Page 5 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

In the 1940’s I began writing a book about homesteading in New Mexico in 1931. I was unsuccessful in getting it published, but kept adding to it as I remembered things — always in the hope that some day...! Through the years no publisher would read
it. “Don’t send it to us,” they’d say. “We have an excess of material of this type.” So, gradually I lost heart — and hope — and gave up, sold my typewriter, and forgot about it.
Almost fifty years passed by, and I felt toward my homestead life as if it had happened on another planet and in a different life. I lived in Magdalena, at the C
Bar N Ranch and at Socorro, and it never once occurred to me that I could go back, even to explore.
A few years ago I had been ill with shingles for several months and my doctor suggested that I get a massage to make me feel better as he could do nothing for me. A young massage therapist from Albuquerque came to my home. During the course of the treatment, and in response to questions she asked me about myself, I revealed the fact that I had once homesteaded, back in 1931, in the southwestern part of New Mexico. She became very excited at the stories I told her about life on the homestead, and this caused me to remember more events. Later we made two camping trips to the Beaverhead/Dusty area — really roughing it since we didn’t even have a tent.
We traveled the Railroad Canyon road all the way to Beaverhead and Wall Lake. We visited the site of Dad’s cabin, but not a stick was left. We couldn’t make it up to my beautiful Peonas, for modern cars are built so much lower to the ground than older ones that we were never able to negotiate the rocky high-centered road. We visited the Dusty schoolhouse, the old fort, and the warm springs for a quick dip. The only thing left there is the old schoolhouse and ruins of the fort.
Kate’s enthusiasm encouraged me to return to my writing and to exert more effort to get it published. This book is the result of that association.
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