Albuquerque in June – Fire

I have a friend, Anjie, who lives in the east mountains, just east of Albuquerque. She commutes in to work at the University of New Mexico Medical Center, and I live on the far east edge of town, so her commute takes her close to my house. Whenever I visit Albuquerque, we try to schedule a walk in the hills near me after she gets off of work. We always have a nice time catching up.

The day after I walked with Anjie, I was out walking with John after work and the light was funny. Beautiful, but it didn’t seem quite right. Is that clouds and the reflections of the low afternoon sun, or is that smoke?

John found a news site – sure enough, Carnuel was burning. Carnuel is a small community between Albuquerque and the east mountains, along Interstate 40. The freeway was closed and so was Route 66.

The only way to go east out of Albuquerque is I-40 and the old route 66 that runs next to it like a frontage road. There’s really no other way east out of Albuquerque without going 60 miles north to Santa Fe or an equal distance south. It’s possible to go east from Placitas, but it’s a poorly maintained, very rough 4-wheel drive track through the mountains and not appropriate for regular passenger cars.

It was rush hour and I knew it was Anjie’s only way home. I texted her, “Are you stuck?” Sure enough, she was. Here’s the photos she took from her car, while stopped on the freeway.

She was stuck out there a long time. She never did get home that night.

Eventually the authorities got the stuck cars turned around and headed back into Albuquerque. I offered our house for the night, but she has relatives in town and stayed with them.

They got the fire out thankfully, and it didn’t burn the entire east mountains down, or the houses in the foothills. The previous month there had been a huge fire in northern New Mexico. We were lucky this time.

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