If you are going to send a generic New Mexico post card, this is the one to send.

We've got the same "Welcome to New Mexico" sign as we found in the earlier post card, but now it looks like it's actually in New Mexico.

I've nothing against the pine forest part of New Mexico pictured in that other card; it's actually quite lovely. But quite lovely pine forests are also quite unspectacular in their abundance. You can find a quite lovely pine forest in just about every state in the continental United States. Like I said before: take away the "Welcome to" sign and that other one could have been Springfield, U.S.A. (you pick the state).

But this– this is New Mexico.

There's a strange type of beauty at work here; not strange as in "odd", but strange as in "foreign", especially to those of us who've spent most of our lives east of the Mississippi.

We measure natural beauty by the lushness of our surroundings: the bursting of blooms in the spring or the blaze of color in the fall. But either way it is a landscape constantly in transition, even as it continuously envelopes us.

The beauty of the American southwest is that of the wide open. Maybe that's why the American archetype– the cowboy– possess those traits that define him best: quiet determination, rugged individualism, a sense of purpose. It's no wonder; the landscape he lives in is honest and unassuming– a man can think as long and as clear as he can see, and when he looks out to the horizon, he sees the sky touch the earth.

Note to the post card publisher: thanks for not junking up the view with "Greetings from <your town here>."