A few days after stepping off the plane in Newark, my blog post covering Texas and New Mexico half-drafted, I was out on a bike ride, having fun, training for Kentucky, when my phone piped up from inside my jersey, yelling “Emergency call!” Emergency call!”
Well, that was alarming. I thought it was some kind of intervention by my cell phone carrier to get me to answer the phone, because there was a true family emergency…
I careened to a stop and wrested the phone from my shirt. I couldn’t get it to work at all. It seemed to be trying to revert to original settings. I begged it not to.
It said, “Portrait. Landscape. Back Button. Home.”
For sure, I agreed it would be best to get home.
I tried to turn it off.
It said, “Off button.”
I said, “I know. just do it.”
But it refused.
I hustled home, then went to the Verizon store. They diagnosed Blind Mode, when a phone decides that its owner is blind. My vision is not that good, but blind may be pushing it a bit.
I bought a new phone which promised to trust my eyesight.. But the Young Frankenstein procedure, in which the two phones, Old and New, lie on adjoining gurneys and the brains are transferred from Old to New, didn’t go quite as hoped. Brain transfer yielded only 1452 pictures. The rest were nowhere. Not the Cloud, nowhere. My phone ate them, and I had been ignoring warnings that my Cloud was full. Everyone knows that when clouds are full, they rain.
Since the operation failed, I have retrieved a few of my favorite shots from Facebook and from among photos I had emailed to family, and I am thankful for 50inthefifties, which survived.
But…Photos of my dad. ..My daughter’s graduation… I have a few; I lost a lot. All of 2016, in fact.
It’s my own damn fault. What a fool. With time, I have accepted this, but it was a shocking loss on the day.
There are so many worse things. Moving on. Making memories, taking photos, not beating myself up over it.
I’ll make better choices next time. I guess I should have known when the phone started taking pictures on its own from inside my cycling shirt that something was amiss…
Hiking: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM, White Sands National Monument, NM, and sundry adventures
The prospect of getting on a plane alone and traveling solo makes me nervous, so I know I have to push myself and get over my fear. This spring, I had the perfect opportunity to do so. I looked at my trusty ginormous map of the USA, and I saw two national parks in close proximity to one another yet in two separate states, Texas and New Mexico. El Paso, nestled up on the Rio Grande, was the nearest city, and with a burgeoning interest in and concern for Mexican immigrants, I thought it was high time I high-tailed it down there and checked out our southern border before our toddler-in-chief built his block wall so high that I couldn’t see the other side. So I got me some flights, a car, and an air bnb in Carlsbad for a couple nights. I felt a Texas twang creeping into my conversations with myself.
Everything went swimmingly on the front end. I had my book, Mexicans in the Making of America. I flew into El Paso by way of Houston, snagged my little rental car just north of town, and easily found the Candlewood Suites. My room was more like an apartment, full kitchen, stainless appliances, and a really comfy bed. Feeling organized and intelligent, I thought ahead to the final night of my trip, which would see me back in town. Liking what I saw, I went to the front desk and made a reservation for the last night of my quest on the first. Clever world traveler, me.
A quick change of clothes, and I ventured out for some Mexican food at a place called Kiki’s, which boasted a friendly, family vibe, pictures of Little Leaguers and pro ballers on the walls. Next, I wended my way up the scenic drive to a lookout over El Paso, a city tucked away in a vast valley between mountains and the river. It was impossible to see the river. Cuidad Juarez, Mexico blended in seamlessly with El Paso. The border appeared conjured from air, yet increasingly, it is impenetrable. Remember, Texas was Mexico until 1848. As a Mexican historian once said, “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”
I watched the sun slip behind the western peaks, some surely Mexican, some American, but all together.
The next morning, I was on the road by 6 am, the desert cloaked in darkness. Just as the sun was inching its way to a sun-sized break in the toothy mountain range to the east, I had my first ever encounter with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I was funneled into a huge permanent roadblock with high ceilings and multiple lanes. Since I was the only car heading east on this deserted stretch of desert road, I had everyone’s attention. I rolled my window down.
“Hello, sir.. Oh, sorry, MA’AM. I saw your ball cap, thought you were… Are you a United States citizen?”
“Yes.”
“Alone in the car?”
“Yes.”
He was glancing into the corners of my tiny Chevolet, even contemplating whether it would be possible for someone to have curled up in the trunk. He waved me on, wished me a nice day. I suspect that if my skin were a few shades darker, I would have been asked to step out of the car and produce papers.
Looking out at the desert, flat, treeless, waterless, intersected only by barbed wire fences for cattle, not roads, it was impossible to imagine how anyone could survive out there, and if he did, how he would evade capture. How desperate would a mother, a father, a child, have to be to set out on that journey?
For those fortunate enough to have a car, pale skin, and citizenship, getting around in West Texas is a snap. The roads are long but straight, and there is no traffic. I covered the one hundred miles from El Paso with only the glare of the sun as an obstacle, thus earning my first glimpse of El Capitan, the westernmost peak of the Guadalupe Mountains. This range is actually a coral reef pushed up eons ago out of an inland sea. Incredible.
I made a left into the inauspicious entrance to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The smaller parks are no less impressive and enjoyable than the Yosemites and the Grand Canyons, but they don’t call much attention to themselves. Most of the signs along route 64 marked the distance to the more famous Carlsbad Caverns. It’s ok with me if most people give this park a pass. No crowds.
First stop: the campground. Because there are no advance reservations, I wanted to be sure to get a spot. I planned to adjust to the mile- high elevation with an easy hike on this day, and spend the night in my trusty car. The following morning, I planned to summit the highest mountain in Texas, Guadalupe Peak. Planned, planned, blah, blah.
Yeah, right. After experiencing a moment’s panic because the campground was FULL, I decided to take a chance and speak with the campground manager. Friendly and super helpful, she gave me some instructions for paying for a parking place, then said she was off duty that day but was going to work anyway, making sure all the people in the campground knew to expect 70 mph winds that night. She said motor homes would be shifted several feet overnight. She was the first of many people that day to tell me that camping wouldn’t be fun. Furthermore, hiking the high peak would be unfun, if not impossible, the following day. No way to escape the wind. A miserable experience awaited me.
Thinking quickly, I trotted up to a flock of young people heading for the trailhead.
Hey. What trail are you guys doing?
The Peak.
Can I hike with you?
Well, we will be going slow…. We are from the University of Colorado.
And I’m thinking, true, but you are also less than half my age. We could have a match here…
Then their leader started to go through his opening instructions, explaining how the tortoise beats the hare, every time. Despite my well documented summit fever, I could sense how inappropriate it would be for me to join them. Plus, I wasn’t acclimated to altitude, and it was getting late to set out on a summit push.
Still, it was a beauteous morning, calm and free. (I stole that line from William Wordsworth, whose words are always worth remembering.) I laced my boots a bit tighter and chose a trail: Devil’s Wall. Three or four miles, up a wash to its end, and then a boulder scramble to a fabulous slot canyon, canyons wrens flitting about, a tiny water seep filled with bees, flies, butterflies.
Afterwards, I spotted a kingbird in the campground. West Texas is a birding hotspot, and I hoped to catch sight of a few life birds, so I lugged my binoculars on every hike. Thing is, birds are not very cooperative. The times I find my ‘bins’ useful are far outnumbered by the times they just add to the weight of my pack. Hope springs eternal…
Invigorated by my first hike and first bird, I stopped off at the visitor center and learned that the best birding in the park is at McKittrick Canyon, a few miles down the road, but my chances of success there would be better in the early morning, not mid day. I set off right from the center on a short hike to see the ruins of a Butterfield stagecoach stop. The Butterfield stage predated even the Pony Express. Butterfield, Pony Express, railroads, telegraph, one followed the other in the drive to open communication and settlement across the West- once we had won it from Mexico, stuck the Native American’s onto reservations, and barged our way in.
Butterfield Stage ruins, the ubiquitous El Capitan looking more stately this time…
Bursting with energy and enjoying the warm sun after leaving snowy New Jersey behind, I wandered over to the Frijole Ranch, a century old stone house. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Smith family set their homestead by a spring, the wellhead of all desert life. They built a gorgeous home, still habitable today, and once they had a sturdy roof over their heads, they fashioned a generator, set up indoor plumbing, hired a teacher, grew an orchard full of fruit, and dammed the Frijole spring to create a swimming hole. Our ancestors were so ingenious!
Though the wind outside was starting to howl, when I stepped in the door, I was enveloped in quiet. A steers skull graced the mantle over the whitewashed fireplace, and comfortable chairs fashioned of deadwood and covered with ticking lined the walls. I felt teleported to the 1860s. Next I wandered the yard and visited the guesthouse and the springhouse.
That afternoon, I took another 3 mile hike to see the Smith Spring, upslope. By the time I got halfway round the loop, the visibility was dropping as the wind pulled sand and soil up in to the air. I figured I would be confined to my car cum bed for the whole night, but wait…
Buzz, said my phone. It was my Air BNB hosts.
“Where are you staying tonight?”
“I’m camping in my car.”
“Well, you’re paying for two nights already. You could stay with us tonight for FREE.”
“Seriously? Because I am hearing there will be dangerous winds tonight.”
“It’s up to you, but camping would be more fun without the wind.”
Who gives away a free night? I would have thought, no one. I would have been wrong.
The fifty mile drive flew by in low visibility, the sun occluded by sand, the tumbleweeds a blowin’. Everything was grey. The brightest light came from the flame of an off-gassing oil field, blown sideways by the gale. I parked behind the house and blew in the front door when Nick opened it.
I drove the short distance to the Red Chimney Barbecue, where I had to wait five minutes for a table. Just five minutes. The hostess brought me a tall glass of water with lemon so I could drink it while I waited. I was stunned by the wind, but blown away by the kindness of the people of Carlsbad. Over brisket and potato salad, I made alternate plans for the morrow. I would retreat underground, to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The Caverns are about twenty miles from Carlsbad town. (Carlsbad itself is a struggling industrial town, which sits forlorn, like a less favored child, in the shadow of the resplendent Caverns.)
The air this day was clear, but the wind persisted, and when I arrived at the visitors’ center, I felt compelled to turn the car around to keep the door from blowing open too far and hyperextending itself like my knees sometimes do. I boogied inside out of the wind and was able to score a ticket to a ranger- led tour of the King’s Palace. Then I headed to the Natural Entrance to begin my trek down 75 storeys to the largest single room in known cavedom, the aptly named Big Room.
The Natural Entrance was “discovered” in 1898 by a sixteen year old cowpoke on horseback. He saw what he thought was a black plume of smoke rising from the desert and feared wildfire. But it wasn’t smoke. It was bats. Millions upon millions of them. April to August, they still exit the cave every night at dusk. I’m sure that’s a show worth watching. I ambled my way down, past the ramp to the Bat Cave, and arrived in the Big Room, complete with flush toilets and a restaurant. Thanks, National Park Service. Especially for the restrooms.
The perimeter trail to the Big Room is 1.2 miles. Eight hundred feet Under the Ground. I saw stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, soda straws, and popcorn. Sounds like I was in a movie theater, but these are cave formations formed by dripping water. They are astounding.
There is a rock called the iceberg rock, which fell off the ceiling of one of the passages down to the Big Room. There are stalactites on it which protrude at an angle, not straight down. These are not active formations anymore, and geologists were able to determine when they stopped growing- 515 million years ago. So they know that the iceberg rock fell 515 million years ago. Give or take a few million.
Iceberg Rock
Caves are great for letting us know how insignificant we humans are in the span of time. And they deserve the present tense, because they are timeless, their past and future infinite. Imagine yourself exploring this cave via the rickety old ladders the first tourists used, before the paved paths and lights. Splurge on a ranger tour. You get to see areas otherwise off limits, and you get to see and hear Nothing. The rangers turn off the lights, and you experience total darkness and silence broken only by the drip, drip of the cave, doing its own interior decorating one droplet at a time. When the lights are off, if you pass your hand in front of your face, your brain will create an image of your hand passing in front of your face. It cannot comprehend and accept the complete lack of light. Eerie.
I made two forays into the cave, one on my own and one with Ranger Dan. At the tail end of each, I challenged myself to double time hike back up the 800 foot vertical to the natural entrance. The first time, I was huffing and puffing a bit; the second was a breeze. The difference? On the first trek, I had water in my pack. Two and a half liters makes a huge difference in the effort required, but outside in the desert, you need to carry at least that for a day hike. In the cave, not so much. But I was mindful that I was in New Mexico seeking physical challenges, and I needed to do some work.
In between my spelunks, I hiked about five miles above ground on the Old Guano Road. Guano is a euphemism for bat shit. The road was a means by which enterprising fertilizer salesmen could get the bats’ waste product to market. It’s loaded with soil- enhancing minerals and what not. The desert lacks much organic material. The cave was a treasure trove for these folks, and they blasted a new entrance just to lower buckets in, fill them with crap, and drag them up. When the work day was done, tourists would ride up and down into the cave in those same guano buckets.
Bat shit crazy. That phrase played in my mind as I hiked the old road and made my way towards the edge of the high desert and the drop into the flats at White’s City. I also thought about my Mennonite host back in Carlsbad, and thought about religion as it applies to my life. I am not an organized religion person. My philosophy for life is “Treat others as you yourself would like to be treated.” I feel that is all I need. But I do think I’m spiritual. Like Wordsworth, I find religious ecstasy in nature. The wildflowers were just starting to bloom in that area of the Chihuahuan Desert, and I saw tiny blooms in red, yellow, orange, white, and blue. These flowers are as tough and resilient as the immigrants and refugees who risk everything to seek a better life for their families.
After my tour with Ranger Dan, I decided to go home to Carlsbad. I was already thinking of my Air BNB as home. I could have stayed a couple more hours and watched the bat flight, but there were only 50-100,000 Mexican bats that had migrated to the cave thus far this season. A mere shadow of their potential wow. And, I had an offer from Nick and Rhonda to go with them to Roswell, only 150 miles, round trip, to see a local theater production of The Music Man. I didn’t want to pass up the chance to get to know them better. By the time I got back, Nick had packed sandwiches and Oreos and bananas for all of us. New Mexico folk. Good people.
Well, two 75 mile car rides and a play certainly provided us with plenty of space to get to know one another. We talked about religion, kids, physical therapy, nursing homes, hospice, family, divorce, Oreos, culture, politics, New Mexico, old Mexico, the East coast, mental health, the affordable care act, Medicare, and our sweet tooths. At intermission, I found myself unable to rise completely from my seat in a fluid motion, my knees seizing up with rust from the day’s exertions. Nick was bummed. He was counting on me driving home…
The only low point of the excursion was the moment on the ride home when Nick exclaimed, “Rabbit!” And then we heard the thump thump of the tires over Thumper.
To fill the ensuing silence, I said the first thing that popped into my mind.
“Dagnabbit!”
Nick asked me if Dagnabbit was a New Jersey thing. I assured him that it was not. That was worth a good chuckle, and soon after, we arrived back at home and trundled under our respective covers. Guadalupe Peak beckoned in the morning.
My summit push to bag Texas started about 8:20 am. The winds were light, the skies clear, my decision to wait wise. I logged in for the Guadalupe Peak hike. There were other hikers making a start at about the same time. I had the requisite water weight, 2 liters worth, the only kind a woman likes to carry. I had power bars, hiking poles, a whistle, a windshirt, a sweatshirt, sunscreen, a cell phone, and the car keys. Mustn’t lose the car keys.
There were three peaks to climb to reach the top of Guadalupe Peak, 3500 feet of elevation gain in 4.2 miles. The first peak was the hardest. Much of it was steps. Up Up Up. They tended to be big steps too, higher than was comfortable for my knees and quads. I wasn’t alone in that; the outline of other’s feet skirting to the sides of the steps and edging around them offered proof. I was pouring sweat and stopped to remove the windshirt, which was functioning more as a wetsuit. After a particularly harsh set of switchbacks and a cliff to skirt, I rounded a bend and caught the first glimpse of my ultimate goal. I was more comfortable on trail and moving than I had been trying to get out of a chair at the play the night before.
The second summit was a cool, woodsy surprise. High up in the mountains, a relict from earlier climates and times, exists a pine and fir forest. Mountain chickadees and warblers cavorted in the treetops, and the pines shaded the trail and made the gradual climb seem effortless, well almost! I picked up my usual rhythm and paced my steps by whispering the words to the opening number of Hamilton: The Musical. Two hours in, on schedule, my stomach started to growl. I stopped and sat on a boulder for 10 minutes. I was at the summit of peak two, perhaps 30 to 45 minutes to go, according to a couple who were descending.
The Peak trail was well laid out. There were two exposed faces that caused me to use my hands on the inside wall rather than poles. I thought about what it would be like to be up there with 70 mph gusts buffeting me without warning. I don’t think I would have made the summit. On this day, though, I pushed past those nerves and arrived on Top O Texas, 8751 feet at 11 am on March 25, 2017.
The back side of El Capitan from Guadalupe Peak summit
I signed the logbook, which is located in a heavy metal box, and added my website, 50inthefifties.com. The monument put me in mind of the book I read immediately before making the trip: The Inventor and the Tycoon, by Edward Ball. It tells the story of Leland Stanford, who funded Stanford University and the transcontinental railroad, and Eadweard Muybridge, the photographer he hired to document the movement of his racehorses. This was the beginning of the motion picture industry, later more fully developed by Thomas Edison.
Long story short, Muybridge discovered that a racehorse does indeed have all four feet off the ground for an instant in each galloping stride. But when that happens, the legs are curled together under its body, not apart, like on this monument and in all early paintings and prints of racehorses.
Not to be a bore, but I really love it when my physical and intellectual lives converge as they did on top of Guadalupe Peak. Not only the issue of racing horses, but also the Butterfield stagecoach, the Pony Express, the railroads, the annexation of Texas, all coalesced in a single point on a clear day as I stood, clear headed, at the top of my game. I sat, briefly, willing myself to savor the moment, and when I looked at my rock perch, I saw fossils, thousands of them, caught in the coral of that ancient sea. The sweeping views hundreds of square miles wide surrounded me, and my feet tread on the evidence of life ages past. Full circle. Fulfillment.
Just before 12 noon, I pointed my boots downslope. Halfway down, I locked eyes with a woman just about my age and stage of life, the first I had seen on the trail. I was heading down, she up. While we didn’t say a word, much passed between us as our bodies passed each other. Connection.
On my final day in New Mexico, I woke to Nick’s generous offer of breakfast. Over eggs and sausage, he invited me to church, too. But I was eager to get on the road. I was going to take a new route and wend my way northwest to White Sands National Monument.
As Nick and Rhonda promised, the drive through the mountains was beautiful. I was utterly alone on the road. Climbing, climbing, skirting the southern edge of an Indian reservation, I entered the Lincoln National Forest. I stopped at a small picnic area to use the bathroom, and I noticed that there was an area that had recently burned. I don’t know if it was intentional or not. There were birds flitting about looking for seeds on the blackened earth. I saw two life birds: a spotted towhee and a flock of grey-headed juncos.
Next stop was just past the town of Cloudcover at the high point of the mountain pass. A two mile hike promised superb elevated views of the White Sands, and it did not disappoint. I marveled at a grove of enormous douglas fir trees, stretched my legs, then drove my little blue car to White Sands.
That’s not cloudcover in Cloudcover. It’s WhiteSands!
I was able to squeeze in two hikes at the monument. I learned just how disorienting it is to wander among the dunes. Right away I could sense that I could easily get lost, so I started to drag my hiking pole to make my footprints distinctive among the very few other sets that were out there.
Most people at White Sands bring sleds which they lug up the dunes but never seem to slide down upon. Instead, they sit in groups at the top and talk and picnic the day away. For those who want to be more active, there is one signature hike, Alkali Flats. It is clearly marked with red poles. Deviate from this path even a bit, and you better have your bearings about you. I saw a tree that was perhaps 100 yards off path, and even with careful planning, I had to retrace my steps twice to get myself back on course from my turnaround point. And just as many photographers were arriving for sunset, I returned to the trailhead and started the car. I wanted to get back to El Paso before dark.
I crossed two valleys and climbed two more mountain passes on the way in. The landscape is forbidding but beautiful, although as I re-approached the urban areas, an ugliness presented itself that will stick with me forever. There was a feedlot that stretched for perhaps two miles along the right hand side of the road. Young cows stood by the hundreds, in barren squares of soil and bovine waste. Not a single blade of grass poked through, not a solitary weed. To eat, the cattle must stick their necks through bars and feed on hay that lines a depression on the other side of the fence. And though this day was cool, there were no shelters from the relentless sun, no sheds. When summer temperatures rise above 100 degrees, doomed animals will still be standing aimlessly on the wasteland, awaiting the day of their deaths. Sad and sobered, I resolved to push my diet further into vegetarian. I don’t eat much meat now, was vegan for a time, and haunted by this enduring image, I am happy to be veggie, and to choose meats and eggs from small local farms.
Back at Candlewood Suites, I showered and repacked my bags, managing to lay things out so carefully that I left my water pack behind the bathroom door, and left it behind the next morning, too. I nearly had a car accident on the way to the airport as I got stuck in cognitive dissonance between the gps and the actual situation on the road. I had trouble finding gas to refill the rental car, and I am pretty sure I was heading the wrong way on a one way street as I pulled out of the gas station. This time, I let my gut guide me and peeled out in front of all other traffic to get clear of the situation. That worked out great, but I felt airheaded and spacey. I was relieved to be at the airport. My return to traffic and civilization didn’t go nearly as well as my foray into the wilderness. My strengths lie in the backcountry.
Give me a trail and a hill to climb.
That’s how I choose to spend my time.
(Sorry for the paucity of photos and a huge thank you to the National Park Service website for providing all my Carlsbad shots. See my next blog for an explanation!)
