I can spend hours on the DraftsForSale.com website. Just don't tell my percheron horse Toby. I wouldn't want to hurt the Big Boo's feelings. This handsome team of percherons Rip and Bob, is currently listed for $9,000.

Don't you think I could get myself a team like this and give wagon rides on Rowe Mesa? Feed people breakfast burritos and hot coffee at dawn. Take along the charming heeler dogs. Get myself a brand new stetson and a driving coat and open up for business. That's a nice idea until I begin to think of the breadth of the spectrum of humanity who could show up as clients. My social skills just might not be up to the task, although my husband swears I can strike up a conversation with just about anybody.

Maybe I don't have to buy a whole team? Just get Toby an equally Big Boo-type friend. (I wanted to name the big percheron horse Boo [or Brother], but everyone in my family had a fit and disagreed. But there are ways around these things, you see.)

We were horrified a few years ago to see our beautiful mesa listed in one of the New Mexico horse magazines as one of the best places to ride in the state. (It is 36,000 acres of rolling grassland, pinon, juniper, ponderosa.) Right there on the front page. The author of that article was also pretty keen to point out what an ideal location it is for driving, with thousands of acres criss- crossed with lovely Forest Service roads. We expected it to be overrun after that article came out, but apparently no one was paying much attention. Thankfully.

Now I understand that some of our weasel-like politicians are selling us out to the four-wheeler crowd. The post office has been plastered with notices of who to contact and where to sign the petition for the mesa. Don't even get me started on that tirade. (I had a coyote-like dog once who made it her business to eat four-wheeler tires for lunch and always lived to tell about it. I can always get another one.)

It's funny, at the old Pecos Pueblo ruins--which were donated to the public, as I understand it, by the beautiful movie actress Greer Garson, who for many years lived on the Forked Lightning ranch with her husband--they show this kind of hokey movie at the main ranger station. It's narrated by Ms. Garson herself, in her cultured and melodic voice, and at the very end, she makes this rousing speech about progress and the Old Santa Fe Trail that always takes me by surprise.

You see, I live right on the Old Santa Fe trail. And this is where the Pecos Pueblo ruins are located. The conquistadors came up across the mesa top, I understand. I still crane my neck up and look for them occasionally when I'm standing in the back yard, doing something mundane, like filling the dog water dish. And if I did, I'd tell whatever shadows remain of the Pueblo Indians to run.

So, in this little film, Greer Garson is talking about how wonderful, how splendid, all this progress is, and these images of horses and wagons are flashing across the screen to eventually fade out and be replaced by images of 18-wheelers cruising down a modern interstate.

18-wheelers. I kid you not.

At that point, I just want to walk out.

I have noticed that no one ever applauds.

One of these mornings, I'd like to wake up and walk out my front door to see the highway gone.