The King of Wings, the beauty of the unknown, and the life waiting on the other side of someday.
In 2021, I took a travel nurse contract in Farmington, New Mexico, and I had no idea I was stepping into a world that would change the way I saw life.
New Mexico felt like another planet. The landscape was vast, strange, and almost impossible to put into words. There were places that made you feel impossibly small, where the land stretched so far in every direction that your eyes couldn’t find an ending. The colors, the formations, the silence, the sheer otherworldliness of it all mesmerized me.
Every weekend became an opportunity to explore. There was always another road to take, another trail to find, another piece of this alien landscape waiting to be discovered. I fell in love with the kind of beauty that doesn’t ask for your attention but somehow takes your breath away anyway.
And then there was the King of Wings.
I was fortunate enough to see it during my time in New Mexico, and I can still remember that hike as if it happened yesterday.
It was cold. The land was frozen and covered in snow. There were no trails to follow, no signs pointing us in the right direction, no markers reassuring us that we were headed the right way. Just a Garmin GPS, miles of open land, and the willingness to keep going.
We walked for what felt like forever, leaving the parking spot farther and farther behind us until there was absolutely no sign of civilization on the horizon. No buildings. No roads. No familiar reminders of the world we had left behind.
Just us and the creation.
There is something humbling about being somewhere so vast and untouched. Somewhere that reminds you just how small you are, how much of this world exists beyond your little corner of it, and how much beauty you might never see if you never venture beyond what you know.
I remember the cold air. The snow beneath our feet. The stillness that seemed to stretch on forever.
And I remember the wolf.
It crossed our path as if we were nothing more than a passing detail in its day. It gave us no mind, didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to acknowledge our presence. It simply continued on its way, moving with a purpose that belonged entirely to it.
I remember watching it disappear into that immense, quiet landscape and thinking about how extraordinary it was to be there. To be a visitor in a world that didn’t need us, didn’t revolve around us, and would carry on just fine long after we were gone.
I didn’t know then how deeply that day would stay with me.
I didn’t know that one day I would look back on that frozen landscape and feel something more than nostalgia. I didn’t know that the King of Wings would fall, or that the memory of seeing it standing there would become even more precious because of it.
But that’s the thing about life, isn’t it?
We don’t know which moments will become memories we ache to return to. We don’t know which places we visit for the first time will never look the same again. We don’t know when something we’ve always assumed would be there will suddenly become something we can only remember.
We move through our days believing there will be another opportunity. Another weekend. Another season. Another year to make the trip, take the chance, book the ticket, say the words, or finally do the thing we’ve been dreaming about.
We tell ourselves someday.
Someday, when work slows down.
Someday, when we have more money.
Someday, when life feels a little more settled.
Someday, when the timing is right.
We put our dreams on a shelf and convince ourselves they’ll wait patiently for us.
But sometimes, the world changes before we’re ready.
Sometimes, the thing we wanted to see is gone before we make it there. Sometimes, the opportunity passes. Sometimes, life takes a turn we never saw coming. And sometimes, tomorrow arrives, but it doesn’t look anything like the tomorrow we imagined.
The King of Wings falling has brought me back to that hike, and has reminded me to live now.
The King has Fallen
