Return to Wonder

Once a year, on the exact same day as the Kentucky Derby, 3,000 people show up in a town of 250 where absolutely nothing about the day makes sense.

Cerrillos, New Mexico.

Population: a few stubborn humans, some ravens, and an unknowable number of opinions about water rights.

The occasion? The annual Cerrillos B***o Race.

People come from across the country with their b***os loaded up in vintage mining gear. Pickaxes. Gold pans. Shovels. Because the rules apparently require you to look like it’s 1887 and about to strike it rich in the Ortiz Mountains.

The race starts up by the old hanging tree, because of course it does, and drops down dusty roads into the arroyo, through the general indifference of the desert. Winding through old mining trails like someone designed a sporting event after reading half a paragraph of history and deciding, yeah, that makes sense.

They come in from all over, b***os in tow, and the rule is simple: you run with them. Which turns the whole thing into less of a race and more of a negotiation.

Meanwhile, 3,000 people line the streets like this is the Super Bowl of poor decision-making.

No one really knows why this many people showed up. For a town that tries to keep itself a secret, there’s no real marketing for this. Definitely no influencer push. Just some collective agreement that this is important.

And it kind of is.

Because where else do you get: a b***o dressed like a taco. I cannot explain this. I will not try. A Buddhist b***o mural. Or a rusted 1960s Chevy van turned into some sort of folk-art b***o shrine, complete with an oil painting of b***o Jesus and the b***o apostles at the last supper. I guess that makes Judas the ass.

Things in the high desert don’t always make sense. Neither do I. We get along fine.

***oRace

I sat under a juniper this morning with a cup of coffee and a burrito still wrapped in foil.

Nothing dramatic happened. That’s kind of the point.

The wind moved through before it touched me. You hear it first out here. Low in the trees, then across the ground, then it hits your skin like it was always on the way.

I didn’t come out here to have a moment. I came out here because it’s where I go. Same spot. Same tree. Coffee going cold while I stare at dirt like it might explain something.

Somewhere in that, everything goes quiet.

This is when I pray.

I pray differently now than I did when I was a pastor.

Back then it was words. Asking. Interceding. Trying to say it right, mean it right, aim it somewhere and hope it landed.

Out here it doesn’t work like that.

It’s less about what I say and more about whether I’ve gotten quiet enough to be in it. Like there’s already something moving through all of this and I either line up with it or I don’t.

And when it does, I’m not sending a prayer anywhere.

I’m inside it.

Part of it.

The same way the wind is part of what it’s moving through.

That’s as close as I can get to explaining it.

I wrote about that here
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