(Photo and video/Garrison Wells/Observer)

 

About 3,000 U.S. flags blow in the wind today at Vista Verde Memorial Park.

It’s a fitting place for the flags, on hallowed cemetery ground. They flutter gently, rising up the hill like a carpet, as the wind caresses them.

They represent those who died during the horror-filled attacks on 9-11-2001 on New York City and on the Pentagon.

On Sunday, this is the spot where the City of Rio Rancho will hold its annual memorial for those victims, and for the men and women first-responders who put their lives on the line to battle the jetliner-fueled fires on the Twin Towers, before they collapsed.

Today, a memorial rests in the spot the towers took up. It’s palpable.

Here, surrounded by these simple flags, the feeling exists, too.