Sometimes, you just have to be there

Recently, I’ve been wondering why my friends and I don’t spend more time in Truth or Consequences.
By rambling, Wild West standards, it’s practically in our back yard, just an hour away from those of us in the northern part of Las Cruces.
I find myself using some of the same excuses I’ve been offering loved ones for the past decade for my reluctance to leave my querencia. I’ve already seen most of the parts of the world I want to see, some several times. It’s a hassle to make the trip. You can’t count on the weather. I get seasick on ships and flying is irritating, congested and a general ordeal.
Besides, I’ve found most of what I want and need close to home. And with advanced technology, you can tour the Louvre on your laptop or tablet, download a documentary on the Galapagos Islands or Machu Picchu or virtually sail the South Pacific. It’s almost the same as being there.
Except, it really isn’t.
That hit me when a loved one and I decided to beat the Memorial Day weekend’s maddening crowds (another factor that deters me from travel) for a quick little spring getaway to T or C.
I was walking down a marina ramp at Dam Site, after getting lost and feeling crabby on a too-windy day, when I paused, reflecting on the gently moving water, and spotted a hawk, or maybe an eagle, soaring high above me in a clear blue sky. It’s a reflex now, even on a supposed day off, and I took out my iPhone to capture the moment with a short video.
I couldn’t, of course, I’m far from a maestro of the medium, but I doubt that the world’s most skilled photographers or videographers could truly capture what it feels like, to be in the middle of a large body of water in high desert country, on a windy-but-warm spring day, sharing a flight of the imagination with a big bird in a panoramic moment of delight-in-spite-of-myself.
I’m a considerably better writer than I am a photographer, but I don’t think a thousand well-chosen words would do the job any more than a great video could manage.
You just had to be there.
Maybe there’s something about getting out of your familiar surroundings — even, or especially, if they are surroundings you love — that tends to shake up, stimulate and enhance your senses.
The state of rewarding, heightened reality stayed with me for the rest of the day.
The mood continued while I visited Dee Lighthart, who feels like an old friend after decades of visits to her one-of-a-kind, multimedia, multisensory emporium, Second Hand Rose. I did a little video, but you can’t smell the candles and incense, feel the fabrics or fully appreciate her creative juxtapositions of objets d’art. I suppose we could Skype and chat online, but there’s something about sharing the same, real-time space that inspires questions about her buying trips to exotic locales, updates on the talents of our grandsons and news of what’s up in T or C and LC.
I popped into RioBravoFineArts Gallery, which triggered a flood of memories of good times with its late founder, colorful character and talented artist Joe Waldrum. I found my attention arrested by the large-scale, light-filled floral paintings of Dave Barnett. Later, when working on today’s Artist of the Week feature on Barnett, I searched all available online sites and tried to find an image that truly captured the almost electric thrill of standing in front of a giant canvas and seeing his painstaking but transcendently painted blossoms against that vivid, only-in-New-Mexico-blue sky. In a half-century of quests, I’ve found that only a rare few artists can convey that true sense of what is ethereal, illusive and in the end, spiritual as much as it is sensual.
Here was one such work before me, and I’m now savvy enough to stop and enjoy the moment. Online and printing technology continues to improve, but as another attention-arresting artist, Carolyn Bunch, once told me, “You can lose the hand of the artist” in the translation.
Sometimes, you just have to be there.
S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com, @derricksonmoore on Twitter and Tout, or call 575-541-5450.