Surviving in remote northern New Mexico mountains

Surviving in remote northern New Mexico mountains is more costly than you would expect. The previous owner left me with at least a winter or two’s worth of firewood, which I burned for heat most mornings. It warmed us up and left a pleasant smell throughout the cabin.

However, the cabin’s main heat source was a propane tank, and I had a very small one at that. It gets very cold around 8,000 feet in elevation, so I burned through that tank 3 times in one winter. It was about $900 each time to fill it back up - an expense I had certainly not thought about. Old wooden cabins are not exactly the most heat-efficient, as I quickly found out.

The well was straight groundwater, which I thought was delicious compared to city water. However, the well was subject to dry up during the summer when more visitors were staying in their cabins nearby. I remember taking a shower one morning and the water suddenly dried up. We had to wait another day or two for water to fill up the well again. There was already an extreme water use restriction in place, but it opened my eyes to how scarce the water situation can be in remote places out West. We might see that problem again this summer with how dry this winter has been in many parts of the country, especially in the West.

The meat at the local grocer was not the freshest, so we’d drive 1.5 hours over the state line to Colorado to shop at a Natural Grocers in Pagosa Springs. We’d get food to last a week or two and then retreat back to isolation in the mountains.

We had a young child on the way during my year in the mountains, so we’d drive another 1.5 hours south to Espanola, New Mexico for healthcare and prenatal visits. The hospital there in Espanola helped deliver our baby and did an amazing job. I’m so thankful for those nurses and other hospital staff who took care of us. For such a small community, I thought they had a good hospital.

I spent a lot of time on the road, but that’s not a complaint. The mountains and high desert of northern New Mexico are truly some of the most stunning landscapes in the entire US. It’s hard not to stop and take a photo around every curve. I didn’t mind being away from many amenities because I had many chances to drive around and experience the beautiful country.

I fished in the Rio Brazos for trout. I bought a new truck and used my old Chevy strictly for adventuring/offroading. I stayed off the highways after sundown because elk and deer in the road were far too dangerous and difficult to see. I remember driving near Alamosa, Colorado, very early one morning. A male elk with a gigantic rack stepped right in front of me out of the darkness. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have smashed right into him and could’ve lost my life. I swerved as hard as I could into the other lane, twisting and turning my steering wheel in a desperate attempt to miss this massive beast. I was lucky to escape that encounter.

Other than that, life was pretty simple in those days. I worked remotely using Starlink, or I’d drive to the library in the village of Chama and hang out for the afternoon. The restaurants usually closed early and weren’t open every day of the week during the offseason. Wintertime was sleepy and slow, much like it is in most places where it gets cold and dark.