Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal | Page 56

Culture. Culture is a funny thing. Some allow culture to influence everything they are and some; well some don’t have a choice. I’m from the great and beautiful city of Albuquerque, a city of about five hundred some thousand and in the heart of the southwest. I was born and raised in what the locals would call the South Valley. Growing up I was entrenched with what I knew and now know as normal but as I got older only came to found that it was just different, way different. It was everything but normal.

My wife and I, along with the rest of the country, ventured out to the Northwest in 2015. I had been to many places outside of the U.S and never found myself at a shock when arriving because I expected it, but now a little over a year later, am under a deep understanding of how people regardless of region are just different. The Northwest has many different things I wasn’t used to or perhaps had even seen in the country. I made the move and never had even visited. However, I won’t tell you how much I don’t know about the PNW. Instead, I think I’ll tell you and try to expose some of the unique experiences the state of NM does well.

You simply can’t be given the child hood I was given. From the early wake up sessions, slaughtering pigs, burying goats next to the hottest coals left over from the greatest fire your hearts can fathom, to sneaking a cold beer as a child when no one was looking. We killed pigs and used everything and I mean everything of that pig for food. We took the goats and lamb and did the same.