If you head north from Albuquerque toward Santa Fe and stay on I-25, bypassing the capitol city, and then take the Glorieta exit, you are headed towards the town of Pecos. Once you are in Pecos, make a left at the main intersection onto NM 63 and roll past the Catholic Church, up the hill, and then descend a little into canyon and country. Soon, the grounds of Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey Benedictine Monastery is to your left (you can actually book a room there ahead of time for private retreat), and right after it, the entrance to the lake.

The lake is, logically enough, called Monastery Lake, and it is a wonderful public lake with a private feel- mostly because whenever I’ve headed up there, it’s been thinly occupied.

And that’s okay.

With fall rapidly approaching, Sunday morning I just needed to get out of city and into nature once again, and Monastery Lake called. First shared with me by my church buddy Thearith Ung a few years ago, Monastery is the lake we used to visit to get out of town for a few hours to fish. So close to Albuquerque, the lake is quiet and quaint and becoming.

With Thearith’s absence from New Mexico on my mind, Monastery was the place to go, so I was out the door by 5 AM, hoping to beat the sunrise to the lake- and I mostly did.

The drive up was quiet, the air in the valley was crisp, and the lake was mostly empty of visitors when I got there, and stayed that way all morning.

I ended up catching three small trout and a crawdad, who didn’t want to let go of a worm on the hook.

I stayed at the lake until 11:30 or so, breaking from time to time to just sit and look around, or to eat trail mix, or to change the setup on the pole (well- two broken lines on the day, because I’m an amateur). The day was quiet and peaceful, just what my heart and mind needed. The trout didn’t really bite much on what I had brought- worms and Power Bait garlic flavored balls- but they were especially active around 10, eating flies and mosquitoes at the surface. It was nice to see a few bigger ones jump out of the water to grab some breakfast.

When it was time to drive home, I made a detour through Santa Fe for an unfruitful lunch stop (since I never found anything I wanted, got caught in a big traffic detour near the plaza, and wandered on a few unknown roads for a while) until I found the freeway again and got on back to life in the big city.