Day 133: Old West

Las Cruces to somewhere in Doña Ana County. 18 miles/2539.7 total

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

9:50 a.m. I am setting out from the corner of Frontage Road and Harry Burrill Road near the Las Cruces airport, heading west alongside and sometimes on I-10 to a spot on New Mexico 549, 18 miles from here. Today’s walk is a little shorter than usual and I’m getting started a little late because I had to buy and install a battery for the motor home this morning.

It’s an absolutely clear day, with the temperature in the high 50s, going up into the mid-60s. There’s a breeze from the west. Behind me stand the jagged peaks of the Organ Mountains and the San Augustin Pass, 25 miles away but still looming very large in the distance.

Today I'll have to walk along the side of I-10 for a bit, and although pedestrians technically are not allowed on interstates, I anticipate no problem. There really is no alternative in spots and the authorities know this.

Tonight I’ll go back and stay again at Walmart in Las Cruces. After staying at the one on the east side for a few days, off I-25, I’m now staying at the one on the west side of the city, near I-10, about seven miles east of where I start today’s walk. I don’t usually backtrack like that, but right around here the border patrol is pretty active, and I don’t wish to attract any attention by parking overnight on the highway. Besides, this Walmart is so accommodating that it’s really quite delightful. I don’t know when I’ve seen so many motor homes at one time at a Walmart. There were at least a dozen, and the security guard who drives around in his little truck stopped by and welcomed me when I arrived, advising me on the quietest place to park and recommending some places to eat nearby. He asked me where I was from in Michigan, then told me he used to live in the Chicago area and vacationed on Lake Michigan, at Pentwater. Small world.

The highway signs around here are quite civil and genteel in their tone. I pass one that says, “Notice: Prison Facilities in This Area. Please Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.” I would think that “DANGER. Prison Area. Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers” would be more to the point, but they say “please” as if you would be doing them and not yourself a favor by forgoing the opportunity to pick up an escaped criminal.

On long walks through nothing, such as this one promises to be, I listen to my iPod as the afternoon wears on—sometimes to music, but more often to recorded books. I just finished listening to The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a very engaging book about the nature of epidemics, not only of disease, but of various human behaviors. This is at least the third book by Gladwell I’ve listened to. Just yesterday I started listening to The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. I don’t think I’ve read that one since high school. Which reminds me that somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area there’s an Upton Sinclair house, and I’ll have to make a point of visiting that when I get out there, just as I visited Terre Haute, Indiana, the home town of Theodore Dreiser, as I was reading Sister Carrie. Sinclair was a dedicated socialist, as was Dreiser and of course Dreiser’s fellow Terre Haute native, Eugene V. Debs.

At 3 miles into the walk, still on Frontage Road, I come to the first of about a dozen billboards for a place called the Old West. This is one of those stores that inundate you with billboards, like a much smaller version of South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina, well known to all travelers on I-95 up and down the east coast.

At 5.4 miles I reach this emporium, Bowlin’s Old West Trading Post, and go inside for some refreshment. Back outside I sit on a guard rail and enjoy my coffee and eat lunch. Afterwards I cross over I-10 and now am walking on the south side of the highway. I see that the road here is called the Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway. Since they commemorate the Bataan Death March every year between Alamogordo and Las Cruces by holding a hellacious marathon across the desert, I wonder if they commemorate Pearl Harbor Day in a similar way over here, maybe by flying over the expressway and dropping bombs and strafing passing motorists. I’m sure there are any number of people around here who would eagerly volunteer for such an assignment. Yeeee-haaaa!

About a mile after I cross the highway the paved access road veers off to the south, and I stay to the right on a dirt road, which soon becomes two rocky and sandy ruts. It’s covered with animal tracks—horses, cloven-hoofed animals, coyotes, birds. I wish I knew more about how to identify them. In the summer I suspect the rattlesnakes and scorpions would be a consideration here, but now it’s cool enough that they’ve retreated underground.

At one time camels roamed this area. In the mid-1800s the army brought some over from the Middle East for use here in the Southwest. They proved very well suited to the terrain and climate, and were working out, except that they tended to spook the horses and mules. With the outbreak of the Civil War the camel experiment was largely forgotten, and many of them escaped into the desert and became feral. Camel sightings throughout the Southwest continued into the early 20th century, with the last one being in 1941 in Texas. But who knows?

Finally even this little rough path disappears, and it’s time for me to climb over the barbed wire fence and get up on the highway, which I manage to do with the dexterity of a pollo coming up from Old Mexico. I acquire a number of burrs on my pants and shoes, and after pulling them off I am marching along the shoulder of I-10 against a very strong headwind of perhaps 30 mph.

At 12.2 miles I pass the U.S. Border Patrol inspection station, which is on the other side of the road, for cars heading west. No one seems to notice this fence jumper.

Another example of the elevated tone of the highway signs is this one: “Dust Storms May Exist Next 15 Miles.” Some dedicated state employee whose first language is not English must have come up with that one. And a philosopher to boot. Not “Dust Storms Possible,” or “Watch for Dust Storms,” mind you, but “Dust Storms May Exist.” Or they may not, depending on whether we acknowledge them. What, after all, is this thing called existence but the sum total of our perceptions? Dust storms might exist without us, but what meaning would they have? As Descartes said, cogito ergo sum; je pense donc je suis.

Off to the south is a line of pointed peaks rising from the desert floor. Some of these mountains probably are in Mexico. One of them looks like a breast, topped with a nipple. At least it does to me.

After five miles on the interstate I negotiate a passage through some prickly tumbleweeds and climb another barbed wire fence to get onto Frontage Road 1028, which will take me to New Mexico 549 down at Exit 116. Near this exit there’s a small collection of houses on either side of the expressway. This might qualify as a community of some kind, but there’s no name on the map.

A couple of Border Patrol guys in a white SUV stop on 549 to ask me if I need a ride, but don’t seem interested beyond that gesture of courtesy. In another mile and a half is the motor home, and the end of another day.

Day 132: The Crosses

Organ to Las Cruces. 20.2 miles/2521.7 total

Monday, November 15, 2010

9:15 a.m. I’m leaving from a little west of Organ, at US 70 and Weisner Road, heading west on 70 through Las Cruces and out the other side to a spot near the airport, a distance of 20.2 miles.

It’s chilly today and mostly cloudy, although the sun does shine from time to time. And the clouds are lower and thicker than they’ve been. Right now the temperature is in the 50s, and I expect it to get into the low 60s. A light breeze is blowing in from the west.

During the time I wasn’t walking I let a spot on the sole of my left foot heal, where a large thorn had gone through the bottom of my shoe and punctured the skin. I removed the thorn, or thought I had done so, but a little piece of it remained in there, and began to get inflamed. So that’s cleared up now. Also I drove around Las Cruces and the campus of New Mexico State University, the land grant university located here. NMSU, home of the Aggies, is a school of over 18,000 students, founded in 1888. I also took a trip with the motor home back up the San Augustin Pass, where I camped one night and then visited the White Sands National Monument again and walked the dunes. Very peaceful and beautiful in an otherworldly way.

Yesterday I visited with two new friends, Glenda and Doug Baker, who were recommended to me by my old friend Billie Bob. They live in a very nice place up here on the east side of the city, and I had dinner and conversation with them. I’d like to thank them again for their hospitality, and I hope I have an opportunity to get to know them better in the future. It’s always a pleasure to meet people in the places I go through.

As easy as it is for me to get addicted to leisure, it’s time to get addicted to walking once again, so here I am, hitting the dusty trail.

Along this stretch of US 70 the housing developments are beginning to take shape and I can see subdivisions of tan and beige and pale red houses, some in frame style and many in the classic Southwestern adobe style, like Doug and Glenda’s house.

I pass the Hacienda Baptist Church, where the sign says “Bikers Welcome.” Right. I can see that happening. I pass the East Mesa Memorial Pool, a nice new recreation center, and a little farther down is the East Mesa Laundry. So that must be the name of this area, although it’s not on the map as such.

Here in mid-November the trees are beginning to turn yellow and brilliant orange—the aspens and cottonwoods and various ornamental fruit trees that landscapers have planted.

At about 3.5 miles into the walk I come to the first gas station I’ve passed since Alamogordo, some 65 miles back—Shorty’s Gas and Liquor. And there’s Shorty, looking like Yosemite Sam on a sign above the pumps. Right next to that is Big Daddy’s Marketplace, with a fifteen-foot-high statue of Big Daddy, wearing green pants and a white shirt and a droopy Mexican-style moustache. It’s a flea market, but it’s closed today. Next to that is a huge brown and white bull, perhaps ten feet high, bearing a sign that reads “El Toro says shop here.”

I stop in a convenience store where I buy a cappuccino (which I like to mix about two-thirds/one-third with regular coffee) and also to bask in the incredible array of stuff they have in these little stores, and to enjoy being back in a city after so many miles of nothing. I like the scenery and quiet of the countryside, but on the whole I prefer going through cities and settled areas where people are outside walking and not just zooming past in their cars. As I get to Roadrunner Parkway I look south a few miles and I can see the area where Doug and Glenda live.

As in Texas, here in New Mexico they take care to decorate their highway interchanges a bit. At 6.5 miles, at the intersection of US 70 and I-25, the highway overpasses have nice stone work and rich red coloring and even a little decorative frieze of a mountain motif that repeats itself along the bridges.

I forgot to mention at the end of my previous walk that I have reached the 2500 mile mark on this trip. That would have been enough miles to get to the west coast if I'd taken the most direct route from Michigan. As it is I’ll be walking for another 700 to 800 miles. But I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of this.

Past the expressway things get more congested. I pass the usual array of businesses—Lowe’s, K-mart, Walgreens, fast food places—and this feels like a major commercial center. Actually Telshor Boulevard, which runs north-south parallel to I-25 on the east side, is considered the major business district, along with Lohman Ave., but US 70, also called N. Main Street here, has a lot going on. These strips have pretty much replaced the downtown business district. Downtown is the Doña Ana County Courthouse, a handsome white adobe-style structure.

The City of Las Cruces was laid out by the U.S. military in 1849, right after the Mexican War. The community of Mesilla, immediately to the southwest of Las Cruces, was originally larger than Las Cruces. But in 1860, when the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad came through, Mesilla refused to sell it a right of way. Las Cruces donated the right of way to the railroad, and eventually it became larger than Mesilla. Today, with over 93,000 people, it is the second-largest city in the state. Albuquerque is the largest, with over half a million, Rio Rancho is third, and the capital, Santa Fe, is fourth.

The name Las Cruces means “the crosses” in Spanish. Wikipedia claims the origin of the name is unknown. Some people suggest that it might have to do with crossroads, but this is implausible because the word for crossroad is masculine, and that would require the name of the city to be Los Cruces. I think the meaning is pretty straightforward, given the Spanish and Mexican tendency to name things after Christian saints and other religious iconography, and that it was named after the three crosses of Jesus and the two thieves. This symbol or three crosses shows up fairly often on signs. When I see it, it reminds me of a bit from "Desperados Under the Eaves" by Warren Zevon:

Don't the sun look angry through the trees,
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves....

I pass the Las Cruces Country Club, then the Academia Dolores Huerta, a middle school. Dolores Huerta is shown on a painting on the awning over the front door, standing in a vegetable field wearing an apron bearing the United Farm Workers symbol. She was the co-founder of the UFW, with Cesar Chavez. Born in Dawson, New Mexico, she grew up near Stockton, California. She’s been involved in politics and labor organizing for most of her adult life and is now 80 years old.

At 10.2 miles, down toward the center of the city, US 70 turns right and heads west again under the name Picacho Avenue. For the first time since I started back on the walk three weeks ago, I feel a drop or two of rain. I always carry my emergency poncho for such occasions. It starts to sprinkle off and on.

As I pass the Doña Ana County District Court a squall begins to blow through, carrying almost as much dust as moisture. As Picacho Avenue continues west the businesses become modest and local, including several antique stores. One is open, S.O.B. Antiques, and I go in and buy four pocket knives.

Down and across from S.O.B. is an Aamco Transmission place where out on the sidewalk stands a sculpture of a woman made from a transmission and some miscellaneous parts. Very clever and nicely done. She holds the mail box.

I’m going through the area called Picacho, with Picacho Peak off in the distance to the north. Suddenly the rain gets very heavy and I have to break out the emergency poncho. But by the time I finish wrestling with the thing, which is blowing all over the place, and get it on, the rain begins to subside. In the process the poncho rips down one side, but that’s okay, I keep a supply of them in the motor home.

I come to the Rio Grande, in front of which is an historic marker. It says the Rio Grande originates in the mountains of Colorado and is over 1800 miles long, forming the border between Texas and Mexico. Here it flows more or less straight south. It also formed the original western boundary of Texas when it claimed the eastern half of New Mexico. The Rio Grande is pretty dry right now, with only two shallow streams about ten feet wide. Crossing this river I feel that I have symbolically crossed out of the ambit of Texas and am now in the far west.

In front of a house I see a large bush with fruits that look like apples growing on it. On closer inspection, and after talking to the guy standing out front, I realize they’re pomegranates. He invites me to take as many as I would like. I thank him and pick one, which I open with my knife to scoop out the little kernel-like seeds and drink the purple juice. Refreshing. An old world fruit, the pomegranate was introduced to this continent by the Spanish in 1769 and is now cultivated for its juice, particularly in California and Arizona.

Out here on the edge of town, next to the Fairacres Baptist Church, is a cemetery--a memorial garden to be exact. I sit on a bench dedicated to the Dr. Willie P. Isaacs family and relax for a few minutes. In front of me reposes Dr. Willie P. himself, who died four years ago. Some of the other surnames I see are Radtke, Wagner, Guillen, Telles, Struffalino, Lucero, Perez, Hernandez, and Candelaria. It reads like a baseball lineup card.

From the cemetery I begin a long steady uphill climb toward the airport. It’s cooling down, with about an hour of daylight left, as I turn onto the road that branches off of US 70 toward the airport. I’m walking parallel to I-10 now.

At last the motor home comes into view right past Harry Burrill Road.

Day 131: The Pass

Otero/Doña Ana County line to Organ. 20.6 miles/2501.5 total

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

9:30 a.m. I’m setting forth from the side of the road near mile 179 on US 70, just a little east of the Otero/Doña Ana (pronounced Doñana) County line, heading to a spot about three miles west of the village of Organ, a distance of 20.6 miles.

Today’s walk will take me up and over the San Andres Mountains through the San Augustin Pass and into the flat lands below.

No clouds, and it’s about 60 degrees. I have a very clear view of the mountains to my right and directly in front of me. The wind is blowing in stiffly from the west, though, pushing against me as I walk.

Like yesterday, I won’t have any places to stop for refreshment, so I’m carrying everything I'll need. The gas stations don’t start for another three miles or so past the vacant lot where the motor home is parked.

Not long into the walk I come to a historic marker telling about the disappearance of Albert J. Fountain and his son Henry. Albert Jennings Fountain was a Civil War veteran, New Mexico legislator, and prominent lawyer. On February 1, 1896 he and his eight-year-old son Henry were traveling home to Masilla (south of Las Cruces) from Lincoln. They carried grand jury indictments against cattle rustlers. Father and son disappeared at Chalk Hill and their bodies were never found. In 1899 Oliver Lee and James Gilliland were tried for their murder. Both were acquitted. And that’s all the marker says. I suppose Chalk Hill is near here.

There is a bit more to the Fountain story than what was provided on the marker. It seems that old Albert J. had cheated death on more than one occasion before his luck ran out. Born in Staten Island in the 1830s, he moved to Sacramento, California and became a newspaper reporter, from whence he went to report on the exploits of William Walker, an American southerner who had gone down to Central America with a private army and set himself up as president of Nicaragua in 1857. Fountain's newspaper dispatches angered Walker, who had him put in prison and sentenced to be shot, but he escaped and returned to California. Immediately after serving in the Union Army in the Civil War he joined the New Mexico volunteers as an Indian fighter. While fighting Apaches he was wounded and trapped under his dead horse overnight with a bullet in his thigh, an arrow in his arm, and another arrow in his shoulder. Later he served in the post-war Texas legislature as a Radical Republican, where he encountered the enmity of a number of Texas Democrats and fought several duels, killing at least one man. In the 1870s he moved back to Masilla, New Mexico, his wife's home, where he became a district attorney and started a newspaper and eventually went into private law practice. In 1881 he represented Billy the Kid on a murder charge, but lost the case. His client escaped from jail, which seems like the usual response to a death sentence in those days, killing both his guards. Not long afterwards Billy the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett (father, as you may recall, of Elizabeth, the author of the New Mexico state song and the first teacher at the school for the blind in Alamogordo).

Fountain then ran for the New Mexico territorial legislature against Albert Bacon Fall, another Las Cruces area lawyer and land owner, defeating him once and losing to him once. At the time he and his son disappeared Fountain was obtaining an indictment against Oliver Lee, a noted rancher and gunman (and friend of Albert Fall's), for cattle rustling. Although Fountain's body and that of his son were never found, authorities did find two pools of blood and some other blood-soaked personal effects. Lee and his employee Gilliland and another thug named Billy McNew were acquitted of the murders in 1899, after being brought in by none other than Pat Garrett. Their lawyer was Lee's friend Albert Fall. Albert Fall would go on to become one of the first pair of U.S. Senators from New Mexico, but not before successfully defending Lee's brother-in-law, J.J. Cox, for his alleged involvement in the 1908 shooting of Pat Garrett. Fall was appointed Secretary of the Interior under Warren G. Harding. A few years later, after being convicted of taking a bribe to provide no-bid oil leases to several companies on land owned by the Navy in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, Fall became the first cabinet member ever to be sent to prison.

I leave Otero County and enter Doña Ana County. Las Cruces is its county seat and the second largest city in New Mexico. It lies beyond the mountains that loom before me.

Before I leave the Alamogordo and White Sands region, I should mention that I’ve been listening to a series on local public radio about the Alamogordo Primate Facility. I mentioned that they used chimps in the early years of the space program, and that they housed them at Holloman Air Force Base. I don’t think they use them for that purpose anymore, since humans have been going into space for fifty years. But evidently they keep a bunch of chimps around, and the military is caring for them, but also interested in dealing them off to the NIH and drug companies for biomedical research. I might have the facts a little wrong there, but you get the idea. Some people are up in arms about the treatment of the chimps, some of which have been kept in little cages for years. They’d like to “rehabilitate” them and put them in parks and preserves. It’s a minor cause célèbre in the Alamogordo area.

I might as well weigh in on the subject. I think our practice of using animals other than humans for experimentation is a natural outgrowth of our essentially predatory nature. We raise and kill animals to eat them and wear their skins in the form of leather and furs or to feed them to other animals, so it stands to reason that we might wish to use them for experiments that we’re not so sure would be safe if performed on us--sacrificing animals in yet another way for the good of humans. If one eats animals, how can one object to experimenting on them, provided the experiments aren’t completely frivolous? But people do object, and they do draw arbitrary lines. Kill and eat, okay. Inject with experimental vaccines, not okay. I don’t see a clear distinction there. If one objects to both the eating and the experimentation, that's consistent.

What’s lurking in the background of the chimp controversy is one of my hobby horses, the notion that we shouldn’t mess with certain animals because they’re almost like us because they share almost all of our DNA, or are cute and cuddly, or are relatively intelligent. That strikes me as a very self-centered position for our species to take. Why do we care so much about animals that are almost like us, or ones that wag their tails when we come in the door, or rub up against our legs and purr? Because we are stuck on ourselves as a species, and wish to protect the animals that seem most like us or gratify us in some way. It’s all about us, not the other animals. Modified vegetarians even partake of this attitude when they suggest that the best or healthiest animals to eat are birds or fish, rather than mammals. But when we encounter an animal that is very dissimilar to us, like a spider, we’ll stand on a chair until someone steps on it.

Oddly, some people who object to using animals for experimentation think the use of human volunteers is more "humane" (giving an intriguing meaning to the word). But such volunteers usually are prisoners or other down-and-outers who may have opted for being the subject of an experiment as the lesser of several evils, rather than out of a sense of adventure or altruism. Any way you look at it, some species is being exploited. Better them than us, I say.

I see a live jackrabbit, running like crazy through the sagebrush and mesquite. After all this talk about animals, the sight of this one makes me hungry.

After 4.5 miles I come to a collection of buildings set back from the road about half a mile. This is the White Sands Small Missile Testing Facility. I don’t know whether the facility is small, or the missiles are, or both. In the distance I hear jets, or maybe missiles, breaking the sound barrier.

I’ve seen half a dozen large hairy brown spiders dead on the roadside. I don’t keep statistics on insects or arachnids, but the spiders are out here, along with the fat dying grasshoppers.

After the small missile facility I begin in earnest my five mile long ascent through the mountain pass. The wind has picked up and is pummeling me at 25 or 30 miles an hour. It’s becoming chilly.

At 9 miles I reach the main exit for the headquarters of the White Sands Missile Range and its museum and gift shop. After that as I proceed up a very steep hill I get far enough into the mountains that the wind is blocked a bit. This ascent is much steeper than the one to Cloudcroft was.

All throughout New Mexico so far I’ve been seeing gourds growing wild along the roadside on vines twenty or more feet long. They’re round, about the size of tennis balls or baseballs. They turn yellow when they dry out, but I pick up a green one and cut it open to taste the flesh to see if it is edible. After all, this is the same family of vegetables as pumpkins and squashes. The taste is so bitter that I spit it out immediately, and the bitterness stays in my mouth for a half hour or more. Hope I don’t die, for Christ’s sake.

At 13.8 miles I pass the entrance to the Aguirre Spring camp ground. I’m almost to the summit. Soon after, I come to a large Nike Hercules missile at a truck pulloff area. A sign in front of the missile tells the story of the Nike Hercules. They once stood guard around major cities during the Cold War. They were capable of knocking down attacking missiles or carrying nuclear warheads to attack formations of incoming missiles. Testing for the Nike Hercules began in 1955 at White Sands and concluded in 1967, after which it was replaced by the Nike Zeus. And now this Nike missile stands guard over the rest area and its green porta-potties.

Finally I get to the top, and an arduous climb it has been. I’m now at the San Augustin Pass. This pass is the divide between the Tularosa Basin to the east and the Jornada del Muerto to the west. The Jornado del Muerto is the name for the desert basin in which Las Cruces lies. It's Spanish for something like "single day's journey of a dead man." Hmmm. San Augustin Pass is a cut between the Organ Mountains and the San Andres and San Augustin Mountains. Elevation 5,710 feet.

The other side of the mountains presents a wide vista for twenty or thirty miles ahead to the next mountain range, with the desert floor and a few smaller hills in the foreground. I have about two miles of downhill before US 70 levels off for its course into Las Cruces.

At 16.6 miles I enter Organ, which is designated only by a small sign on the highway. It appears that at some time this was a going concern. There are several empty stores and restaurants and a place purporting to be open called Thai Delight. But there is only one vehicle parked in front, and I find it hard to believe this place operates as a restaurant. Probably a front for other activities. There just isn’t enough business around here to sustain a restaurant, especially a crummy-looking one like this in the middle of nowhere.

Organ was once a mining town. Near here from before the Civil War mines produced gold, lead, iron, silver, and other minerals. In 1885 the population was over 1500. Eventually the mines were inundated with water and by the 1930s they closed. The Wikipedia article claims there are 100 households in the vicinity today, many of them homes of employees of the White Sands Missile Range. It has a post office, but is unincorporated.

Highway 70 has become an expressway so I get off the main road and start walking along the access roads on either side. I’m entering some of the far eastern suburban areas of Las Cruces, still ten miles or so away. Although most of the houses hereabouts are prefab or trailers, it’s clear that the area is being prepped for middle class development. The infrastructure is already here, with the highway exits and access roads nicely laid out, and large tracts of land have been leveled and cleared. All that remains is the construction of businesses and houses.

Day 130: White Sands

White Sands National Monument to Otero/Dona Ana County line. 21 miles/2480.9 total

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

8:55 a.m. I am walking out of the parking lot of the White Sands National Monument visitor’s center to the somewhat suspicious stares of a couple of park employees. I get on US 70, heading southwest through nothing to a point in the middle of the long space between Alamogordo and Las Cruces. I will finish in 21 miles on the Otero-Doña Ana County line.

I can't promise anything of interest on this walk (not that I ever do). This is one of those stretches that must be walked so I can get to more fascinating places. Other than a small military installation about two-thirds of the way through, there’s nothing in the way of civilization or amenities, unless you count the port-a-potties provided by the State of New Mexico at a few places where trucks can pull off the road.

There are clouds in the sky today, for a change. They started coming in yesterday afternoon. Alamogordo, behind me, is pretty much covered with clouds. I’m back wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and the temperature is about 50 at the moment, getting up into the high 60s, with a strong breeze from the west into my face.

This stretch of road is designated the Bataan Memorial Highway. I hope the walk today doesn’t end up resembling the Bataan Death March. As a matter of fact, every year in March they hold a marathon and a 15-mile run along here, or somewhere in the White Sands Missile Range, through which I’m walking, to commemorate the Bataan Death March. That was in 1942 after the Battle of the Phillipines, when the Japanese marched 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war about 60 miles over a week’s time, killing as many as 11,000 of them along the way. In the New Mexico version of the Bataan Death March, competitors can run “light,” with normal running gear, or “heavy,” carrying 35-pound backpacks and, if they’re military personnel, wearing their army combat uniforms. Survivors of the real Death March are there to greet the winners.

I should say a word or two about the White Sands National Monument, too. I visited it in April on my way out to California and wrote about it in the blog. This area was first set aside as a national monument in the 1930s. The white sands that form the ever-changing dunes here are made of selenite, a crystallized form of gypsum. Unlike regular quartz-based sand, gypsum is water soluble. In prehistoric times this area was a lake, in which the gypsum was dissolved and sank to the bottom. When the lake dried up selenite crystals were left, some as large as three feet long. Gradually these crystals have eroded and sand-sized pieces have blown over here from the southwest, forming these unusually white dunes. Also unlike regular sand, this gypsum sand does not absorb the sun's heat very well, so even in the hottest part of the year the sand can be walked on in bare feet. The National Monument has hiking trails and places where people can ride sleds down the dunes. Because of the whiteness of the sand and the otherworldly look of the place, some movies have been shot here, especially ones where people are supposed to be on another planet or in the middle of the old desolate tough-guy west.

Apparently the White Sands National Monument people and the military have a sort of uneasy relationship. Frequent flyovers by jets and the occasional errant missile have had a tendency to interfere with the touristy aspects of the place. Not to mention the fact that US 70 is closed a couple of times a week, for an hour or two, because of whatever they're doing on the missile range.

For the first mile I walk past a line of dunes on the northwest side of the road, on which grow large deciduous bushes, probably mesquites, that have turned flaming yellow and orange. Those colors, contrasted with the white sand, are a beautiful sight in the morning sun.

I pass a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol station, where all vehicles coming east have to stop. I stopped in the car on the way here this morning, and I’ll have to stop in the motor home on the way back to pick up the car. Sure hope they don’t find that family I have living in the back. After I walk past, a friendly young man from the Border Patrol drives by in a Jeep and asks me if I’m okay. Slow day, I guess.

So little is there to distinguish one mile from the next on this walk that I have to use the mile markers on US 70 as progress points, rather than crossroads or other roadside sights like I usually do.

For anyone interested in the found money situation here in New Mexico, let me report that as of this morning I have picked up $1.76 in change, but no nickels yet. I have two quarters, nine dimes, and thirty-six pennies.

At about 8 miles into the walk, there’s still absolutely nothing to report, except two dead coyotes. The mountains are getting a little closer.

It’s about 1:00 p.m. and I have gone 11 miles. I’ve found a few more pennies and a dime. Though you can't see it from a moving vehicle, the roadside is heavily littered with beer bottles. Not cans, mind you, but bottles, mostly brown.

The wind is blowing hard from the southwest, pushing me back. It’s gusting to between 25 and 30 miles an hour.

At 13.5 miles I come to a small military installation called HELSTF, which stands for High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility. There’s a gate out front, and perhaps a dozen buildings spread back a mile or so from the road.

At about 18 miles things are the same as they were, except that I have only another hour to walk.

With less than two miles to go the San Andres Mountains are no longer off in the distance. I’m walking right beside them. The land sweeps smoothly up, like a carpet, to the foot of the mountains, which rise to heights of several thousand feet. I can’t really capture in words the majesty of these mountains, for the most part unblemished by evidence of human presence, looking like they did ten thousand or more years ago when the first people lived here. As a flatlander from the east, I am continually impressed by such sights. I can see how people could think that gods dwelled in the mountains, or indeed that the mountains were the gods. They’re so undeniably huge and powerful and frightening, yet quiet and passive at the same time. They change throughout the day from blue silhouettes to horizontally striped and striated rock faces to greenish brown lumps of shadow to grave black outlines on the starry horizon, always standing guard over everything.

Day 129: Alamogordo

Alamogordo to White Sands National Monument. 21.1 miles/2459.9

Monday, November 8, 2010

8:50 a.m. I’m starting at the north end of Alamogordo, heading through the city, then down US 70 to the visitor’s center at the White Sands National Monument, a distance of 21.1 miles.

It’s about 60 degrees and clear, expected to get up to about 70 or 75. A beautiful day as usual. In front of me as I head west on US 82 are the San Andres Mountains, and behind me are the Sacramento Mountains.

Very soon into the walk I turn left onto Florida Ave., entering the Alamogordo city limits. A mile or so down Florida I pass the Deutsche Schule Alamogordo, looking fairly new and prosperous. In 2008 the German government built this school for the children of German air force pilots who train at Holloman Air Force Base, southwest of the city. (As if to reinforce this, I see a couple of people speaking German at the gas station after the walk.) I wonder if they still call it the Luftwaffe?

I should mention that Alamogordo was founded and laid out by the El Paso and Northeartern Railroad brothers, Charles and John Eddy, and that John chose the name Alamogordo, which means “fat cottonwood tree,” after a grove of, well, fat cottonwoods he remembered from down by the Pecos River. When the Eddy brothers laid the city out, they numbered the east-west streets and named the longer north-south streets after states. White Sands Boulevard, which is the main drag and where I’ll be soon, was originally called Pennsylvania Avenue.

Alamogordo’s motto is “The Friendliest Place on Earth.” That’s a bit grandiose, don’t you think? I have found most of the people here to be about as friendly as they are elsewhere, to be sure. But the friendliest on earth? Even allowing for normal civic hyperbole, that's a big statement, bound to invite dispute.

The north end of the city seems to be a prosperous middle class neighborhood. The military is big in Alamogordo, and nearby Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range employ over 6,000 people, many of whom live in this city of about 35,000. There are also many military retirees living around here.

Alamogordo is perhaps most famous for being the city closest to the Trinity site, where they detonated the first atomic bomb in the summer of 1945. Even though it was several dozen miles from here it must have lit up the sky a bit. Closer than I'd want to be to an atomic explosion.

Down at the White Sands Missile Range is where they did quite a bit of research in connection with the space program in its early years. Training chimps, decelerating people from 600 mph to a full stop in one and a quarter seconds, that kind of thing. There’s a museum here in town dedicated to the history of the space program. I won’t visit it, however. Frankly, the whole space thing never excited me much, in reality or in fiction. Except of course for I Dream of Jeannie, which was a great show.

At 4.2 miles, after cutting across on Indian Wells Boulevard, I turn south onto US 70, White Sands Boulevard. Right away I pass a large campus of buildings of the New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. According to a sign in front (in large type), it was founded in 1903. The first teacher was the blind daughter of lawman Pat Garrett, Elizabeth Garrett, who also wrote the state song, “O Fair New Mexico.” And for you deep trivia buffs, here's the last verse of that song, copied from my 2007 edition of the New Mexico Blue Book:

Days that are full of heart-dreams,
Nights when the moon hangs low,
Beaming its benediction
O'er Nuevo Mejico.
Land with its bright manana
Coming through weal and woe,
State of our esperanza
Is Nuevo Mejico.

I pass the Trinity Full Gospel Church, Pastor Harold T. Marshall. I wonder if this church is named after the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or the a-bomb site? Maybe both. Which reminds me that I read about a church here in Alamogordo that held some book burnings in 2001. Not this church, but one called Christ Community Church. They burned Harry Potter books as well as books by J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Star Wars books, and the works of William Shakespeare. Also a Ouija board. The pastor called the Harry Potter books “a masterpiece of Satanic deception.” To retaliate, the Alamogordo Public Library held a fundraiser and used the proceeds to purchase books by J. K. Rowling, Tolkien, and Shakespeare.

Strictly as a statement of literary criticism, I can see the burning of those books, except for the Shakespeare, of course. I think burning books, particularly if they're insipid ones, may have its place. After all, books aren’t sacred, especially Bibles and Korans. If the burnings had been held a few years later they could have warmed themselves with some of that damned Twilight series, and thrown some Dan Brown on the fire while they were at it.

I pass the Alamogordo Visitor Center and Chamber of Commerce, whose free RV dumping station I availed myself of yesterday. In this complex there’s also the Tularosa Basin Historical Museum, which I visited last April on my way through here. I decide to go back in for a few minutes and end up having a nice conversation with the docent, a woman named Shirley. We talked about our grandchildren mostly.

I stop to exchange pleasantries with a woman who is holding one of those street corner signs, this one for a furniture company. But she seems quite paranoid and doesn’t want to talk. I'm tempted to mention to her that Alamogordo is supposed to be the friendliest place on earth, but she doesn't appear to be in the mood.

I come to the Commission for the Blind Orientation Center, in a 1949 vintage adobe building, quite handsome. I pass My Mother’s Place Restaurant, the Rocket Restaurant, the White Sands Motel. As I reach the southern edge of town the buildings thin out. I pass the Highway 70 Adult Store, a couple of abandoned car dealerships, some used car lots, a paint and bump shop.

Then I’m back in the desert again. A flat expanse lies before me for the next 60 miles or so, with the San Andres Mountains in the distance but getting closer. Out here in the middle of nowhere there’s a new-looking place called Plateau Espresso. They’re selling the usual fancy expensive coffee and tea drinks. I opt for a blended iced chai, which is basically a milkshake with just an afterthought of spiced chai tea and a big glob of whipped cream on top. But it hits the spot when you're walking through the desert. Chai wallah, come here, boy!

At 14 miles I pass the entrance to the main gate of Holloman Air Force Base. Lots of new-looking base housing along a fence by the road. After about a half mile of this the base becomes fenced-off bare desert, jets flying high and low over me.

Some high clouds are coming in from over the mountains to the west. At 19 miles I pass a sign saying that I’m entering White Sands Missile Range, "Birthplace of America’s Missile and Space Activity. Visit our Museum and Gift Shop and Missile Park."

I begin to see the white sand dunes of the national park, and at 20 miles I see the sign for White Sands National Monument. Not long afterwards the motor home, parked in front of the visitor’s center, comes into view.

Day 128: Downhill

Wimsatt to the outskirts of Alamogordo. 22.2 miles/2438.8 total

Saturday, November 6, 2010

9:05 a.m. I’m departing from Sixteen Springs Canyon Road and US 82 in Wimsatt, going uphill for about eight miles into Cloudcroft, then steeply descending for fourteen miles to Alamogordo, a total distance of 22.2 miles.

It’s another clear sunny day. What else is new? It’s chilly up here, probably in the high 40s, but by the time I get to the sunny west side of the mountains it’ll be hitting 65 or 70.

Almost immediately an old couple stop to ask me if I’m “broke down” and need help. I tell them my story in brief—that I’m walking across the country and staying in a motor home at night. They laugh, I guess from the sheer insanity of the idea. The guy doesn’t have any teeth, and he looks jolly and benign and just a little daft. I’m reminded of one summer during college when I did some work for a guy, helping him build a breakwater on his lakefront property. He was probably only in his 50s, but his wife insisted that he needed someone to do the heavy work because he had a heart condition. So he’d hang out with me at the dock, bumming cigarettes from me on the sly and shooting the shit. This guy had false teeth that he seldom wore, and I got used to seeing just his gums. He was a nice guy to begin with, but the absence of teeth made him seem even more beneficent and genial. Then one day I came over while he was eating his supper, and he had his teeth in. He looked up and grinned at me and I was shocked. Those teeth made him look like a different person, sinister and tough. His smile was now menacing rather than kindly and avuncular. I think at that moment I was experiencing something innate in our species--the evaluation of another based on whether they are predator or prey or something in between, and the key to it is in the teeth.

I pass the Mountain of the Lord Church, set back about a quarter of a mile from the road. It has the now-familiar “Prayer, America’s Only Hope” sign out front. They must get those signs from some fundamentalist clearing house. Deliver us from our wickedness, oh Lord. In this case I'm sure that what they’d classify as America’s runaway wickedness would be things like voting Democratic and not executing enough blacks and Mexicans.

The sign on a building says James Canyon Volunteer Fire Department. Notwithstanding this, and the fact that James Canyon appears on other things near here, including the church and cemetery I visited yesterday, my map says this is Wimsatt. And it looks as if there are plenty of Wimsatts to go around. I read last night that old G. Gordon had a few kids and a bunch of grandkids. Up the road there’s a Wimsatt & Sons Construction and Storage Company. So the Wimsatts still make their presence known here.

Buildings and businesses dot the way as I near Cloudcroft. The Wimsatts have a U Haul rental operation. They, like everyone else, squeeze a living out of tourism, transience, and recreation up here in the mountains. I wonder if G. Gordon Wimsatt passed on his knack for reading bear grease to any of his descendants.

I start seeing quite a few spruce trees in addition to the pines, and some Douglas firs and balsam firs as well. The hills are thickly forested with evergreens here, with few bare spots on the peaks.

At 5 miles I reach the sign that says I’m entering the village limits of Cloudcroft, elevation 8,650 feet. But that’s just a teaser, because the real village isn’t for another two or three miles, and I’m still heading uphill. Wikipedia says the population of Cloudcroft was 729 in 2000, but I’ll bet it swells in the summer, because there are many lodges and campgrounds and vacation homes. A place that's twenty degrees cooler must draw people from down in the baking desert.

Cloudcroft was founded by the Eddy brothers, Charles and John (they must have named Eddy County after one or both of them). They organized the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad. They decided to run a rail line up into the Sacramento Mountains to harvest lumber, and when they got up here they saw that it would be a great place to bring tourists. Cloudcroft Lodge and a pavilion were built in 1899 and the rail line was completed to the top in 1900. In the 1930s the lodge was managed by Conrad Hilton, and it brought in some big names, like Clark Gable and Judy Garland. With the increasing popularity of cars, passenger rail service stopped in 1938.

I pass the Village of Cloudcroft Photovoltaic System Project, run by the EPA, Department of Energy, and the State of New Mexico. I see a few solar panels, but it looks as if they’re still setting them up.

Then comes Ski Cloudcroft, which is waiting for some snow at this point. A little way up the road they’re doing some logging on the hillside, and the sweet smell of sawdust fills the air. I see my first New Mexico raccoon roadkill. I’ve seen a few smears that probably were raccoons, but I couldn’t tell for sure. This one’s intact.

After Big Daddy’s Diner, the Elk Vista Motel, and the Crosseyed Moose Cafe, at 7.9 miles I enter the village center. Cloudcroft has new-looking elementary, middle, and high schools, one right after the other along 82.

Past the high school I head up to the central business district, which consists of a few blocks of boutiques, antique and souvenir stores, and bars and restaurants, all aimed at the tourist trade. The store front facades are flat and square in the typical old west style. I remember that when I was here in April in the car on the way out to California they had snow on the roofs of the buildings and roadsides here from an overnight storm.

After a little turn around the town and a visit to Allsup’s gas station convenience store for a cappuccino, I begin my trip down out of the Sacramento Mountains. Immediately I feel like I’m being pushed from behind, and each step jars my knees and my heels. As I begin tripping this light fantastic the first thing I can see on the far western horizon are the vast white sands looking like snow in front of the San Andres Mountains, perhaps forty miles distant. That’s a nice preview of what I’ll be seeing during the next two or three days of walking.

In the immediate foreground are the remnants of a train trestle. A historic marker tells the story of the railway built by Charles B. Eddy, which continued to operate as a freight railway until 1947. All that remains is this one trestle.

Less than two miles down the hill a guy on a bicycle passes me going the other way. Lord have mercy, that’s a serious bike ride, the kind you’d do if you were in training for the Tour de France. A little more than 4,300 feet over sixteen miles.

Off to my left the valley is filled with deciduous trees, flaming yellow and gold aspens and elms. I pass under the Harkey Pedestrian Bridge of the New Mexico Rails to Trails system. And here comes the same cyclist going down the mountain, coasting and riding the brake all the way. Easier than going up.

I come to a little place called Old Wooten. This was probably a water stop for the railroad. There’s an old water tank painted red. I go by an orchard where the trees are just loaded with ripe apples, and hardly a single one on the ground.

At about 15.5 miles I reach Mountain Park, elevation 6,750 feet. So that means I’ve descended 1,900 feet so far. Not quite halfway. The only factoid I can offer about Mountain Park is that it’s the birthplace of the cartoonist Bill Mauldin.

I stop in at the Wolf Creek Antler Works, a place that sells furniture made from elk and deer antlers. I sit on the front porch and talk to the proprietor, a guy named Joe. He’s originally from Artesia. I ask him if he’s heard of Gordon Wimsatt and he says oh yes, that guy was famous around here. And the Wimsatt family is all over up in the mountains. Joe says his business is slow in this spot and he’s thinking of going back up to Cloudcroft next year. Reluctantly I get back on my feet, which are a little more sore than usual from all this downhill walking.

The next little community is High Rolls. It lists its elevation as 6,750 feet also. But it’s downhill from Mountain Park, so somebody is mistaken.

West of High Rolls, at 17.1 miles, I come to a tunnel. Lupe at the Hope Quick Stop told me this is the only tunnel in New Mexico. It’s a short one, about a quarter of a mile. At the other end of the tunnel I’m once again treated to a view of the vast area of white sands on the desert floor.

Tucked against the steep cliffs I see a roadside cross and a little shrine to a young woman named Kristen. Her photograph is down at the bottom of the cross. She must have bought it right here, maybe driving a car, maybe as a passenger. Or perhaps she was walking, just like me, and one of these big loose rocks that are strewn along the shoulder fell down off the mountain and hit her in the head. (I’m starting to think like Anguish now.)

There’s about a mile and a half to go, and the vegetation is once more typical of the desert—yuccas, cactuses, mesquites—and the hillsides are bare of the tall evergreen trees.

I pass another dead raccoon, an empty beer bottle lying next to him as if he’d passed out from drinking too much. Maybe all these animal deaths aren’t due to car accidents after all.

Day 127: Wimsatt

Elk to Wimsatt. 20 miles/2416.6 total

Friday, November 5, 2010

9:25 a.m. I’m setting out from a spot just past Elk, at Mule Canyon Road, heading west on US 82 through the village of Mayhill to a place on the map called Wimsatt. Today’s walk will be 20 miles.

It’s a beautiful day, and I say that with the knowledge that a majority of the days in New Mexico are cloudless. But today the sky seems somehow clearer and bluer. Probably the mountain air. It’s in the high 40s, and expected to get into the high 50s.

Of course I’m walking uphill, but fairly gradually still. As I look around today it strikes me that the countryside is becoming alpine rather than the arid and semi-arid surroundings of the past two days of walking. In the broad meadow to the south of 82, between the road and the mountain ridge the road follows, deciduous trees are plentiful—aspens, alders, some elms, and even a few birches and willows. Up on the hillsides it’s strictly evergreens, mostly junipers, pinyon pines, and now increasingly the taller ponderosa pines, also known as western yellow pines. The higher in elevation I go, the taller the pine trees get.

The stream I remarked on last time runs just a few feet downhill from the road. The water rushes in spots, and occasionally I see small waterfalls. In the meadows on the other side of the stream cattle graze—white face, angus, Hereford, and several other beef breeds. Herds range from a dozen to over a hundred. Lots of cows up here.

Shortly after I start I leave Chaves County and enter Otero County, and then the Lincoln National Forest. There’s a tanker truck on the side of the road that says Mescalero Gas, A Mescalero Apache Enterprise. The Mescalero Apache Reservation is just north of the national forest. They’ve got a casino and a racetrack and a few other things, evidently. Robert Kie, my host the other night, used to be a tribal policeman on the reservation.

Otero County's county seat is Alamogordo, but it also contains this national forest and the reservation and part of White Sands National Monument, to the west, which I’ll be walking through in a few days.

I’ve had two ride offers already, one from a guy in a PVT truck. PVT stands for Penasco Valley Telecommunications, a small private telephone company operating around here. The driver saw me and said, “I shouldn’t even have stopped; I graduated from Ohio State.” And I realized that I’m wearing my Michigan hat today. Usually I wear a camouflage-colored hat. But today I left it in the motor home and used this one because it was in the car. I guess I’ll wear it tomorrow, too, to show my support for the Wolverines as they play the Fighting Illini at noon.

And speaking of bad news coming out of Michigan, I see that Rick Snyder, the Tough Nerd, has won the gubernatorial election, and that the Republicans now control both houses of the state legislature. They’ll probably impose austerity measures on the state, as if things aren’t austere enough already. We’re in for a rollicking time now, not that it’s going to make much difference. They could turn Michigan into the Delaware of the Midwest and eliminate all taxes on corporations and it wouldn’t induce manufacturers to bring in businesses. Rick Snyder of all people knows that, having outsourced all the jobs in his company to the far east. The Tough Nerd. To call both him and Satan nerds is an insult to Satan.

The most disconcerting thing is that the GOP will take credit for the upturn in the economy that’s already begun, even before they get into office. And the people, like a tribe in the jungles of Borneo that prays to the god Ooga Booga because they’re afraid the sun won’t come up, then gives Ooga Booga all the credit when the sun does come up, will think these new assholes actually had a hand in the recovery. The recovery from the shit storm that resulted from eight years of Bush and Cheney and Halliburton and Blackwater and Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and the purveyors of the fast buck and the free market and the third-tier derivative security. As if you could undo all that in less than two years.

Every now and then I see a sign, made to look like a political campaign sign, that says “Prayer. America’s Only Hope. 2 Chronicles 7:14.” That’s one of those verses from the Old Testament where God says he’ll forgive his people if they turn away from wickedness and seek him. It reminds me that the citizenry around here, particularly the whites, are some seriously reactionary folks. Not just hard-bitten right wingers, but hard-bitten religiously self-righteous right wingers, the worst kind.

Six miles into the walk it’s getting shadier and the trees are getting taller. Some large apple trees grow along the river. Around every bend is another magnificent vista. To my left are the stream and the meadow, several hundred yards wide, and the slope of the Sacramento Mountains. To my right the sheer rock faces where they’ve blasted the hills to make the road.

I see my first fresh deer kill. I’ve seen a few live ones today. On a sign Smokey says the fire danger is low today. The original Smokey the Bear, you may recall, was from New Mexico, rescued from a forest fire as a cub. In his honor, the New Mexico state mammal is the American black bear.

I just finished a pleasant conversation with a mail carrier named Sarahy, who has been noticing me for several days and decided to find out if I was walking for some cause. As my readers know, I’m a rebel without a cause. She delivers the mail out of Artesia, and drives from there to Mayhill and back every day. That’s 70 miles one way. I told her I’d been a mail carrier briefly, and that she had one very large mail route, but a scenic one. She said it can get a little treacherous in the winter when it snows. Like almost everyone who stops, she was friendly and curious. People notice things around here, probably because they have only this one main road to concentrate on, and not a lot happens.

At 9.6 miles I enter Mayhill, a small village with a few churches, whose business district consists of a dozen or so buildings, among them a hair salon, a gas station, a couple of stores, and a hotel with a restaurant. The sign as I enter says “Congested Area.” Well, that’s a relative thing. In the center of town there's a historic marker that refers to a battle between U.S. forces and the Apaches that took place here.

I stop at the Mayhill Convenience Store and the proprietor is friendly. He shows me his left hand, which has the last two fingers missing. He says he was bitten by a rattlesnake and got a fang in each finger and the bites got gangrene so the fingers had to be amputated. As I look around the store I begin to see some virulently mean-spirited right-wing political signs. One says, “Pelosi the Puke,” and the worst by far says, “Don’t Re-Nig in 2012.” I beat a hasty retreat, thinking that the rattlesnake didn’t do its job well enough.

The elevation of Mayhill is 6,578 feet, so I have another two thousand feet to ascend between here and Cloudcroft. Just west of town is the junction with New Mexico Route 130, which goes off to Pinon.

A few miles down the road in front of an abandoned restaurant I have a conversation with a young guy named T.J., who builds houses around here and restores old cars in his spare time. He looks uncannily like the actor Liev Schreiber, but with no front teeth. He lives in an old motor home with flat tires that’s set up right next to his shop. When I tell him about how I do the walk he says he noticed my motor home earlier today. It’s a good thing for me that people are respectful of the property of others.

I get waved over by an Otero County Deputy Sheriff, a guy of about forty. He wonders if I’m okay because some people saw me fifteen or so miles back and contacted him. Then he does his little cop routine where he tries to get as much personal information from me as possible, knowing he doesn’t have any legal basis to make me tell him anything. But I don’t mind giving him my driver’s license, and it’s better to cooperate with these guys as long as they're not trying to hassle you too much; after all he drives up and down the road all day, and I’ll probably see him again tomorrow. When he sees I have a Michigan license, he mentions that he used to visit his grandmother in Pontiac when he was a kid, that she worked at a big department store. “Hudson’s?” I ask. “Yeah, that’s it.” Turns out she worked at the Hudson's at the Pontiac Mall specializing in prosthetic bras for women who’d had mastectomies. So we have our small world moment, and he loosens up and figurs I'm probably harmless.

I see a sign for a Christadelphian camp. The Christadelphians, whose name means “brethren in Christ,” are a small sect that was started in the nineteenth century by an Englishman named John Thomas. They are “biblical unitarians,” which means they believe in God the Father, but not in the trinity. Jesus wasn't God the Son, just the son of God. They've also were conscientious objectors during the major wars in this country and in Britain and Europe. They’re scarce as hen’s teeth now, but they do have this camp up in the New Mexico mountains.

At about 18 miles I come to a place called Cloud Country. There’s a big gate out front and some mailboxes. I guess this is a housing development, although I can’t see any of the dwellings from here. I imagine it would be compelling to come up here in the summer, especially, when it’s 110 degrees down in Alamogordo.

With less than a mile to go I come my first New Mexico cemetery, next to the James Canyon Church, now called the Cowboy Church. Before going into the cemetery I peek in the window of the little one-room church. There’s a lectern in front and behind that a galvanized baptismal tank. Dunkers, not sprinklers. But I notice something on the floor. Little black dots of something. At first it looks like bird droppings, but then I see that it’s thousands of dead flies. All over everything in the church. Evidently the place hasn’t been used lately. T.J. told me that the flies were very bad this year because of a wet spring and summer. Looks like the Lord of the Flies has taken over the House of God.

I go into the cemetery for a few minutes to commune with the dead of James Canyon. It’s overgrown in places with tall grass and weeds, but a few areas have been tended. A mixture of Anglo names and Mexican names. Robert Garcia has a tractor trailer etched on his tombstone. I take a seat next to Pfc. Joe L. Mancillas, who was killed in 1943 in World War Two. There’s nothing like a little respite in a cemetery. So quiet. Across the street the sun is low over the tall trees, but it warms me.

On down the road, around a bend, the motor home comes into view. The map says this little area is the community of Wimsatt. It looks as if Wimsatt was named for G. Gordon Wimsatt, born in 1915, who came here with his parents in 1927. He learned to predict the weather from a guy who was half Apache by studying the changes in bear grease placed inside a scraped-out deer bladder. (You can’t make this stuff up, I swear.) Well, old G. Gordon got so good at it that he did better than meteorologists and other sages and often confounded people who scoffed at his predictions. Many times he'd predict major weather conditions that no one else did, so people finally came to rely on him. He had hundreds of containers of bear grease, and he experimented with other types of grease as well, including human grease taken from around a kidney that he got from a hospital. In 1985 he predicted a major earthquake around Mexico City. He got on Ripley's Believe It Or Not. He died in 1995 at the age of 80.

It’s going to be cold tonight. Already, since the sun went below the trees, the temperature has dropped five or ten degrees. It’s supposed to get down to the low 20s. But I’m going down to Alamogordo, in the desert.

Day 126: Uphill

Chaves County to Elk. 20.8 miles/2396.6 total

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

10:22 a.m. I’m getting a late start this morning because I spent a little too long over coffee with Diana Kie and her kids and then at the computer before finally setting out from mile 65 on US 82 in Chaves County heading west to Elk, a distance of 20.8 miles.

It’s another clear day with a strong breeze blowing at my back from the east. It’s in the high 50s and will probably get into the high 60s.

I spent a quiet night outside the home of my hosts Robert and Diana. Diana told me this morning that she puts up a hiker or cyclist about every two weeks. She's sort of an angel of good cheer on the road, offering meals and shelter to people whenever she sees them, mostly when she’s driving back and forth to her kids’ school, which is at least 15 miles from their house. It’s interesting that for as many hikers and bikers as there evidently are along here I haven’t seen any. I see cyclists maybe once a week, but the only time I’ve encountered another walker was in western Louisiana when I saw two within a couple of days of each other.

I’m trying to maintain a brisk pace, because I won’t get back to the motor home until nearly sunset. Today I will make it to those gentle brown hills that lie in front of me about ten miles distant.

The flora continue pretty much as before, with plenty of mesquite, chollas, prickly pears, a few yuccas, and here and there an agave, a light green succulent with wide thick thorny leaves. They make tequila from one type, but I don’t think it’s the one I’m seeing. Also, as the walk progresses, I begin to see a few short juniper and pinyon pine trees for the first time. There appears to be as great a variety of plants here as there is in any wooded area in the northeast; they’re just shorter, due to the lack of water.

The wind has stiffened and is blowing now from the northeast at about twenty miles an hour. At the intersection of US 82 and New Mexico Route 24 I reach a point of demarcation between the rolling fields of the past two days and the mountain foothills, and the road becomes steeper. Route 24 goes down to a place called Dunken, about which I could find no information.

Within a few miles of this intersection I’m straddling two sub-environments. On my left, south of the road and down about a hundred feet, flows a rapidly-moving shallow stream about twenty feet wide. This is the first body of water I’ve seen so far in New Mexico, I think. Along the stream grows a variety of tall deciduous trees—elms and aspens mostly, and the grass is closer to green than to the usual yellow-grey. On my right, across the road, rise sheer cliffs at the top and bottom of which grow prickly pears and other desert plants. A fascinating contrast.

Ahead of me the hills are rounded like pointed domes, dotted by rotund evergreen trees. I come upon several places where the grass and plants by the roadside have been burning very recently. The first area, blackened and still smoldering, is about an acre in size, but the next two are larger. The fourth, thirty or more acres, still has little fires burning here and there where bunches of dry sticks are gathered together. A half dozen firefighters are busy pumping and spreading water. Several miles back a state policeman stopped beside me to ask if I was okay and if I’d seen anything suspicious, telling me that these fires had been started deliberately. This all must have happened between the time I drove down the mountain in my car to the beginning of my walk, just a few hours ago. I did see several fire trucks, but that was about it. Anyway, the worst of it is over now. Conditions are extremely dry right now, and I can see how easily a fire can spread in these hills, especially with the wind as strong as it is.

At 9.6 miles I stop at a large roadside stand, the only commercial establishment on today’s walk. The sign says it’s run by Tom and Pam Runyan. In addition to selling fruit and jellies and honey and other such things, they have a petting zoo and a fishing pond behind the place, which I don’t visit. Petting zoos are just sneaky ways to get other people to pay to feed your livestock. Also, the Runyans advertise a “clean restroom.” But I don’t need that either. The world is my clean restroom.

On Diana’s advice I ask Tom Runyan, the old boy who runs the place, if there’s a safe spot near here where I can park the motor home overnight. He tells me I can park on Route 24, just off US 82, in a wide area in front of some land he owns. I thank him and buy a Diet Coke and promise to come back tomorrow and buy something else from him.

The elevation at Runyan’s, by the way, is about 5,400 feet, which means that I’ve climbed about 1,300 feet since I left Hope and 2,100 feet since Artesia. I'll get up to about 5,800 feet by the end of today. Still almost 3,000 feet more up to Cloudcroft. It must get a lot steeper. Tom also told me that these are the Sacramento Mountains I’m entering.

The road winds around, opening up new vistas with each sharp turn, until I get to about 15 miles, then it levels off somewhat. I’ve hit a bit of a plateau, although the elevation continues to rise gradually. This plateau continues until I’m almost through with the walk.

With about a mile and a half to go, the sun hangs low over the hilltops to my right. Twilight comes earlier in the mountains. According to the maps, I’ve just gone through the community of Elk, although I saw no sign for it. There have been farm and ranch houses along the way, but nothing I’d call a village. Nor have I seen any elk, for that matter. Just one good-sized doe running along the river. Right after the sign for the turnoff to Mule Canyon the motor home comes into view.

Day 125: Los Muertos

Hope to somewhere in Chaves County. 21.1 miles/2375.8 total

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

9:40 a.m. I walk out from the Hope Quick Stop, heading west on US 82 again for 21.1lonely miles, to a spot in front of a ranch somewhere in Chaves County.

Another cloudless day, with the temperature around 55, going up to the high 60s. At the moment the wind is blowing toward me from the west.

Today’s walk will be along the most sparsely inhabited stretch of road I’ve been on so far, with the possible exception of Borden County, Texas. There will be no towns or villages, and precious few intersections. Just hilly grasslands. And fairly light traffic. People do live and work around here—the cattle that graze along the fences must live somewhere—and I occasionally see houses set far back from the road, but there are times when I feel completely alone.

Lupe, at the Quick Stop, gave me a friendly send-off this morning when I went in to tell her I was leaving my car there for the day, telling me to be careful. And careful I will be.

Today is election day, and before I start getting pessimistic and critical I’ll share a little joke with you. A guy from the U.S. was talking to a Chinese guy, and he was challenging him a little on the state of democracy in the People’s Republic. He asked him, “So, how often do you have elections in China?” At first the Chinese guy looked puzzled, then suddenly he smiled. “Oh, elections! I wake up with an election evely morning!”

Appropriate story, because we’re all about to get screwed. Going into today they’re predicting that the GOP will take over the House of Representatives, but the Democrats should hold on to the Senate. The voters are “angry,” we’re told. Well, the Republicans have been angry ever since they lost in 2008, and they’ve got their well-oiled propaganda machine working overtime to convince the American public, stupid as ever, that the unemployment problem is somehow the fault of the current administration. I know people have short memories, but does everybody in this country have Alzheimer’s disease, for God’s sake? Isn’t this the same unemployment problem that got the Republicans thrown out of office two years ago? Old George Orwell would be scared shitless if he could see how completely his sinister vision has come to pass. The GOP and its corporate masters would have no trouble getting elected using the slogans “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” Especially the last one.

So next January we’ll probably have a House that will endeavor to dismantle the very few decent things the Obama administration has succeeded in doing in its tepid first two years. Well, as I always say, we get the government we deserve in this country. Reminds me of the lines in that song by Nine Inch Nails:

Bow down before the one you serve,
You’re going to get what you deserve.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this is also the Day of the Dead—el dia de los muertos. Unlike election day, it’s not a movable feast. Every November 1 and November 2, coinciding with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day in the Christian calendar, Mexicans and some Mexican-Americans remember their dead friends and relatives by building altars to them and leaving food and drink and other gifts for their souls at their graves. I heard several references to el dia de los muertos on the Spanish-speaking radio stations, but I couldn’t really tell what they were saying beyond that. This practice originated with the Aztecs, and maybe before that. Since all religions seek in some way to facilitate communication with the dead, either literally or by imagining that they know something about the afterlife, it’s no surprise that this ancient American tradition got seamlessly incorporated into Christianity.

I’ve been reading a little of the history of New Mexico from a 2007 copy of the New Mexico Blue Book I picked up in a store in Artesia last Saturday. I’m only up to about 1700, but a lot has happened already. I get the impression that the Spanish treated the native peoples—the Indians—a bit better than the English did in their part of the continent. At least at the official level they seemed committed to behaving decently. In 1504 Queen Isabella issued a decree that the Indians were not to be mistreated, and that they should be converted to Christianity. This echoed an edict from 1593 of Pope Alexander VI (who was a Spaniard of the Borgia family), in which he said the aboriginal peoples were to be Christianized and not harmed. Of course the Christianization part was a pretty stiff prerequisite, and I’m sure the Spanish didn’t hesitate to put the shits to any Indians who might have had the temerity to question the need to convert. More than anything (and I could be mistaken here) it seems as if the Spanish were not driven, in their dealings with the Indians, by a sense of racial superiority, as the English most certainly were. In fact, the great conquistador Hernando Cortez married the daughter of the Aztec king Montezuma, thus setting the standard for the mixing of Spanish and Indian blood that to this day characterizes the average Mexican mestizo. To be sure there is an insidious parallel tradition in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America to keep the ruling classes as white as possible. Still, the policy of marrying the Indians, as the Spanish did in Mexico, rather than simply annihilating them or putting them in concentration camps, as we did in the U.S., seems the more humane course. More on New Mexico history in future installments.

A couple of miles into the walk I come upon a small herd of cattle, and try a little Warren Zevon on them, but they’re having none of it. The problem is that I started with Hank Williams, and they turned tail and trotted away from the fence. I should have led with Warren.

The chief difference between the terrain of yesterday’s walk up from Artesia and this one is that it is more hilly than not today. On the road there’s plenty of up and down, with the uphill climbs being longer. Out in the fields there are lots of chollas and prickly pear cactuses, and not quite as many yuccas as yesterday. Many of the chollas are full of yellow fruits, and the ones that aren’t probably have green fruits that match the color of the branches. And of course the prickly pears have their red and purple bulb-like fruits.

I come across a dead porcupine. I wouldn’t have been able to identify it as such, it was so far gone, but for a few tufts of quills. I think this is the first porcupine I've seen on the trip.

Not long after, I see two black garbage bags full of rotting meat, maggots still busy on it, and next to them the skinned skull of a deer, its antlers cut off. Then a few miles down the road I come across a deer pelt recently removed from the animal, the inside still wet and pliable, and next to it one of the rather large front legs of a deer. From its size I think it might be a mule deer. It takes me a few minutes to put it all together, but I can see that someone killed the deer, skinned it rather skillfully, then took what meat they wanted and threw the rest out, including the head. But first they skinned the head and kept the ears and antlers, no doubt for purposes of creating a trophy mount. The only thing I can’t figure out is why they felt the need to put the meat they didn’t want into bags. Why not just leave it by the roadside to be eaten? At any rate I think I’ll count this as road kill. What the hell, it was killed, and it’s on the roadside.

At 6.6 miles I leave Eddy County and enter Chaves County, whose county seat is Roswell. Chaves Country was named for Jose Francisco Chaves. He was a prominent New Mexican who was born into privilege in 1833 in what was then the Mexican province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. He went to school in St. Louis and studied medicine in New York, then raised livestock in what had become the New Mexico Territory, and served eight terms as president of the Territorial Council. In the Civil War he enlisted as a major in the Union Army, and after the war served in the U.S. House of Representatives. After that he went back to New Mexico and occupied several posts in territorial government until being assassinated under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1904, at the age of 71.

All day I’ve been swatting at little red-eyed flies with striped bodies. They land on me and stay with me. The only good thing about it is that they’re fairly easy to kill with my bare hands, not having developed especially quick reflexes. They’re probably not used to being on humans and land mostly on cows. My success in killing flies makes me think of a kid I went to elementary school with named Roger Martin, who filled the ink bottle in his desk with flies he caught with his bare hands. While the rest of us were trying to learn Spanish from Senora Lopez or sitting with our heads down on our desks listening to Mrs. Baumgartner read from Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Roger was doing something productive. I wonder that happened to him. Maybe Ted or Jim knows.

I think this is the most serene area I’ve been in. So quiet and devoid of signs of human habitation, except of course for the barbed wire topped fences and the road itself. Maybe before the Spanish came this was a foot path used by the Apaches in their nomadic travels between here and what is now Texas.

At 9.4 miles, I rest at the entrance to Cuahape Ranch Road, to get off my feet for the first time today. I usually don’t sit for more than three or four minutes at a time. At about 14 miles the terrain becomes much more hilly and rolling. The road rises and falls. The wind has picked up speed and is now out of the north again.

While I’m sitting on a rock a woman pulls over to offer me a ride, and we get to talking and she invites me to come for dinner and park the motor home by her house tonight. I accept, and a little while later she drives by again with two kids in the back seat and asks me when I think I’ll be over. She lives near mile marker 77, which is about eight miles west of Hope. That sounds like a perfect place to spend the night.

Finally, at 21.1 miles, right in front of the entrance to the Muerto Springs Ranch, I reach the motor home.

After picking up the car I go to the house, which happens to be on Cuahape Ranch Road, right where I sat and rested earlier. I'm welcomed by Diana Kie and her husband Robert, who, I learn, are both Apaches. They have two charming children, Robert, 10, and Kathrine, who is 12. While the kids did their math homework I ate a great meal and had an interesting chat. Robert used to be a tribal policeman on the Mescalero Apache Reservation a few miles west of here, and Diana moved to the reservation from California. Robert now teaches at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia. They lived in Artesia for awhile, but didn't like the pollution from the refinery, so they moved out here to the country.

I wish to thank them for their very kind hospitality and for their company this evening.

Day 124: Village of the Zombies

Artesia to Hope. 20.1 miles/2354.7 total

Monday, November 1, 2010

9:45 a.m. I depart from the Walmart parking lot in Artesia, heading 20.1 miles west on US 82 to the village of Hope.

This morning I parked the motor home at the Hope Quick Stop on the far side of town, after asking the proprietor for permission. I sometimes take this precaution with the motor home since it’s so intrusive a presence, and it gives me a chance to chat with someone. On the few occasions when I’ve gotten into trouble for parking it’s been because of the car. Several times I’ve returned to the car and found notes on the windshield saying not to park in that spot, and once in Missouri someone wrote on one of the side windows in soap, “This is not a parking lot.” Then there was the infamous incident in Jackson, Mississippi, when the owner of a business called the cops to have my car towed, but the cop called my nephew because the car was registered to someone with the same name as his, and he intervened on my behalf. But never once has anyone said anything about the motor home. I think I know why. Ordinarily, wherever the motor home is parked is where the car will be the next day. People have already tolerated the presence of an out-of-state vehicle for one day, but by the second day they’re ready to take action (although in Jackson I had not parked the motor home where I parked the car). Well, today the car is safe at Walmart, and later I’ll get permission to park the car tomorrow at the Quick mart.

It’s probably ten degrees cooler today than yesterday. It’s in the 50s now and I doubt if it will get over 70. The sky is covered with high cirrus clouds again, but it looks like they’ll blow over soon.

Today I begin the ascent that will take me from 3,380 feet here in Artesia to 8,668 feet in Cloudcroft. The trip up the mountainside will take four days. The climb will be quite gradual today and tomorrow and steeper on the other two days. Then the descent from Cloudcroft to Alamogordo will be rapid, going back down to 4,526 feet in about fifteen miles. Roadside signs warn trucks of 6% grades on the other side of the mountain. I’m not sure how the cell phone or internet reception will be after tonight, and some of my dispatches may be delayed until I get into the city.

I pass the large white Artesia water tower, boasting of the many high school sports championships the Artesia Bulldogs have won. Most of them were in football, but there are a few for basketball and track and one for golf, even. It doesn’t say whether these are regional or state championships. I can’t help wondering if they use any alien ringers on their teams.

Within five miles I’m out in the country. Across the yellow grasslands everywhere the plant that is beginning to predominate is yucca. It consists of an array of spiky sharp thin green and white leaves, about 18 inches long and a half inch wide, terminating in needle-like points. The overall impression is reminiscent of Ron Wood’s hair. These bunches of leaves sometimes sit atop a thick trunk covered with old brown dried-up leaves. Up out of the leaves grow straight branch-like shoots, three or four feet long and a half inch to an inch in diameter, which produce bunches of white flowers in the spring and summer, and which are now dried up and contain only a few seed pods. An interesting and complicated-looking plant. In addition to the yuccas the fields are dotted with mesquite bushes and the occasional cholla cactus.

A mile or more to the north someone is shooting automatic weapons. I hear rapid burping bursts of machine gun fire. Maybe there’s a shooting range or a military installation on the other side of the low hill. Or maybe it’s just some Second Amendment lover shooting for the sheer joy of it. After another mile the sound of the gun fades away and is replaced by that of a chain saw and then silence.

I pass a beautiful large new house about a quarter of a mile back. On either side of the gate at the road are concrete heads modeled after the Easter Island statues, and along the driveway on both sides they’ve put huge rough-cut stone steles four or five feet high. It makes for an interesting view down the drive.

People here in New Mexico have been quite generous with their offers of rides. Each day I get at least three. Just now a guy offers to drive me into Hope, and after I decline and thank him I happen to look down at the pavement and see a bunch of discarded pennies, sixteen of them in all. That brings my take in change up to almost a dollar so far.

At 12.5 miles I’m still surrounded by vast flat or rolling grasslands in all directions. It’s only when I look behind me that I’m aware of how far uphill I’ve gone. When I look back into the haze I can vaguely see the valley where Artesia lies. It’s amazing to think of how many millions of acres—indeed, millions of square miles—of this country look just about like this: yellow-brown grass dotted with shrubs and other small plants. Practically half the country rolls out just about the way it does here, from the middle of the Dakotas down to Texas, and across to the Pacific, excepting only the coastal northwest. That’s a lot of wide open spaces.

In the absence of dead mammals I turn my attention to a more plentiful form of animal life, the grasshoppers. The black ones with the orange and black wings are just about gone now, with many lying dead or dying. Occasionally I see larger grasshoppers, fat and tan and scaly with blunt tails and no wings, eating the black ones. But even most of these big guys seem to by dying off, their fat butter-colored bellies exposed to the sun. I’m aware that some of the different sized grasshoppers may be stages of the same species, but I know the black ones and the big fat yellow ones are different.

At about 14 miles I cross a dry river bed called Eagle Draw. I was at the Eagle Draw City Park in Artesia yesterday, at the free municipal RV dump site, so I think Eagle Draw must run down from here into the city. I believe this is what they call an arroyo here in the west.

I come upon a deer skeleton, or more accurately a scattered, bleached, chewed-up collection of bones that I identify as a deer skeleton based on a piece of mandible that happens to remain. The skull is gone, probably carried off. Since I’ve had so little road kill so far I’m going to count this. Deer number one.

At 17.6 miles I enter the Village of Hope, elevation 4,085 feet. That means I’ve gone up about 700 feet on today’s walk. The wind is now blowing stiffly out of the north as I head toward the center of town, still a mile and a half away. Hope has arrogated to itself quite a bit of municipal land, most of it vacant. As of 2000, the population was 107. Wikipedia doesn’t have much to say about Hope other than the fact that it became somewhat known because a novel called World War Z, written by Max Brooks, was set there. It was where a group of humans successfully fought the zombie horde. So I guess it’s safe for me to approach now.

There’s a story about how Hope got its name. Two settlers tossed a dime into the air and one said, “I hope you lose.”

At 19 miles the speed limit goes down to 40 and I see the first real trees I’ve seen on today’s walk, some pines and a collection of elms, and also several I think are mountain ash trees, with compound leaves growing alternately about 15 to a stem.

I pass a little convenience store called Hope Store and next to it a defunct antique store with several rusty farm implements out front. Across the street from that there’s a little park with about a dozen benches and four picnic tables. Down one side street is the Methodist Church and down another is the Church of Christ. Take your pick.

After a short rest on one of the picnic tables I resume walking, on a brand new wide sidewalk. In fact, this is a hell of a nice sidewalk for such a dinky place. It even has wide handicapped ramps at all the intersections. As much of a fan of urban infrastructure as I am, I’m having trouble seeing how this is going to get enough use to justify its cost. The same thing goes for that little park. You could fit the whole village into it with room to spare. I don’t see anyone else outside. Maybe the zombies got them all.

I pass the fire station and the post office and in a few blocks I reach the Hope Quick Stop and the motor home. But first I spend a few minutes talking to the proprietor, a pleasant woman named Lupe who’s from Artesia originally, but has been up here since she got married 27 years ago. I told her Hope had some pretty fancy sidewalks for such a small town, and she responded enthusiastically, saying "lots of people" walk on them and the kids ride their bikes on them, too. Wonder where they all are now? Lupe also said that last year when they were putting them in they let her write her name on the sidewalk next to the store. She’s quite proud of that.

I got her permission to park the car here tomorrow, then told her my story. Like many people she wanted to know if I was walking for some cause. I always get a tiny bit apologetic when I tell them "No, I'm just doing it," even though I don't care at all for the idea of embarking on random quests in support of disease cures. If it's a good cause, just give the money--who cares if someone hops around the world on a pogo stick, for Christ's sake? On the other hand, imagine how much money I might have raised so far if I just had a cause. But no, I rebelled against the idea of using the walk for that purpose. I guess that makes me just a . . . .