Photo: The Mesilla Valley

Here's a lovely aerial shot of nearly the entire Mesilla Valley (click to enlarge). (El Paso is not visible, but is downstream, to the right.) Most obvious is the narrow course of the Rio Grande river, which nourishes the Mesilla Valley in New Mexico, with the city of Las Cruces at the left. Our extraterrestrial heroine Ana Darcy* and her husband and family live near the green areas (pecan orchards, mostly) at the center of the photo. The pod is kept in one of those orchards.

We're looking roughly northeast: the scalding sand dunes of the Chihuahuan desert are at the bottom, and along the top, slanting down diagonally, is the tail end of the Rocky Mountains. The darkest mountains are the Organ Mountains, which loom over Las Cruces in another photo in an earlier post. Readers will remember an exciting event at the end of the first volume, Distant Cousin, which took place directly over these mountains. In the far distance, probably 100 miles away, the snow-topped peak of Sierra Blanca is visible, one of New Mexico's excellent ski areas. The large white area, slightly below the top of the picture, is probably White Sands National Monument, a giant deposit of gypsum dunes, which is mentioned in Distant Cousin: Regeneration.

*Meet Ana Darcy!

Maps (click): El Paso and Mesilla Valley, West Texas, Ft. Davis & Observatory

(If you right click a map to open in its own tab, you won't lose your place in the narrative!)

Ana Darcy Méndez's stories have taken her all over the world, but the map above zeroes in on the area around her home base (at top, just south of Las Cruces and Mesilla, New Mexico, in the dark areas which are enormous groves of pecan trees in the Rio Grande River valley). Distant Cousin: Recirculation takes her to Mata Ortiz, a tiny Mexican town south of Columbus New Mexico (on the border), further down Mexican Highway 2.

The second and third maps above show West Texas venues from Distant Cousin and Distant Cousin: Reincarnation. Ana first came to earth and landed in the mountains to the northwest of Fort Davis, Texas (map #3). The McDonald Observatory is where Ana expected to be greeted by astronomers who would welcome her as the first human to return to the home planet. That did not happen, of course.

The fourth map above shows the highways from Alpine to El Paso, Lac Cruces, and Mesilla., which Ana has driven several times. Note the few towns along this 200+ mile distance: Valentine, Marfa, and Van Horn.


See more maps and photos from the venues in the books down the right column.under the photo of Ana's hair.

Now, meet Ana Darcy!

Maps of West Texas & Southern New Mexico

The map above (really a satellite photo) shows Las Cruces, New Mexico at the top. (RIght click to another tab for the full size image.) Our extraterrestrial heroine, Ana Darcy, lives among the green pecan groves which follow the Rio Grande just south of Las Cruces with her husband and family. See Distant Cousin for more about her!

Below is a photo of west Texas south of El Paso (seen above). (Right click to another tab to see the entire map.) The white patch on the road leaving Fort Davis (the red "A"), going up (north) diagonally to the left, shows the approximate location of the McDonald Observatory, where Ana first landed on Earth (and was kicked out, being thought crazy). The road south from Fort Davis (diagonally down to the right) leads to Alpine, where Ana hid from the FBI, local police, and Army Special Forces. The road crosses some mountains (the darker areas), to the right of which is the approximate location of the Williams ranch, which appears in Distant Cousin, Distant Cousin: Reincarnation, and Distant Cousin: Regeneration.

See more maps and photos from the stories in the column on the right.

Now, meet Ana Darcy!