2010. Quite by chance the noted equine photographer Tony Stromberg was having an opening the same night. It was a drizzly April evening with very little action so I found myself wandering back and forth between my show and Tony’s. He did the same. In a snippet of conversation Tony described the horse sanctuary that he managed and spoke in spiritual terms about the rescued horses and life lessons they had taught him. He told me that his operation was in Ocate, New Mexico, a place somewhere between nowhere and oblivion. He said he had to drive to Mora for a tank of gas and to Las Vegas to find a real store. It sounded grim but it's lilting moniker stuck with me.

Last Saturday after we picked up a couple of Peggy’s paintings from the Kennedy Museum at New Mexico Highlands University we took the great circle route back to Taos through, you guessed it, Ocate. Being a man of the plains, figuratively speaking, the grasslands through which we drove were a tonic and the epic New Mexico sky enveloped us as only it can.

Wowzer! That's a sky.