CatronCountyWalk

Fait accompli

2007-08-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it is done. The task is finished - I've walked every mile of every paved road in Catron county. It was an odd task, to be sure, but it was mine, all mine - I'm fairly sure no one else has ever attempted it, in fact I can't think why they would.

Here are some pictures from my final morning's walk:

And here is the final map of the project:

So, goodbye CatronCountyWalk, hello Strolling Around Socorro!

Coming down to the homestretch

2007-08-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

It was a struggle to get up and out this morning, but I knew if I didn't do this walk today, I wouldn't be able to finish next week. Today I started at mile post 55 and walked west back to 48. Pretty perky for the first three miles, then I started dragging - I kept expecting to hit a long downhill stretch, but it was up and down, up and down, the whole way.

One thing I noticed and was intrigued by:

Ted Nugent, of course, is the aging hard rock Cat Scratch Fever guy, and I remember hearing once that he had taken a fiercely public pro-gun stance, but this sign made me curious. Does he have property in Catron County? What does "United Sportsman" mean? Is he describing himself as a unity of one? Google answered one question, at least - his organization is called "Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America" and perhaps that mile of highway 60 has been adopted not by Ted personally, but by a member or two of his club. But still, I have questions. Who's responsible for the typo on the sign? Someone in the Catron County division of the highway department? Someone on a state level? The members of the TNUSA who applied to adopt that mile of highway? Am I the only one who notices these things?

One more stretch of highway to go, and I'm done walking Catron county's paved roads.

Rito/Sweazeville/Omega

2007-08-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I walked west from mile marker 48 back to Omega, knocking off about 7 miles of what's left of Highway 60. I should have saved Omega for last - it would have been fitting to end my walk at Omega - but I really want to save the Pie Town stretch for last, so that I can celebrate with a slice of peach pie at The Daily Pie, made from fresh peaches.

Omega isn't a ghost town, exactly, but it's no longer in its heyday, so to speak. The thing that caught my attention immediately was a mobile home, half burned in a fire. Someone lives in the other end - the end that wasn't burned up in the fire - and apparently has for many years.

I googled Omega, and came up with this much: "This community was once called Rito after nearby Rito Creek. The name then switched to Sweazeville to remember a local gas station owner called Sweaze. In 1938, residents adopted (the name)Omega, the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet, for obscure, but possibly Christian reasons."

Getting back on track

2007-08-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

I'm committed to finishing this project, but have been temporarily distracted by things like buying a house, enrolling kids in new schools, reassembling my work history after a ten-year hiatus, and other important and necessary things.

Only three more walks to go, and they're written in pen on my calendar. It looks like I'll finish before Labor Day.

When I said before that I wasn't sure why I even doing this project, it was only because in the grand scheme of things it seems sort of self-indulgent. Then again, I may not be walking down the street like Lucky Larue, in the immortal words of John Prine, but I ain't hurtin' nobody. And I've felt a thousand times more connected to this strange place that is Catron County since I began. Every footfall confers a small sense of ownership and belonging, which is something that evaded me for many years when we first moved out here. This is something that is truly different about walking around your neighborhood rather than driving.

There's no question that you see more at 3 mph than you do at 60 mph, but there's more to it than that, and I hope you'll forgive me for belaboring the obvious while I figure out what I'm trying to say.

When you drive through a place, windows closed, radio and air-conditioning on, you see it. With the windows open and the radio off, you see it, smell it and hear it. But when you walk through a place, you not only see it better, smell it better, and hear it better, you also physically touch it and it physically touches you back.

Okay, I give up - I don't mean to be getting all touchy-feely here. Maybe I'm just starting to get a little sentimental about leaving.

Six mile Sunday on 60

2007-07-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the first time in all this walking that I was alone on the road. My ride dropped me off at the state line, then went on into Springerville, AZ, to get gas and a newspaper. Until he came back almost an hour later, I was by myself. It was great. In fact, I almost never get any alone time any more, so it was downright exhilarating.

With the six miles from the state line to mile post 6 completed, I've only got about another 21 miles to go. I thought I'd be getting pretty psyched in anticipation of finishing, but it hasn't happened yet. I've sort of lost track of why I started this in the first place.

Looking west into Arizona.

Looking east at the start of Highway 60.

Highway 36 is Done!

2007-07-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

Today was not a good day to forget to bring the camera - I could have taken a lovely picture of the Cibola County Line sign, and the scenery was nice, with lots of lovely features like mountains off in the distance. But I was excited and bleary-eyed when I left the house this a.m. and left it behind.

I had two fellow walkers today, and we ended up talking about food quite a bit - recipes, and things we'd eaten as children, things we'd had recently, and things we'd served or been served. Mundane, perhaps, but it passed the time and we were done walking before I knew it.

We celebrated with coffee and pie at a place in Quemado, which is where the conversation took a more interesting turn. Quemado seems to be a hotbed of conservative politics, and so perhaps it was not the right place to be overheard making unkind jokes about the president's colonoscopy (do you think they'll find his brain up there?) or expressing alarm and dismay that the vice president will officially be in charge of our nation while the president is under the influence of the anesthesia.

What is it about walking that loosens my tongue like the third glass of wine? You don't have to get me drunk to learn my secrets - just take me on a ten mile walk, and I'll tell you everything.

Today's actual mileage was something in the neighborhood of 5 and 1/2 miles - enough to make me opinionated, but not enough to really get me in trouble with the leather-clad senior-citizen biker patriots at the table next to me.

Chipping away at highway 60

2007-07-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Another 6 miles today, in good company. Not a lot to look at, as you can tell by photo. About 32 miles left to call this project done. Clock's ticking.

Highway 59

2007-07-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to write about this briefly and succinctly, as it is almost midnight and I have to get up before dark in the morning to hit the road again. We made the trip down to Highway 59 yesterday. Just getting there involved driving east for an hour or so to the Very Large Array (in Socorro county) and turning south on 52, which is only paved for the first four miles, for another hour or so's drive to the town of Winston (in Sierra county), where we made a pitstop before backtracking to the start of 59.

59 starts in Sierra county, runs into Catron county for a short stretch, runs back into Sierra county for a good way, and then heads back into Catron, where it ends at Beaverhead. There aren't any county line signs, so I just sort of guessed and started walking at mile marker 4. It was already later in the day than I've been walking lately, so it was hotter walking than usual. I only walked for a mile or so, while my ride went ahead to scout out the road and then came back and trailed me. Then we drove some more, and when it seemed like we were in Catron county again I got out and walked some more. I'm sure I didn't walk every inch of the Catron part of the road, but it was enough to satisfy me.

I quit walking where the pavement ends at Beaverhead, and we realized that Wall Lake was only 8 miles of unpaved road to the south. Not knowing when or if we'd make it to such a remote area again, we decided to check it out. The road was a litle hairy - narrow, steep and winding, and eight miles took about half an hour, but it was so worth it. Wall Lake isn't big, but we had it completely to ourselves. In the rock face that overlooks the lake there's a ruin that resembles the ones found at the Gila Cliff Dwelling, and we climbed around and explored and took a million photos before heading back to Beaverhead.

We had originally planned to go back home the way we came, taking 59 back out to 52 and 52 back up to the VLA, but we were feeling adventurous, so we headed north out of Beaverhead on a dirt track - barely a road at all, more like a cowpath - and somewhere around O Bar O Canyon (as near as I can tell) the dirt track split into what people around here call a turkey track, where the road turned into three roads. We took a guess, and picked the one that looked like it would run north, and quite a bit later we came out to Bursum Road and then to Highway 12.

By the time we got home everyone was just about wore out from jouncing around on the dirt road on the rocks and the ruts for hours, but we saw some incredible country, and hardly another living soul the whole time. I have to admit I was disappointed not to see much wildlife - just a pair of deer and a few hawks, and later some elk and antelope. I wouldn't have minded getting a glimpse of a wolf, as there are reportedly two small packs of wolves that hunt out there. Also, about 20 or so miles south of Wall Lake a camper was bitten on the ass by a bear, through his tent, only a few days ago. I wouldn't care to be bitten on the ass by some crazy bear, but I wouldn't have minded seeing a bear, from a distance.

Seven more miles

2007-07-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today's walk could have been a bit miserable: it was hot and muggy from the start, with the sun in our eyes and no breeze, too many long steep hills, and not much at all to look at. But it wasn't a bit miserable, in fact it was very pleasant, because my walking partner today was such a pleasure to walk with.

I don't know whether pushing myself with these long hot walks up long steep hills is causing massive release of endorphins, or whether the universe is actually showering me with love lately. Whatever it is, I feel very loved and happy. Walking rocks!

Here is a picture of part of the Sawtooth Mountain range, which you can see north of Highway 60 between Pie Town and Datil.

Just a short one today

2007-07-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today's walk was only a disappointing 1.57 miles, done in 35 minutes at the leisurely pace of 2.7 miles per hour. We covered the paved part of 601, which runs up to Fence Lake, and everything we saw looked ancient.

This looks like a dug-out house.

Possibly an old seeder.

2007-07-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

SEVEN MILE MARCH

We covered a lot of ground today, through a landscape that was as beautiful as it was empty - no trees, houses, windmills.... A little more than seven miles in a little over two hours, from about the 19 mile marker to about the 12 mile marker on highway 60. There was a small amount of giddiness, and then long periods of quiet determination. Ethel came and picked us up again - what would we do without her?

Latest

2007-07-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

Latest is in pink: seven or so miles on 7/8/07, started about 7 am, finished around 9:30.

2007-07-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

The GOOD SHEPHERD

Now I have some idea how a sheep feels when at the mercy of a diligent Border Collie. I started my walk at the 75 mile marker on Highway 60, near Datil, and headed west. My S.O. was drafted into helping out this time, since I had nobody to walk with me, which was very sweet of him - he trailed me in his truck most of the way and never let me out of his sight. I got about 7 more miles done, and only encountered one very small rattlesnake this time.

The terrain around Datil is a lot different from where we've been walking around Quemado - hilly instead of flat, with interesting formations of sedimentary rock, and tall trees instead of the scrubby little trees that you see on the high mesas.

Rattlesnake of the day.

Look at his little buttons - aren't they cute?

RATTLESNAKES!

2007-07-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

My very lovely friend Ethel mentioned that rattlesnakes are numerous around Quemado these days, and suggested that we keep an eye out for them. When we didn't see any west of town, though, we sort of stopped being vigilant.

So we were just strolling along the road headed east out of Quemado, taking in the balmy morning, when we heard the *buzz* of a rattle and realized that we had just walked past one. Naturally, our first instinct was to run out into traffic - fortunately there weren't any cars on the road - and by the time we had turned around to look, it had slithered off into the weeds. My daughter got a good look at its wedge-shaped head, but I didn't see much of it. I think it was fairly small.

Normally when I walk with my kids I walk on the side closest to traffic, because if any of us is going to get picked off I'd rather it be me. Then again, I don't want one of my kids to get bitten by a rattlesnake either, so we changed places so that I was closest to the grassy edge, and walked on. A mile or so later I had forgotten, of course, to be on the look-out, and walked past another rattlesnake. This one was a bit feistier than the other. It was louder, for one thing, and kept the rattle going while it coiled and reared up - its head was about knee-height - and stayed there vibrating with hostility.

The first one didn't spook me too much, but this one really got the adrenalin going - for another two miles we were very jumpy, and startled at every little sound. I must have passed within a foot or so of it, and never noticed it until it rattled. After that, we walked slowly and carefully, jumping out onto the road every time a cricket chirped or a lizard ran by. Good thing there weren't too many cars.

GPS batteries were low, and the silly thing kept turning itself off, so walking stats for today are approximate: ~5.75 fresh miles covered in about two hours, with a few long rests on the long steep hill between mile marker 39 and mile marker 40. I forgot the camera in the car, but I took a few pictures after the walk, before we drove home.

Old farm machinery.

Sign below the silhouettes says "LAST CHANCE PIZZA".

The lettering on the fin says "The AEROMOTOR Co, CHICAGO"

Windmill on wooden tower.

Kindness of Strangers

2007-07-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today, perhaps because we really were out in the middle of nowhere and I wasn't carrying my camera, no fewer than six cars stopped to try to give us a ride. One guy in a big black truck pulled over on the opposite shoulder, rolled his window down and said "You can't be out here walking for your health!" A woman in a camper, probably thought we were turning down her offer of help because we couldn't see into her vehicle and didn't trust her not to have an accomplice in the back - she asked if we were really sure several times, and said "It's okay, it's just me and my kids in here!" Another car didn't stop when they first passed us, but saw our car parked four miles down the road and turned around and drove back the four miles to check. Nice people out here.

I didn't bother with the camera because there was nothing to take pictures of but the horizon and the hot empty highway. No birds calling to each other today, just a chorus of crickets and the occasional sound of a vehicle. Two roadkills. A spot where someone had the sudden inspiration to empty half a party's worth of empty beer cans and bottles by the side of the road, but we didn't have a bag to collect them in, so we left them there.

Poor planning had us walking uphill most of the way, but I was really pleased at how quickly I'm getting back into stride.

Fresh miles: 5.5
Time in motion: 1:46
Moving average: 3.1 mph

At one point, we were averaging 3.2 mph, according to the gps gizmo! Uphill! In the heat! And I'm not even knackered!

We've got a little under 19 miles left to the Arizona border, and I've discovered that 601 to Fence Lake is actually paved for 1.6 or so miles, so 3 or 4 trips more ought to cover everything west of Quemado.

Windmills won the West

2007-06-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

On our way out this morning we scared a few elk babies - hate when that happens, as they all throw themselves at the fence and I worry that they'll injure themselves. Still, a few manage to get over everytime that probably haven't gotten over before.

The first boneheaded thing I did was to forget whether I had locked the car or not. Extra-special credit goes to the daughter who jogged back about a quarter mile to take care of it for me.

When we first started out there was no traffic at all, just the sounds of our footsteps and a few birds calling to each other. The only wildlife we saw during our walk was this fast-moving fuzzy caterpillar.

After a while, traffic picked up, and we saw our first sign of civilization.

A road-side rest for weary travelers, complete with mandatory stinky flyridden trashcans.

In The Best of The West, An Anthology of Classic Writing from the American West edited by Tony Hillerman, I came across a piece of writing by a man named Alan Bosworth, called "And the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day", about Ozona County (not Catron County, not even in New Mexico, but a place that gets about the same amount of rain as we do here.) I'll give a bit of an excerpt:

...it is a long way to water in any direction--especially down. The firstcomers were quick to acquire the few dependable waterholes....The whole land is tilted southwestward, and water runs off it with flash-flood speed. What stayed behind...was soon "too thick to swallow and too thin to chew," and cowboys forced to drink out of cowtracks in the mud quickly developed the habit of straining the water through their teeth. They could have understood the wariness of the late Gene Fowler, who all his life would never drink to the bottom of any glass because, when he was a boy in the Rockies, "there was always some sort of a bug surprise at the bottom."

"Well drillers and windmills saved the day....It seems rather strange and a little sad that no literature has ever really given the well driller and the windmill man their due. I do not know of a man of either breed who ever got rich, although they helped others to riches. The drillers were a peripatetic sort, always moving westward with the frontier; they might be compared with Johnny Appleseed, on an earlier and more fruitful border...

...whatever brand it was, the new windmill worked its magic deep in the earth, day and night, to bring a thin stream of bright water fluting from the lead pipe and splashing into some sort of storage reservoir--a dirt tank scraped out of the ground, a circular stone and cement tank, or a taller one made of galvanized iron. The perhaps apocryphal cowboy who swore he could drink water faster than the new mill could pump it was talking through his Stetson: given time, with the incessant wind, and the tank would be brimming over.

If you're looking for something to read, and you are interested at all in the American West, you might want to look for this anthology.

The windmill is no longer there, of course, but the tower for it is, and this circular stone and cement tank.

Today's statistics:
Fresh miles covered: 4.92
Moving average: 2.7 mph (lots of uphill today.)
Time in motion: 1:48:53
Time pausing to smell the roses: 11:13
Total time for walk: 2:00:02

Status update

2007-06-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

The light blue represents fresh miles.
Statistics for 6/28 walk, per cheapy GPS with old batteries:
Total miles walked: 5.43
Total miles not previously accounted for: 5.09
Moving average: 2.8 mph
Time in motion: 1:56:06

The area circled in darker blue represents a quandary of sorts. Highway 59, in the bottom southeast corner of the county, was paved at one time, so technically belongs to this walk. I'm not sure how many miles of the once-paved part actually are within the county line, or what condition it's in. Even getting to it will depend on good luck, in the form of someone with a good truck willing to spend a day or two out in very remote country, which, when you think about it, shouldn't be so hard to find. We'll just have to see.

West on Highway 60

2007-06-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

It was barely light when we headed out. Elk everywhere, at least a hundred of them, and lots of babies. We made it to our starting point, five miles west of the town of Quemado, and started walking while it was still fairly cool.

Summer in NM is not the best time to be walking on hot asphalt. However, I'm leaving Catron County at the end of July, and this is an unfinished project I'd like to complete. The clock, she is ticking...

Here we are looking east in the direction of town. You can see the policy of walking downhill whenever possible is in effect. We've been warned that rattlesnakes have been spotted frequently around Quemado in recent weeks, so we start out gingerly, but soon forget that we are supposed to be being vigilant. People stop, as usual, to see if they can help us, but not very many: more of the people using the road aren't locals but are just passing through. Already I can tell that 60 has a different character, if roads can be said to have characters. The shoulders of the road are a little wider, the speed limit is a little higher, there's a little more traffic, and there's more feeling of being connected to the rest of the world.

This stretch of road that we're on has been resurfaced recently - the asphalt is black and shiny, the lines are crisp and bright. This was pressed into the side near mile marker 30, in case anyone is looking for it:

Near mile marker 31 there is a little gravesite.

"Ray Curtis, b. April 20, 1918, d. May 4, 1918." A little boy who lived only 14 days.

"Jessie Curtis, b. April 16, 1920, d. April 16, 1920." A little girl, who lived only one day.

And one more child lost, presumably, although there's nothing inscribed on the stone. I asked about the Curtis family, and was told that there were other children who lived, but I didn't find out any more than that.

Something else by the side of the road:

It seems entirely likely that that vehicle will still be there in twenty or thirty or forty years time.

Here we are again, looking towards town.

And here, closer to town, is a little house of the kind that so appeals to me. Built probably a hundred years ago, by a man, for his family, out of whatever materials the landscape afforded him and not much else, I think. A story in each one of these little houses, which someone might or might not be able to discover at this late date, and the house standing in mute testimony for another hundred or so years.

In the town of Quemado, an "official scenic historic marker":

And finally, when we got back home, hot and happy, the icing on the cake.

The elk seem to be using our place for a sort of a nursery, as we keep finding their babies stashed here and there, or wandering around near the fence line calling for mama. This one is doing exactly what he should do - when he heard the car, he pressed himself flat into the grass and thought really hard about being invisible.

Power's out in Woy Woy

2007-06-11T13:45:00.001-07:00

I don't know if anyone's been following the weather in Australia, but I'm getting the impression it's rather wet where our friend Spike lives. Spike's been posting terrific photos around Woy Woy for quite some time - there should be some really interesting photos coming soon, of the same streets and houses after the flooding's gone down - that is, if Spike's okay. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Long Rider Bernice Ende

2007-05-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of writing a history of the town of Aragon for you, but in the meantime here is a link to the record of a journey made by a woman named Bernice, and a horse named Honor, and a dog named Claire who have traveled over 5,000 miles across the country. I met Bernice when I was working briefly as a short order cook at the Adobe Cafe and Bakery seven miles west of Reserve, but didn't realize she had a blog of sorts until I was googling something else this morning and it turned up. What I was most struck by when I met her was the smile that never seemed to leave her face, and her air of peaceful serenity.

Not a happy boy.

2007-01-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

No biting or scratching, just a few dirty looks and we were soon forgiven.

Cat Population Decimated by Eagles. Goodbye, Mars.

2007-01-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that we know it's winter when the bald eagles arrive, and we know winter is over when the eagles depart. Every winter, a pair of bald eagles sits high up in a tree we've dubbed, unimaginatively enough, the Eagle Tree, and we like to think it is the same pair year after year, a male and female whom we have named Hercules and Xena after Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless.

This year only one eagle showed up at first, the male, we think. We spotted him around Thanksgiving week. It was mid-December before the female arrived, and when we had a really cold stretch they both disappeared for a while, maybe gone south to warmer digs. They came back when the ponds thawed and we've been seeing them every day. They hunt the small wild ducks and rabbits and field mice and don't generally come too near the house or barn.

This winter has been wetter than usual, lots of snow and rain and sleet and snow again. I don't know if when the ground is covered with thick white snow it makes it better for hunting or worse. But I do know that this last week we've had lots of snow, and we've had not two but FOUR bald eagles hanging about, one clearly a juvenile female. And at the same time, the cats have begun to disappear.

Semi-feral cats are a fact of life in the country. They keep the rodent population down in barns and outbuildings, which is a very good thing, since the rodents that live in sheds and barns and wood piles are vectors for the transmission of bubonic plague and hanta virus. (Yes, we still have bubonic plague in America, shh.) Hanta virus crops up regularly in New Mexico, usually caught by rural folk who heat with wood, and is surprisingly lethal. So, cats are good to have around, and we put out a little food in the barn and in the tree next to the woodpile for them everyday.

We started with one pregnant cat which belonged to the neighbors, but thought our barn was a good place to have three litters of kittens. We called her Momma Cat. Eventually she disappeared, but not before we had gotten her all her shots and had her spayed and treated for various absesses. Her offspring were fairly wild, and their presence, as well as the presence of the free buffet in the barn, attracted more cats, especially stray males in the spring.

Too bad there isn't a form of birth control drops for cats that you can mix in their food and water. We did learn that the longevity of a semi-feral cat is directly proportional to the amount of time and money you invest in catching, transporting, spaying, neutering, etc., said cat. IE, the more money we spent, the sooner the cat would disappear completely, never to be seen again. The point of no return is about equivalent to $150 US. (includes gas for the two-hundred mile roundtrip to the vet's office, vet exam, spay or neuter, various and sundry shots, and treatment for various wounds/ailments.)

Not all cats are good mothers - some of them will up and leave a whole litter, or abandon a single slightly defective baby, or in the case of one very savvy little female, leave the babies on the front door step with a note pinned to them saying Here, you take care of these damn little pirahnas, I'm eloping to Vegas with the slinky black Tom from down the road. (She was backed, a month later, knocked up again and no sign of her man. Some girls never learn.)

Mars was one of an abandoned litter - we named the two males Mars and Mercury, and the female Venus, and took them in and raised them in the house. They preferred the outdoors after a few months, and then Mercury died and Venus disappeared, and Mars was left. He used to sleep under my car, until I accidentally ran over him and broke his hip. At the vet's, I said no to neutering him, assuming that since I was already at the $150 mark, he wouldn't be around much longer anyway. Back into the house he came, and we nursed him back to health, and when he went back outside to live, he had a newfound and two-fold sense of purpose. One, to claim every female as his own, and two, to drive off all competitors. He succeeded, too.

Whenever he was torn and bloody he came yowling at the door, and we'd doctor him up and send him back out there. He seemed to be quite fond of his harem, very affectionate, and gentle with the little ones, although as soon as his male offspring matured he would drive them off. Every year he looked a little worse and had a harder time getting rid of the stray males, and we thought he might not manage it next spring.

As I mentioned, there are now FOUR eagles on the place, and the first time we realized this it was because there was one very large one sitting in a tree quite near the house. Mars has disappeared, along with most of the other barn cats - in fact, there are only three outdoor cats left, as far as we can tell. And they're acting very nervous, moving around in stealth mode, trying to stay out of sight.

I fear the worst.

Closed for Christmas

2006-12-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

See you next year!

Love and Peace to all.

2006-12-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing I was referring to in an earlier post about trash. Whatever this was, allowed to remain undisturbed over time it has evolved from useful to useless to curiosity to artifact. You wouldn't even notice it, driving by on the highway, which to me is part of it's appeal.

2006-12-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

Who left this here? And when? I don't know. I don't even know what it is.

2006-12-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

View from above. Still don't quite know what this is, if it's two separate items, or whether the first drew the second, and the whole thing was pulled by horses.

2006-12-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Some part of this machine was able to be ratcheted higher or lower, evidently.

2006-12-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Those are modern storage buildings in the background.

2006-12-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

...

2006-12-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

I wonder if this is upside down.

2006-12-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Obligatory culvert photo. Not a bit Freudian. Not in the least.

A must-see

2006-12-11T01:01:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already seen this post at Neath'sWalking Turcot blog, go see it now. I mean it.

"Theories of Everything"

2006-12-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

There's an article in the New York Times about a collection of cartoons by Roz Chast called Theories of Everything and there's a paragraph in the article describing one of her cartoons which made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

In the latter sections of the book there are lots of jokes about hitting middle age. “Midlife Crisis: The Clouds Before the Storm” shows a tired looking woman, dressed in a frumpy skirt and blouse, sitting on her sofa, thinking, “I bet if I really wanted to, I could bicycle across Canada.”

Substitute "walk" for "bicycle" and I am that woman. I haven't snorted coffee out my nose in ages, but I did when I read that paragraph. Must buy the book.

Walking Bull

2006-12-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

From a book I'm reading, by Sara Rath, called About Cows.

Ted Terry rode his bull, Ohadi, from Ketchum, Idaho, to Times Square, New York. He began the trip in July 1937 and arrived in New York City on August 11, 1940.

Presumably, he didn't ride his bull at a gallop, or a trot, but at a walk. I bet every one he passed wanted to say hello.

Talking Trash

2006-12-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to access the comments feature at Walking Fort Bragg to tell Ron how awesome I think his latest photo series is - definitely go there and check it out! I just hope Ron didn't take those wave pictures from the jetty - apparently the beach isn't safe right now for the kiddos and the old geezers and geezerettes. From what I understand, our Ron falls into at least two of those three categories...

Reading Ron's post about Glass Beach, and a few things here and there at other walking blogs, has got me to thinking about garbage. I read an excellent book a decade or so ago about the settling of the American West - wish I could remember the name or the author - which somewhat dispelled my romantic "Little House on the Prairie" inspired notions about the early settlers by talking about the big trash heaps they left behind their little log cabins. Apparently, they ate a lot of canned goods. And Johnny Appleseed? According to Michael Pollan, Johnny wasn't some handsome young fellow who walked across America eating apples and spitting their seeds over his shoulder, as Walt Disney et al would have you believe - he was a rather creepy old religious nut who maybe married a twelve year old girl and sold apple trees to settlers crossing the Ohio River. The settlers bought them for the cider, which when fermented represented one of their few reliable sources of alcohol.

Anyway, not to get too far off the point here, I was talking about trash. If you live in the city, you put your trash out on the street and a truck comes by and takes it away. If you live out in the country, it's a different story. Here, the county provides a few dumpsters scattered around, and there's a landfill or two, but mostly your garbage is your own problem. Lots of people burn their garbage. Quite a few dig a hole with a back hoe and toss their garbage into it until it's full, cover it with dirt, dig another huge hole, etc. For larger items, many of us have a junk pile somewhere on the property. It's a form of recycling, since when you need a piece of lumber or a piece of PVC pipe or some wire, you go rummage around the junkpile for it. But it also represents something else, which I'll try to explain.

Let's say you have a car which doesn't run anymore. You hang onto it - it might still be good for parts. After a while, the weeds grow up around it, the weather turns it a nice rusty color, the cattle graze around it, the mice and the ground squirrels set up housekeeping in it, and it becomes part of the landscape. It's not hurting anything. You could have it towed or hauled off somewhere a hundred miles away and sold for scrap, but it would cost you more in time and effort and gas than you'd make on the metal. You'd lose money - and why? It's not hurting anything.

This is why you come on these things out here that almost look like sculptures - artifacts of a different era, worn down by weather and time into abstract art pieces. An abandoned wagon, an old truck from the forties, a car from the fifties. Often on our walks we pick up pottery shards from 800 years ago, and a few steps later, pottery shards from fifty years ago. We admire the 800 year old pieces, and discard the 50 year old pieces without a second look. In a hundred years, we'll appreciate them.

Pueblo Creek Interpretive Trail

2006-12-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went on a treasure hunt to find our first geocache, not too far from home. To get there, we had to find what is now Catron County Road 013, an unpaved county road off of highway 180. It used to be Forest Road 232, is given as Forest Road 232 in the clues, and is marked FR232 on the map I was using, so that was the first part of the challenge. The second part of the challenge was that the road is closed at the Pueblo Creek campground, possibly because of summer rains which caused water to flow over the bridge and may have made it unsafe for cars. The beginning of the Pueblo Creek Interpretive Trail appeared to be on the other side of the closed bridge.

No problem. Using our trusty new Garmin eTrex we marked our location and headed off in what we hoped was the right direction based on our longitude, latitude and elevation, and stumbled shortly on the Interpretive Trail near the far end of the campground. It's a lovely little trail, not too difficult and very well marked - just look for the cone-shaped mounds of rocks. Every once in a while we stopped and determined our latitude and longitude. We were looking for a particular bench described as a landmark, so when we saw a bench, we assumed it was the one we were looking for, and of course it wasn't, and with the sun sinking low in the sky, I thought we'd have to go home and try again another day. The kids were not even remotely interested in giving up, however, so we figured out our position again, found the right landmark, and found the cache.

We sat on a log in the late afternoon sun, looking through the objects left behind by other geocachers, reading all the notes in the logbook and trying to think of something more interesting to say than "We found it!" On the way out we surprised two deer. The car was very quiet as we drove home - everyone comfortably relaxed and tired from hiking through the woods, and feeling thoughtful and contemplative. I was thinking about how sublimely funny it was that I should be scrambling around in the beautiful woods, in nature, using sophisticated technology to find a plastic man-made object holding cryptic little messages and tokens from my fellow man, and deriving so much pleasure from it. Can't wait to do it again.

2006-12-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is the first of many one lane bridges on Catron County Road 013 which goes through Pueblo Creek Park, on around behind Saddle Mountain and back out to 180 a few miles from Luna.

2006-12-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

One or two signs like this mark the Pueblo Creek Trail, but mostly the trail is marked by cairns - rocks piled in cone-shaped mounds about a foot and a half high.

2006-12-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Creekbed we wandered through while looking for our first geocache. Notice the sedimentary rock.

Another culvert.

2006-12-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

Finding beauty in the mundane

2006-11-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

One of the differences between my walking blog and other peoples' walking and running blogs is my landscape. Not a lot that's manmade out here, and what there is embodies pragmatism more than wealth or novelty or ideas. Power lines, barbed wire fences, cattleguards, a two lane highway with no shoulder, the barest minimum of what's needed. And culverts. You have to have culverts. Even where there doesn't appear to be any water you need culverts, because when a hard rain does come, the hard baked clay soil doesn't soak it all up. The excess water runs off, finding the path of least resistance, which is usually a road or driveway someone has painstakingly scraped out with a back hoe, and carves it into something beautiful, but impassable. So you need culverts, a way to direct water so it won't do so much damage, a sensible pragmatic solution to the problem of rainwater run-off. Ugly, but utilitarian and cheap. And sometimes beautiful, when they create a little waterfall.

2006-11-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

Culvert leading from "duck pond" to "blue gill pond" taken November 26th.

2006-11-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

November 29th - first snow of the year. Same culvert, just a different angle.

2006-11-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Isn't she beautiful?

Slow walking

2006-11-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Spinning my wheels in the walkies department - and I don't mean bike wheels. So, just strolling around in circles close to home, playing with a cheap GPS and taking pictures. This little GPS dealie is pretty amazing. Latitude and longitude, elevation, date and time, trip odometer, average speed while moving, elapsed time while moving, elapsed time while stopped, bearing, time of sunrise and sunset... you name it, this little gadget has it, everything but the temperature. If you're dying to know, the elevation at my house is 6532'. Cool, yeah?

Walking the Colicky Pony

2006-11-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

I walked all afternoon in the sunshine with my daughter and her pony, Cheyenne. She found Cheyenne lying down, apparently unable to get up, and we were able to pull her to her feet before she did too much rolling, which could have caused her intestines to become twisted.

It was an unbelievably beautiful day. We walked a mile at a time, down to the gate at the highway and back to the barn where we'd try to get her to drink some water, and do it again. And again. The only time in my life I've actually hoped to smell a horse fart - I don't quite understand what it's all about, but when a horse is colicky, you walk them and walk them and walk them until they begin to pass gas, and hopefully, drop a load of horse apples, which is an indication, apparently, that things are working again in the intestines. You have to keep them up and walking.

So, as I said, it was an unbelievably gorgeous day, and I found myself feeling grateful to the horse for being the reason that I was outside walking around in the sunshine with my children. Toward dusk, we saw a Northern Harrier. At least I think it was a Northern Harrier - they're known to winter in this area.

After a few false alarms ("Was that you? Or was it the horse?) we detected the greatly anticipated and highly desired gaseous emmissions from the hind end of the horse. I think she'll be okay.

2006-11-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

...

Crane Appreciation Day

2006-11-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

A picture paints a thousand words, and I have at least ten pics I'd like to post, but I'll try to narrow it down to the best three or four from the Festival of Cranes at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge south of San Antonio, NM, which incidentally is where you will find the world famous Owl Cafe and quite possibly the world's best Green Chile Cheeseburgers.

It's hard to know what pictures to choose, but I'd like to be able to show you not just the pretty birdies but also give you a sense of the natural backdrop. At one time, millions of years ago, much of New Mexico was covered by an inland sea. When you drive into New Mexico from the east for the first time, it's easy to imagine that you're driving down onto the bottom of an ocean of air. The cones and calderas of ancient volcanos seem to be everywhere, and some of the 'ocean' floor is covered with sharp black volcanic rock from ancient lava flows. The Rio Grande River runs down the middle of the state, east of and vaguely parallel to the Continental Divide - from up in the air it looks like a ribbon of green with a thin brown stripe in the middle of it. The Bosque (pronounced Boss-kay if you're Hispanic and Boss-key if you're a gringo) is on the river.

2006-11-18T01:40:00.000-07:00

These are Sandhill Cranes. In the background, to the left, if I'm not mistaken, is the peak that's shown on my map as Cerro Colorado. It's about a hundred miles to the east, and I'm not sure if it's on the White Sands Missile Range (military reservation) or not - if not, then it's just north of it. According to a book called Roadside Geology of New Mexico, "Mountains visible across the Rio Grande Valley are fault block ranges consisting primarily of tilted Pennsylvanian and Permian sedimentary rocks; in some of them Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks are exposed also." Look for the stripes that indicate sedimentary rock.

2006-11-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

Better crane photo.

2006-11-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

A sky full of geese hurrying in before dark.

2006-11-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Peregrine/gyrfalcon cross.

2006-11-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

Harris hawk eating a snack of raw rabbit.

2006-11-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Harris hawk taking off after a homing pigeon. Their normal prey is rabbits, so she was just playing around.

Raptor Appreciation Week

2006-11-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to cover more ground last Friday and last Sunday but it was not to be. Very frustrating to keep experiencing walkus-interruptus when I'm trying to get some momentum going, but my car has apparently reached that magical age in which one thing after another goes wrong. Plan B - getting my Best Beloved to give up an afternoon of football for the privilege of transporting me and my purple partner to my chosen piece of distant highway and trailing me down the road - was a no go. Now I'm driving a loaner which is completely unsuitable for my novice pilot car driver to drive - huge and balky and unwieldy - so I'll have to figure something out.

In the meantime, in the super-de-dooper gas-guzzling unwieldy-mobile, we went east past the Very Large Array and on past the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for a presentation by a falconer and wildlife rehabilitator on hunting strategies of hawks, falcons and eagles, and it was excellent. Three hours out in the wide open under a blue sky, soaking up late autumn sunshine and getting closer than most people will ever get to a Harris hawk and a peregrine falcon - fantastic.

Latest Map

2006-11-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Green is for feet, blue is for bike.

2006-11-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

For beautiful, for spacious skies...

2006-11-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

My trusty steed (again.)

2006-11-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

The sign says "Hubble Ranch, Seedstock Production, Brangus and Angus Plus." I think seedstock might have to do with collecting and freezing bull semen for artificial insemination, but I could be wrong. I'm sorta curious about how they do the collecting, and then again maybe I don't want to know.

2006-11-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Near the ten or eleven mile marker, east side of highway.

Blue sky, purple bike, neon orange safety vest means...

2006-11-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

With the loving help of my little homegrown co-pilots, I was able to get out on the road again today, even though I stayed up until 3am obsessing over election results and my ass was totally dragging.

I've been reading a book about Lance Armstrong's 6th Tour de France win, and apparently one indicator of Tour readiness is the ass factor. Tight little ass means you've been putting in the roadwork and shaving off all the extra little ounces. Something to look forward to.

Counting today's ride, I think I've got 96 miles to go, and it would be very cool to get them covered by December 31st. (Some people could get that done in a weekend, I know, but I'm not there yet.) Then, of course, there are another 906 miles (and counting) of unpaved county roads, and countless miles of unpaved forest roads. (Note to self - find out how many miles of unpaved road in the county.)

It would also be very cool to have a bike mechanic out here. I wonder if Socorro has one - I know Silver City does, but I'm not headed that way soon. Desperately need a tune up.

Catron County people showing their inherent niceness yet again - I was dragging my sorry ass up a very long hill, pushing my purple bike, and a woman with hair turning grey driving a small brownish pickup slowed down and pulled over to see if I was all right. I so appreciate my neighbors out here.

2006-11-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

My new partner.

Wheeee!

2006-11-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

I'm back on the road, thanks in part to the fresh inspiration of Grapenut who's just starting to walk her borough in NY and to the neverending inspiration of Spike who will have walked and photographed and discovered the history of every square inch of Woy Woy and its surrounding area before that walk is over.

It is so good to be back on the road! Using the bike, I was able to walk up hills and coast down them, and if it's not exactly the same as walking, I think it may be just as good, while the weather holds. I knocked off a little over four miles of road, although I walked and cycled more than six. I had a walkie talkie on me so I could keep in touch with my "pilot car", in case I had a flat or fell off and hurt myself. The range on the walkie talkies should have been about 3 miles, but because of the mountainous terrain it was only about 1 mile, which I found out after coasting down a nice long hill and trying to check in with Caravan One. (Like Air Force One, only made by Dodge.) Then I had to push the bike a mile back up the nice long hill to get to a place where I could make contact.

Biking is wonderful and doesn't feel like cheating at all. You feel every inch of the road through your hands on the handlebars, your feet on the pedals, and the base of your spine on the bikeseat. (I'm going to have a serious case of bike butt tommorrow!) The weather was perfect, cool and clear with a steady breeze and deep blue sky. Just me, by myself, was glorious. I could hear everything. I could hear the slight rubbing of the brakes on the back wheel, the creak of the pedals turning, my heart beating. I could hear the occasional car or truck approaching me from half a mile away, and the crackling in the power lines, and the wings of an enormous raven pushing through the air as it lifted itself off a tree branch. There was the constant sound of wind making the telephone wires and fence wires sing, and the sound of road signs rattling and struggling to get free from their posts and sail into the air like kites.

On the drive up to my starting place I saw four javelinas at the edge of the road. It seemed like a good beginning.

2006-11-05T01:20:00.000-07:00

On highway 36 looking north about 6 miles out of Quemado.

2006-11-05T01:19:00.000-07:00

On the way home. Moon was rising in the east, and the sun was setting in the west lighting up the western faces of these formations. This is what the camera saw - I haven't altered it in any way.

2006-11-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

Many elk on and near the road on the way home.

2006-11-05T01:15:00.000-07:00

Did I mention it's hunting season?

2006-11-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

Tiny old catholic church in town of Quemado.

Falling Down House

2006-08-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've been curious about this old house near Alma ever since we started driving that way regularly, and I got lucky last week. We drove past it and noticed that the heavy rains we've been getting have taken their toll, and it really looks like the house is getting ready to give up the ghost. I stopped to take a picture, and noticed an old guy on the porch of an old adobe close by, so I walked up and asked if he could tell me anything.

Turns out he sure could. The man on the porch was Harold Keith, and the house was actually his father and mother's general store and gas station, built in 1940. There was an awning of some kind, and gas pumps out front, and it originally sat right on the very edge of where the highway runs now. The gas pumps were right where the center line is. In 1955 or so, they were deciding where to put highway, and there was some question of which side of the ridge it would go on. In the end, they decided to run it on the west side, and the store had to go. So the Keiths picked it up and moved it about fifty yards uphill.

I think the guy had a little trouble understanding me, and I had a little trouble understanding him too. I probably didn't ask all the questions I could have, and I'm not sure exactly about the dates. When I asked him how old the house was, he said "Older'n you and me both." So when he said it was built in '40, my first thought was 1840, which caused him to protest that weren't neither of us old enough for that.

The old road, the one that was replaced by the new Highway 180, would have hooked up with this old bridge built in 1926, which crosses the San Francisco River a little east of where 180 crosses it now. They've got it fenced off for safety, although you can climb the fence and walk across it, if you like, and imagine the kind of vehicle that might have crossed it 80 years ago. Horse drawn carts and mule drawn wagons, maybe, or funny old model T's and the like.

Anyway, Number One Daughter took a few pictures of the leaning house in it's present state of just barely keeping gravity at bay, but lost them to the computer gremlins. We'll take another picture tomorrow, but it may already be too late. Driving away from talking with Mr. Keith, I realized that I've met him before. I was at the County Fair about two years ago, fooling around with a guitar belonging to the local school's music teacher and keeping an eye on the fiber arts exhibit, and he came over and listened, and then he played a few songs for me. He's a cowboy poet, real old school, and he came back the next day with a tape he had made of himself for me. Kind of embarrassing not to recognize him until too late. At the time crusty old cowboy ramblings weren't all that interesting to me, but he went to a bit of trouble to make me that tape. Must see if I can find it, and then see if there's a way to make an audio link.

And the weather today is...cranky

2006-02-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 11 - walked 4.5 miles, from Datil to mile marker 75 on Highway 60 and back. So, only 2.25 miles towards our goal, and the weather was surprisingly cold over there, and the wind was in our faces and it was all uphill 'til we turned around and went back. Cynthia was having trouble with her shoe, and I got a blister too. The wind, in fact, bit shrewdly. I didn't take any pictures, although the scenery was fairly pleasant. I walked, but I didn't enjoy it.

What I did enjoy was just before sunset, shooting clays with a 20 gauge shotgun, back home where it was warmer, and the wind had died down.

2006-01-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Hard to convey the scale of these babies - one of them weighs as much as three Boeing 747s fully loaded, I think.

2006-01-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

Picture by Elizabeth. Doesn't it look like they're on the move?

2006-01-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

Look up, look down, that lonesome road

2006-01-15T13:42:00.001-07:00

And here it is, the Very Large Array.

2006-01-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

The VLA is in Socorro County, our nextdoor neighbor.

2006-01-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

Behind the sign you can just see the top of an old wooden windmill, possible relic of the cattledrive years early last century.

VLA in the distance

2006-01-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

We started walking around 11:30, from the county line back towards Datil on Highway 60. The air was strangely hazy (due, perhaps to a cold air mass pressing down on top of a warm air mass and trapping all the dust raised by the wind of the last couple of days) and even though we were in a place where you could normally see for at least fifty miles in any almost any direction, visibility was obscured and led to some desolate landscape photos, as you will see if I can remember how to post pictures. The giant dishes of the Very Large Array were gathered in close formation, instead of being spread out across the plains, which was a little disappointing as well. Thinking I would be cold, I brought a very warm coat, which I wore for a mile or so and carried the rest of the way.

Total miles walked: 9.4! This is a big deal - it took me almost five months to get to the point where I could walk 9 or 10 miles comfortably last year, and this year I was able to do it on our second time out. (Total highway miles covered, 4.7)

Wildlife report: One bull elk jumped over a fence onto the highway, came to a stop, then continued on his way, soared over another fence and trotted away across a field.
One greater roadrunner made a mad dash onto the road and under the wheels of a passing truck, miraculously made it onto the other side without injury. High drama, as our hearts leapt into our throats.

Cloud report: In the distance, merging with the haze, low level cumulostratus. Directly above, deep blue sky with small smooth cumulus clouds scattered here and there. Not the typical fluffy cottonball cumulus clouds, but smooth and oddly shaped, looking like slightly melted spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream that have been licked at with a very large tongue.

Other sights/sounds/smells: We were passed by many small trucks and SUVs, one Hummer, many 18-wheelers, several enormous RVs, and several livestock trailers, the kind that leave in their wake the smell of shit and piss and fear.

2006!

2006-01-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I posted on a blog, it feels awkward and weird.

So, a recap of 2005:

Between January 1st and the end of May, we covered more than two-thirds of the paved roads in Catron County on foot. Then we took a nice long break.

Now it's 2006, and the Walk is back on.

January 1st, 2006 - drove one car to Datil, and walked from the intersection of Highway 12 and Highway 60, going east on 60, for a bit less than three miles. The sky was a deep and cloudless blue, the air was cold, the wind was fierce. Stopped for a quick snack of bread and cheese and Christmas fudge, then headed back west two miles and turned off onto a paved road that runs into Datil and ends back where we started, at the intersection of 12 and 60. Our total miles were 5.8, but ground covered actually came to only 3.8 miles. I was relieved to find out that 5.8 miles didn't almost kill me, as it would have when I started walking in January of 2005, although I did end up with a slight case of shinsplints and was slightly sore for a day or two.

We planned to walk again on January 8th, but I had a sore throat, a slight fever, and a weird rash of fever blisters on my upper lip.

Next scheduled walk will be Saturday January 14th, when we will try to walk from mile marker 80, where we turned around last time, all the way to the county line and the Very Large Array and back, about 9 or 10 miles total, assuming the weird rash of fever blisters has not migrated to my lower lip, or anywhere else, for that matter. I'll post pictures next time of the stretch between Datil and the VLA.

2005-11-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here's maybe a more dramatic angle, although still not quite the right one.

2005-11-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the same house - the picture's not quite from the same angle, but it looks like it's barely hanging on, may go any day now. Of course, people have probably been saying that to themselves for the last ten years...

2005-11-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

I took a picture of this house, on Highway 180 near Alma, back in May. I never did find out when it was built, or by who, or anything else about it, but I think it's safe to assume it's been standing a long long time, and that whoever attached the wire cared about keeping it up as long as possible.

Out of the rut

2005-10-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

We had to make a roadtrip to Albuq. the other day. Funny how you get into habits, like the habit of going from point A to point B, no detours, no deviation from the routine. This time we did a little sightseeing.

The first stop on the tour was the dead porcupine - still there on the north side of the road between Aragon and Old Horse Springs. I was wondering why, and then I realized - porcupines are covered with sharped spines. Duh. Coyotes aren't stupid, and ravens aren't either. That's who's doing the roadkill removal these days, I think, as the turkey vultures have moved on and the eagles haven't arrived yet.

Next stop: two very large raptors on telephone poles between Horse Springs and Datil. Not redtail hawks, I don't think. My guess is Ferruginous Hawk or Northern Harrier --seems too late in the year for a pair of Swainson's Hawks. Forgot to take a picture.

Next stop: Datil. Just before Datil we stopped to take a picture of the sky - between the clouds, backlit by the sun, you can just make out the full moon in the middle of the day.

Then, just for fun, we drove around Datil for a little while looking for a WPA building, but didn't find one. That doesn't mean the WPA didn't build anything in Datil. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. We did see a neat house, actually looked like two little square one room houses joined later by the addition of a hallway between them, but that's a guess.

Then on to Magdalena, where I bought a lottery ticket - when the pot is USD340 mill, give or take, why not? Hey, I'm feeling lucky... And found a little old building with a pretty recent sign on it. Magdalena was a hopping place at one time. Cowboys drove cattle as many as a hundred miles or more to ship them on the railroad. Then, with a few bucks in their pockets, they'd live it up a little - have a few drinks at the saloon, visit the little red whorehouse on the hill - then they'd pick up the mail, buy a few supplies and let their horses haul their hungover butts a hundred miles or more back home.

Last bit of fun - Socorro, where we spent twenty minutes driving around the campus of New Mexico Tech. Nice college. Fun to look around a little instead of just driving past as usual.

2005-10-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

2005-10-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

2005-10-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

***

2005-10-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

****

2005-10-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

*****

2005-10-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you can really see the heavy lintel over the doorway - I'd love to get up close and see the hinges.

2005-10-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Walled courtyard - very spanish.

2005-10-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Got to find out about this one, in Aragon. Was it a boarding house? Factory?

2005-10-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is the Square Deal store and gas station in Aragon. One I know the date of! Built from 1937-1939.

2005-10-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

I'm really curious about this one. U-shaped floor plan with a second story - not all that many two - story houses around here.

2005-10-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

Seems like the second story was added on later.

2005-10-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

This house and the building in the next photo are on the same property along with some stables and outbuildings.

2005-10-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a little building that I'd love to know more about. east of Cruzville.

Cruzville to the Lower Frisco

2005-10-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've got the bug for sure now - can't stop driving around taking pictures and wondering who built the houses, and when, and how. Later this week, I'll have a chance to talk to two people who can maybe tell me more about the builders and the time periods. One lives in a house built by the very person who built the house I live in, and the other got a grant to go around and document abandoned and derelict adobe houses on what is now public land, if I understood the project correctly. A third person I hope to speak with soon is a woman in Aragon who's in her late eighties, and recalls playing in the house I live in, as a child - now may be a bad time, since her son is ill. I'm hoping that these people will have lots of information, and be able to give me introductions to people who have even more.

The demographics of Catron county are changing. There is a solid core of families who've been here for many generations; ranchers, and back when there was more rain, pinto bean farmers. There are families who moved here when logging became a big industry, who are still hanging on even though the sawmill has been shut down - some of the families were Okies escaping the dustbowl years - think Grapes of Wrath - who lived in tin shacks in logging camps. Afer the sawmill was shut down, the economic outlook became pretty bleak for many, and the population of the county dropped as families with children moved elsewhere to find work. Now the population is rising again as subdivisions are being created and populated with retired folk who are trading their urban mini-mansions for 5 or 10 or even 20 or 40 acres in the country and building ugly lincoln log kit homes that look as out of place in this landscape as the adobe houses look at home.

That's my general impression, anyway - I may have some of the details wrong.

So here are some more old houses which I hope to find out more about.

2005-10-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

This is the other WPA building I know of in the county, although there could be more. This was the Cruzville schoolhouse, built in 1938, now a private residence. The sunroom on the left was only added on a year or two ago.

2005-10-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

Detail - WPA 1938

2005-10-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Detail - Cruzville School WPA 1938

2005-10-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if this house, south of Reserve, is older than the ones in Aragon -- maybe more Spanish-colonial in style. I'm looking at the roof, which is flat and only slightly pitched. The depth of the house would have been limited by the length of the timber available for the beams, which you can see poking out the front.