America's empty quarter is an adventure from another era

"The entire state is on fire. Emergency evacuation is possible. I have to get downwind now, I will update you." Three days before I'm due to leave for New Mexico, the wildfires raging through America's south-west have almost reached the nuclear laboratories of Los Alamos. I'm not about to cancel my plans, but little did I know that my friend, Nouf, Santa Fe resident and my host for two weeks, has already booked her own flight out as a precaution. Thankfully, a day later, the message is more upbeat. "Don't worry. Albuquerque is downwind from Los Alamos. I'll be there to pick you up - I just might not have any hair left." As the flight descends, my heart sinks. A thick, flat layer of smoke still hangs high over the vast plains in the centre of the state and I wonder if I've made the right decision. Yet I can still see through the haze to the mountains beyond and, as the plane drops lower, the visibility improves so much that I'm no longer worried. New Mexico is a big state - bigger, it seems, than even the worst drought in over a century. Nouf and her friend, Amy, a photo editor at Outside magazine, based in Santa Fe, pick me up at the sleepy airport in a Toyota Highlander and we immediately hit the road to Silver City, in the south-west of the state. We're missing the details of Albuquerque, such as the National Atomic museum, because three more friends are waiting and an improbably elaborate gourmet meal is planned at a restaurant called the Curious Kumquat. I don't mind the rush because America, probably more than any other country on Earth, looks best through a windscreen. Our route takes us straight down the I-25 and, within minutes of leaving the state's biggest city, we're cruising through the Chihuahuan Desert under a big, blue sky filled with billowing clouds. Even though it's tinderbox dry, the mesas are mesmerising: a rich blur of browns and greens backed by sparse hills and jagged ridges, bathed intermittently in strong sunlight and shadow. The road follows the diminutive Rio Grande and we stop for petrol at the City of Elephant Butte (population 1,400) before heading west along an empty road through the pretty southern edge of the Gila Wilderness, a protected mountainous area covered in forest. We end up at Bear Mountain Lodge, a lovely b&b sitting in 72 hectares of its own land. I'm in the bathroom when John, one of the owners, appears in our bedroom to make up the pull-out bed. "Where did you learn to talk like that?" he says quizzically as he hears my accent. "Not in Silver City, that's for sure." Maybe it's the size of this place, and the corresponding lack of people, which lends a spaciness, an eccentricity and slight craziness to the towns we visit and the people we meet. Once an Apache campsite, Silver City was founded in 1870 as a mining town to accommodate the waves of prospectors who were settling in the area. Looking at old photographs of the town, superficially little seems to have changed except for the introduction of cars and traffic lights: its population of 10,000 is essentially served by one main street filled with saloons, cafes, banks and small offices, though there's an almost-northern California vibe in the brightly coloured houses and boutique shops dotted around the adjacent streets. What the miners would have thought of our 14-course tasting menu at the Curious Kumquat, which included crayfish with kombu and curry leaf, though, is difficult to imagine. During the night, I'm woken by a lightning storm over the plain outside our window, and the drumming of much-needed rain on the roof. After a delicious breakfast of polenta and corn salad, I drive with Sondra, another of our party, to Pinos Altos, a scenic mountain "ghost town" 10km north of Silver City. Here there's another even more diminutive main street, settled in 1803, with a big old saloon called the Buckhorn, complete with a wooden veranda, a brick and wood-built opera house, a museum and crumbling corner shop. In the museum we meet George Schafer, who tells us that the population of the town, where the local copper mine is still the biggest employer, is now just 350 and that it only got water mains in 1988. His family lived in the house (now a museum) for generations before him and the living rooms, bedrooms and store rooms give us a glimpse of both the hardships and the spoils of Victorian-era living. On the way back to town we pass by the enormous Santa Rita mine, 1.6km wide and deep.