LESLIE'S JOURNAL

Last night we stayed with Merredith and Noah Kopald, who are on my list of top favorite people in the world. Meredith was my English teacher when I was a senior at 'Eldorado' high school. When I started my senior year, I was all set to go to med. school and become a doctor, but somehow after Meredith's class I had to change all my plans and do my degree in English and Philosophy instead.

This morning Noah saw us on our way with a fabulous breakfast spread of bagels and cheese and mustard and onions and pickled herring and the best coffee we've had since Chicago. I drove out of my hometown reluctantly, but with a full stomach. It was, then, not out of hunger that I found myself pulling over at the Turtle Island Cafe just outside Laguna Pueblo shortly thereafter. Whenever I'm home in New Mexico one of my aims is to eat as much green chili as possible, so I automatically ordered green chili and cheese enchaladas. We ate on the front porch of the little house, looking out over the mesa to the south, watching the Santa Fe freight trains roll past in the distance.

When Helen had gone to the car to fetch something, the proprioetor of the cafe, a native whose skin was a gorgeous deep brown against the white of his cook's top, came over and sat with me. He asked me where we were from and I explained that Helen was from England, and that I was from Albuquerque but had been living in England and Scotland for 10 years. He told me that the only European country he had ever really wanted to visit was Germany, but then he had had a vision of himself there and now he no longer needed to go. He asked me if I liked living somewhere so different and so far away and I said, 'Yes, but when I come out here and see the sky...' And he said, 'Home is home.'