Coyote and Hawk
One newcomer's saga of making the move—and getting over the culture shock—from New York City to New Mexico.
By Jeff Berg
The answering machine offers a chirpy female voice, probably one octave above her normal speaking voice. Its blissful greeting goes something like this: "Hi! This is Dana! I'm in Newww Mexiiiicoooo! Leave a message!"
Dana Greene is indeed in New Mexico. She is delighted. She is happy. Life could hardly be better, even though she has me as a neighbor.
Recently hired by NMSU to work as an assistant professor in the school's small criminal-justice department, Greene is enjoying her first rendezvous with rural living. She came to Las Cruces nearly sight unseen, to live this past spring, with her faithful four-legged companion, Helen, a Rhodesian Ridgeback (that's a dog, not a hog), and was later joined by her life partner, Andrea "Let's Go Mets!" Trimarco. Unlike Greene, Trimarco has thus far failed to see much of the enchantment that is blustered about in everything New Mexico from travel guides to license plates.
Greene's biography goes something like this. Born in Mt. Vernon, NY, she ended up in Puerto Rico at the age of six. "My Dad was a bum," she says half-seriously. "He spent all of his time getting gigs here and there. I don't really know what he did, but I think he was in middle management for supermarkets. Mom later dumped him and married the guy who owned the store he was working for at the time."
Her growing-up odyssey included time in Philadelphia and Detroit, boarding school in Massachusetts and a stint as an actress in Tallahassee, Fla., before ending up in New York City for many years. There she became a tried-and-true big city woman—with the lifestyle of someone who lives in a metro area: A small studio apartment where dog Helen had to perhaps get up in order for Greene to walk by. Non-ownership of a car. Being able to call out for any kind of food at any hour of the day, and have it delivered to her door. She of course enjoyed a social life with lots of like-minded friends, with access to everything that goes on in the Big Apple. While in New York, she taught criminal justice at John Jay College and at Bronx Community College.
But something was missing in Dana Greene's life.
Perhaps news articles and television coverage that appeared in the last year in New York about a family of hawks and a coyote influenced her future move to New Mexico. To long-time residents of the no-longer very wild West, it might appear as eye-rolling overkill when all of the city's media groups covered the "eviction" of a pair of redtail hawks, nicknamed PaleMale and Lola, from a building ledge, where they had built a nest and come home to roost. Then there was the story in The New Yorker magazine's Talk of the Town section (its version of Desert Exposure's Tumbleweeds section, you might say) about a coyote, code-named Hal, that was discovered roaming in Central Park. Hal was later tracked down, tranquilized—overly so— and died just before being transferred out of the city and back to the wilds of the Putnam County Forest.
But now Dana Greene has a chance, almost daily, to see hawks and coyotes—live and undisturbed.
"I came here in January of this year for an interview at NMSU," she recalls. "I had seen the ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education [a trade publication for educators] and was looking for a decent gig in a warmer climate. I was also looking for someplace that would be an adventure."
The competition was pretty fierce for Greene's teaching abilities, as she also ended up considering positions in San Francisco and at the U of Alaska-Fairbanks—hardly a place with a warmer climate.
Greene is wearing tennis shoes with little skulls on them as we visit. She is also tattooed and probably the most gregarious woman on Rockhouse Lane.
She picked NMSU in part, she says, because her future co-workers "told her the truth about the department."
And then the adventure began. "When I was here for the interview, we drove around town, and all I was doing was going to meetings, lunches, and driving by strip malls. I was starting to twitch since I didn't have any access to nature."
But after registering her concern, a visit to the desert added another dimension to her decision. Bitten by enchantment, she returned to the East Coast.
"I got home, and two days later, NMSU called to make an offer. We negotiated for a week, and I ended up selling my apartment in half an hour. I was already in an incredibly heightened state, and then there was this 'sinister' woman [the previously mentioned Ms. Trimarco] making me fall in love!"
Greene's next duty was to return to Las Cruces to find a house. Never having owned a house before, it was all the more important for it to be the right one.
"The first Realtor I met with drove me around to all of these places in town, and I remember thinking, 'What does she think I am, a soccer mom?'"
A second Realtor took Greene to 12 or more houses in a single day. "The first one was a fixer-upper, the second one was even uglier. The next was too suburban, and so we went back to the first one again. I have been in an apartment my whole life, and when the agent mentioned mortgage, I thought, 'who, me?'" And then she thought, "Where is the money coming from?" and then by her own admission, "I burst out crying."
But utopia was soon located on Rockhouse Road, and funding help came from a loving mom, a spry 69 years of age. Greene swallowed her fear and recalls thinking, "This is it."
She says, "I now owned a house, which was absurd. My New York friends said, 'This does not compute'" at the notion of Greene living and working in Las Cruces, NM.
But the move was made, and Greene soon discovered the joys of rural living, just down the street from me. "I got here and the first week was a total meltdown. I spent two days in bed, and finally it was my mom who conquered the house."
As adjustments and acquaintances were made, Greene's unreserved personality took over. She began calling me.
One phone call came with a note of astonishment in her voice: "There are ants crawling all over the outside of the house!"
Another call: "I just saw a COYOTE!"
The next call: "My driveway just washed away! I love it!" (This after her first real gully-washing, toad-strangling desert thunderstorm.)
"There was a rattlesnake on the front porch today!" A bunny! A jackrabbit! A tarantula!
"I could be naked and open my front door, and not have to worry about it."
And, ironically: "There is SO much stimulation here!"
Some things are still requiring adjustment, such as a complete switch from the night-owl life—dinner after 10.30 p.m., not going to bed until after 2 a.m. The only people who do that in southern New Mexico have to because they work graveyards. Then there's the lack of enough decent restaurants, a common complaint of Las Cruces newcomers.
And the need to drive a car, which she bought in New Jersey "from a guy named Peroni. The whole car place stunk of mendacity. My friend Rachel went with me, and finally she ended up getting a price that SHE could live with. Rachel was thinking, 'make this end,' since buying the car was the biggest freak-out of all for me." The car is a Subaru, and to Greene, it is a symbol of her new way of life.
There is a melancholic wishing for the New York Times, ordering in, and a suitable yoga studio, but so far, nature rules. "I love the proximity to nature," Greene says. "I feel like I am in nature."
Greene started her teaching job earlier this semester. Not long after Greene moved, Trimarco made the leap, too, and another family member, a loping overgrown pup named Cropsey, after a street in New York, was added. Trimarco, taking a break from her social-work career, is taking some classes at NMSU and helping to "conquer" the house.
And neither Greene nor Trimarco will have to read stories about wayward coyotes or evicted redtail hawks.
Jeff Berg writes from Las Cruces and seldom goes out.
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