Starting at the beginning

The place to start, when you're strolling around Socorro, is with the San Miguel Mission, founded in 1598 by two Spanish priests who named the village Nuestra Senora del Perpetuo Socorro (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) because of the help they received from the local indian tribe they found there.* The original Socorro Land Grant given by the King of Spain apparently encompassed everything within a 3 mile radius of the church. The most enjoyable account of the history of the San Miguel Mission that I have come across so far is here, written by the pastor - it's a gripping tale, complete with buried treasure and visions of a winged man hovering over the doorway grasping a shining sword during an Apache raid.



The bells of San Miguel peal every hour - my new home is within the original land grant, and I hear the bells every so often. It's nice.

Something else I hear is train sounds - the tracks are behind my new home, just to the west. I feel about train sounds the way Spike feels about the howling of the wind - I revel in them - so this is a good thing. What's weird is that by some trick of topography, it actually sounds like there's also a train passing in front of my house at the same time as it passes behind the house. It's not so much an echo as a sound shadow, as though there's a ghost train traveling parallel to the real one. I don't know why I love the sound of a train so much - possibly I am suffering from a chronic case of Zugenruhe.
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* Or maybe it was named Socorro by the Spanish explorer Juan de Onate (there should be a tilde over the n in Onate) as in this account.

** I have located the elusive tilde: Oñate! Thanks, Spike.