Although I've only been in Galisteo some 32 years, I first saw the village seven years earlier on a dark night hike to the hogback (volcanic dyke) north of the village. I was told that underfoot were many petroglyphs from the nearby Pueblo of Tanuge (colonially dubbed Galisteo Pueblo), in ruins since the late 1700s. I was already a rock art freak. Around 1988 my old friend, Harmony Hammond, was thinking of buying a home Galisteo and I visited the village itself for the first time. Walking across the old bridge to the other side of the Rio Galisteo, where I would soon settle, I remember thinking that the place was foreign or mysterious. When my mother died in 1992, I bought some land there, built a little house and moved from New York's SoHo. I’ve edited the monthly community newsletter for 28 years and have served on the planning committee, water board, and auxiliary fire department. I have hiked and trespassed all over the Galisteo Basin for decades, writing two books about the area and the village. The surrounding land is now familiar, cherished, and layered with memories, my own and those of my historic predecessors.Every day I’ve savored my view of Cerro Pelon to the southwest. This is my place, though I’m a newcomer in terms of New Mexico history.