New Mexico, or as our imaginative hero, Pecos Pete, likes to call it, "The Land of Enchantment," is a place where blue skies play marbles with cotton candy clouds, yucca and cacti paint a prickly green picture, and the sunsets are a breathtaking mix of orange, pink, and purple splashes. The air is crisp, and the scent of roasting green chiles wafting on the breeze would make your nostrils dance a little jig of delight! Pecos Pete, with his cowboy hat set at a jaunty angle and his bright, twinkling eyes, is a champion of pottery, the age-old art popular among the kids of New Mexico. These kids are not your regular, run-of-the-mill sort. They are a creative bunch, with an eye for shapes, a feel for texture, and a mind bursting with stories as vibrant as the New Mexican landscape. You can find them sitting in a circle, their hands turning clay on wheels, or shaping it with their fingers, their faces alight with concentration. As they mold the wet clay, their imaginations run wild! One moment, they're crafting a bowl as wavy as the dunes in White Sands, the next, they're sculpting a vase as tall as the Sandia Mountains. Pecos Pete often ambles around the pottery circle, a lasso of laughter around his waist. He never misses a chance to toss in a joke, making the kids roll their eyes and giggle. "What does a potter do when he breaks his favorite teapot?" he'd ask. "He tries to handle it without getting steamed!" And the laughter echoes around, as bright and warm as a New Mexico summer day, blending beautifully with the sounds of shaping and creating that fills the creative air of the enchanting state.