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Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM

Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM, February 13, 2008
Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM, February 13, 2008

Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus NM is about 30 miles south of Deming NM and just north of the border at Palomas, a popular destination for those looking for inexpensive medical and dental work in Mexico. Or a fine lunch at the Pink Store right over the border.

Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM

Nights I've camped here

A Voyage and a Harbor

The native American was forced westward by the young escaping the limits of east coast villages that had been established only a generation or two earlier by parents escaping the limits of European villages. From then on, whether seeking a whale, rafting with Huck Finn, easy riding with Peter Fonda, or next week in Cancun, there has been a strong belief in America that happiness lies somewhere else. And yet as we find freedom we also rediscover loneliness. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says, we require both shelter and venture. We need freedom and support, silence and cacophony, the vast and distant but also the warm and near, a voyage and a harbor, the great adventure and the hobbit hole. Much of the iconography of our times gives little sense of this. Instead, the individual is treated as a self-sufficient, self-propelled vehicle moving across a background of other things, other places, and other people.

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