Ojo Caliente, just a few minutes north of Santa Fe, had not yet developed into the luxurious spa resort it is today when I got lost there. I’d heard a frail young woman on the train tell how its waters helped her illness. She planned to return there after the next surgery on yet another part of her brain. I unfolded my New Mexico map and searched the northeastern quadrant for tiny font spelled in Spanish.

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The last stretch of road was as dry and dusty as I expected. It was early March and the midday sun felt good as I walked the premises looking for humans or a welcome center. No wind. Sparse clouds. Blue sky. One old building looked like a boarding house from any old western movie so I knocked, with knuckles and voice, and entered.

Choices explained to me all seemed reasonable: $20 for a full day to try each of the five different mineral pools or $60 to include the night in the old hotel and breakfast in the morning. After dropping my backpack on the bed, I decided to explore the nearby area and try the pools after supper.

The bluff behind the main building was easy to scale. I was raised in northeastern Colorado with similar caliche bluffs as my playground. I wandered those home pastures for days as a child, never once disoriented. However, soon, too soon, I was lost. Read more