Beast Modes

TAMING THE SANDS—AND SNOW AND MUD AND ROCKS—OF NEW MEXICO IN FORD’S SECOND-GENERATION RAPTOR.

- Jason H. Harper

TAKE THIS ROAD,” my co-pilot urges. “I just know that it leads someplace good.” Chances are, she’s right. Nearly every road in the vicinity offers adventure. Chances are also high that the route will get us stuck.

We’re in New Mexico, one of the few places in our overly civilized country that will defeat the average truck or SUV. For every paved road in the 121,590-square-mile state, there are dozens of dirt tracks that radiate away from the tarmac, an arterial system that runs over the meat and bones of a great, rugged beast of land. And although people come to the state expecting deserts, they’re often not ready for the 13,000-foot mountains, the jumbles of flattop mesas, the slick sandstone, or the face-slapping winds that blow down from the snow-capped San Juan peaks. It can be a lonely place. The scope is immense, the kind of big that makes you feel small, inducing for some a sort of open-air panic. But I grew up here, a third-generation New Mexican, and find comfort in the hundred-mile horizons.

For 20 years, I’ve been hemmed in on the East Coast. Whenever I need to reorient my internal compass and look to the sky while touching dirt, a trip home is in order. And if you’re going to roam this big land, you’d best do it in something that won’t force you to hoof it out.

Enter the second-generation F-150 Raptor. You may know it as the Truck That Jumps. But that’s a pretty narrow customer mandate. What Ford has sought to create is a go-anywhere vehicle that opens up places like the back roads of New Mexico to all of us.