Looking for Lucia Berlin in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico

Pink mountains, night hawks and radar towers in the desert on the fourth stop of my Lucia Berlin research trip

Hello, friends —

For everyone who’s subscribed since my newsletters from Alaska, Texas, Mexico and Chile: thank you so much! Check out my previous posts for more information about my road trip in search of Lucia Berlin, and my forthcoming biography.

The fourth stop on my literary journey was New Mexico. Lucia lived there for two separate periods, during the 1950s and 1960s, and the landscape clearly stayed with her. In her story ‘A Manual for Cleaning Women’ — which is actually set in California’s Bay Area, and which everyone in the world should read — she writes:

I wish there was a bus to the dump. We went there when we got homesick for New Mexico. It is stark and windy and gulls soar like night hawks in the desert. You can see the sky all around you and above you.

I immediately saw what she meant, and why she continued to look for New Mexico in other landscapes, long after she’d left it behind.

First Impression

The first thing I did in Albuquerque was track down the radar site where Lucia sets her spectacular short story ‘Strays’. It’s out in the desert, on federally-owned land — ‘Nothing around, not a tree, not a bush’, as Lucia puts it — surrounded by barbed wire and a high, chain-link fence. I hiked out onto the West Mesa to get close, and it was totally worth it.

Forgive the selfie stick — I was alone.

Best Discovery

I was so lucky in Albuquerque — I had a great research partner, Lucia’s very generous and insightful cousin Jill Gatwood. Check out her gorgeous mosaics! I think the toasters are my faves: some of them even have their own mosaic pieces of toast.

With lots of help from Lucia’s sons Jeff and David, Jill and I tracked down Lucia’s many New Mexico houses: more on that in my book. But Jill also introduced me to the history of the area — which she is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about — and to the irrigation canals that run through it. They’re called ‘acequias’, and they were first dug hundreds of years ago by Pueblo Native Americans, and added to by the Spanish colonisers who arrived in the late sixteenth century. Locals still often ‘walk the trenches’, which are peaceful and beautiful, lined with cottonwood trees.

Here’s the view from one of Jill and my walks, right in the middle of the city, though you can’t see any buildings.

Worst Discovery

Sadly, Lucia’s most beautiful Albuquerque house is abandoned now, and almost a ruin. The adobe walls are flaking away, and the pool in the garden filled with rusted car parts and empty beer cans. Here’s Jill outside the front door.

Last Impression

I left New Mexico having slept in a new kind of bed (to me). When I’d arrived at my Airbnb four days previously, I hadn’t been able to work out where the bed was.

And then I did.

It’s called a Murphy bed, and it was very comfortable. It felt appropriate, too, because Lucia spent much of her childhood sleeping on Murphy beds in mining towns. She mentions them several times in her wonderful memoir — but I’d never really noticed that until I ended up in one myself.

Final Thought

I’ve spoken to lots of strangers on this trip — on trains, on aeroplanes, in taxis and cafés and diners — and when I’ve told them about my journey, they’ve often reacted in the same way: ‘Wow, I hope you don’t have children’, or ‘Wow, your husband must be an understanding man. You’d better get home to him soon.’

I’m not exaggerating — I transcribed those reactions, word for word. If I had ten dollars for every time someone expressed surprise that Tom is supportive of my trip, I could stay in a place with a more conventional bed. And of course, I’ve never heard anyone say anything along those lines to Tom, whose work takes us to a new country every year.

What I’m trying to say is: your support means a lot. Not everyone gets it.

I’m off to look for Lucia on the other side of the country now! In the meantime, keep well, and if you can’t find your bed, just try opening some cupboards.

Nina

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