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  • Knife Edge of the Black Range

    Knife Edge of the Black Range

    Cuchillo, Winston, Chloride, New Mexico

    Literally, and as metaphor, the road to the edge of the Black mountains holds messages about truths and consequences. I ventured westward on a picnic to scout camp sites, and to try and forget about the larger world. No luck on either.

    This Gila region was Apache country until it became mining and ranching country. That history is a brutal and slippery one. “Black Range Tales,” first published in 1936, by James McKenna, contains wonderful woodcuts and interesting tales, especially those about the Apache.

    It was too cold to camp. That December Chaco Canyon trip quelled my appetite for winter camping – for now. So it was two nights at Ted Turner’s Sierra Grande in T or C where I was delightfully comfortable and warm in the room and in the water.

    They call it Truth or Consequences, New Mexico but its renaming from “Hot Springs” had nothing to do with any prophetic political insight, then or now. It was a game show contest, which makes far less sense unless you get meta and figure this is all a game show. Sometimes I wonder.

    The highway west from T or C to Winston and Chloride, NM 52, is crazy. Crazy beautiful in its passage through the sharp knives of Sierra Cuchillo (meaning knife) toward the Black Range. It’s not unlike the route to Kingston and Hillsboro, except 52 doesn’t pierce the mountains but curves north toward the San Mateos. It’s crazy fun to drive and crazily driven. Trucks, pickups mostly, pulling stock trailers, atv trailers, equipment trailers, or nothing at all, confidently speed to and from Truth or Consequences. Probably for gas. Or Walmart. Or more cows.

    There are a lot of cows, but no grass. It is plainly evident that this is because of the cows, as everywhere the cows aren’t, there is grass.

    The good roads end at mines or houses and every road that crosses a drainage channel is a recent flood zone cleared by bulldozers. They’re apparently busy after every storm keeping isolated places from being isolated. To say those drainages look denuded and highly eroded is a fierce understatement.

    Back to that road metaphor. The truth is you have to believe the road signs that warn you. Trusted sources (sometimes highway engineers) know what’s up – truths about what’s ahead right there in bright yellow. But, as we see, truth can be denied. People can deceive themselves into making stupid and reckless decisions, or apologizing for the lawlessness of others.

    There’s such a long history here. So much went on before the mines and the cows. Even before the Apaches. So it is good to take a long view as long as you live in the present. Soak it all in. Enjoy truth, consequences, and hot springs.

    Never limit cows.

    Don’t try to check the storm flows.

    You’ll need a bigger dozer.

  • Knife Edge of the Black Range

    Knife Edge of the Black Range

    Cuchillo, Winston, Chloride, New Mexico

    Literally, and as metaphor, the road to the edge of the Black mountains holds messages about truths and consequences. I ventured westward on a picnic to scout camp sites, and to try and forget about the larger world. No luck on either.

    This Gila region was Apache country until it became mining and ranching country. That history is a brutal and slippery one. “Black Range Tales,” first published in 1936, by James McKenna, contains wonderful woodcuts and interesting tales, especially those about the Apache.

    It was too cold to camp. That December Chaco Canyon trip quelled my appetite for winter camping – for now. So it was two nights at Ted Turner’s Sierra Grande in T or C where I was delightfully comfortable and warm in the room and in the water.

    They call it Truth or Consequences, New Mexico but its renaming from “Hot Springs” had nothing to do with any prophetic political insight, then or now. It was a game show contest, which makes far less sense unless you get meta and figure this is all a game show. Sometimes I wonder.

    The highway west from T or C to Winston and Chloride, NM 52, is crazy. Crazy beautiful in its passage through the sharp knives of Sierra Cuchillo (meaning knife) toward the Black Range. It’s not unlike the route to Kingston and Hillsboro, except 52 doesn’t pierce the mountains but curves north toward the San Mateos. It’s crazy fun to drive and crazily driven. Trucks, pickups mostly, pulling stock trailers, atv trailers, equipment trailers, or nothing at all, confidently speed to and from Truth or Consequences. Probably for gas. Or Walmart. Or more cows.

    There are a lot of cows, but no grass. It is plainly evident that this is because of the cows, as everywhere the cows aren’t, there is grass.

    The good roads end at mines or houses and every road that crosses a drainage channel is a recent flood zone cleared by bulldozers. They’re apparently busy after every storm keeping isolated places from being isolated. To say those drainages look denuded and highly eroded is a fierce understatement.

    Back to that road metaphor. The truth is you have to believe the road signs that warn you. Trusted sources (sometimes highway engineers) know what’s up – truths about what’s ahead right there in bright yellow. But, as we see, truth can be denied. People can deceive themselves into making stupid and reckless decisions, or apologizing for the lawlessness of others.

    There’s such a long history here. So much went on before the mines and the cows. Even before the Apaches. So it is good to take a long view as long as you live in the present. Soak it all in. Enjoy truth, consequences, and hot springs.

    Never limit cows.

    Don’t try to check the storm flows.

    You’ll need a bigger dozer.

  • Chaco Canyon and the Chaco Culture National Historic Park

    Winter Camp Mid-December 2025

    I’m fortunate there wasn’t much wind. Setting up the new tent was no more difficult than it had been in my yard. It wasn’t much easier either. I had the poles in and was deciding which of the multiple openings was intended to be the entrance. I was rotating the unstaked tent this way and that when I heard a clucking and tsking. I looked around half expecting to see someone and briefly imagining the spirit of my sister criticizing the present alignment. As I scanned the cliff face, a brief gust lifted the tent up and rolled it back down, the main door facing east. I staked it where it settled.

    A raven flew over a couple of times. A pair of them flew in and out of the dark holes in the sandstone that look like so many black eyes. They fly right into the holes and disappear. They watch everything.

    My father would have been 106 and it was with him that I last visited the canyon. The entrance was different and the road wasn’t as good. It was winter then too but I don’t recall seeing so many elk. Or any elk at all.  

     It’s a long way to drive for just a day visit. But most people do so it’s very quiet in the mornings before they arrive.

    Alone? You’re going to be alone? 

    Not really. Have you seen Gallo Campground?

    I can’t stand outhouses.

    It has flush toilets in a heated building.

    What if something happened?

    I’d say “help.” I wouldn’t even have to yell. I could whisper it. That’s how close the spaces are. 

    The Chaco trip I’d planned for warmer October was cancelled by the government shut down. On reopening I reserved a site in the campground and began amassing equipment including a selection of “hot” tents. Several people told me that my new tent obsession puts me on a slippery slope to RVing. My response is to get another tent.

    I only have four now, not including those I’ve donated to make room in the shed for more. It’s sort of like Goldilocks trying beds. The first one would fit a small circus. It’s canvas and weighs over 50 pounds, I decided it’s more suitable for a two week glamping trip. The next is a “pop-up.” I was sent two of them. The first contained a used tent that I struggled to set up before noticing duct tape on a part. I pictured a desperate repair during a storm and decided not to chance using the new one. 

    The third tent I got solely because they called it “Coco Nest.” It is inexplicably weird and difficult. Enough said. 

    I settled on a version of a “Nature Hike” tent and drove to Chaco in the trusty Crosstrek with a tiny stove and enough wood for several Ancient Pueblo signal fires. A park ranger came around on the second morning and smiled at the huge pile of wood. “Staying warm?” 

    I also brought enough food for about a week and planned to cook and grill everything. I spent a lot of time looking for things I’d forgotten and struggling to do things in the dark. 

    The first night I didn’t sleep. At. All. The ground is a lot harder than I remember from camping thirty years ago.This was confirmed the next night. Sleep deprived and tired after hiking around ruins all day, I tripped and fell flat on my face. I remained there with my chin buried in the cold very hard ground for awhile assessing all my life choices. Especially that last one of not turning on my headlamp. Blood and bruises, nothing broken or chipped. No one in the campground saw this, though they might have heard a thump and groan. 

    Chaco’s campground is three hours from “civilization” but the spaces are about thirty feet apart. You can hear everything. Zippers, voices, coughing, rustling nylon. And it’s against a canyon wall that doubles percussive noises like car doors and amplifies whispers. Thankfully few people camp in December. But that night after nursing my wounds and finally getting to sleep, I woke to arrival of campers right next to me at 10PM. I listened to them struggling to set up their tent in the dark and almost felt sorry for them. They stayed in their tent all morning as I packed up. I tried not to make a lot of noise. But not too hard.

  • Big Mountain 2024

    Victorian Hotels in High Mountain Towns and a late summer drive to Tucson 

    My first concern is no hot shower. The phone is charged, which is good because otherwise I would have missed the notice on my weather appa bout a “Regional Planned Emergency Power Outage.” That’s the wording.  As a former city planner I’m especially amused by the oxymoronic term, ‘planned emergency.’ Apparently it provided “plausible deniability” for hotels that rented rooms in spite on knowing what was coming. 

    Up until then I liked my big bright corner room in the grand old hotel. The fire escape door at the end of the hall was tied open and there was a smell of room deodorant masking a sewer scent in the bathroom. But the mountain view – incomparable and stunning.

    Red Mountain White Knuckles

    The drive on US 550 between Durango and Ouray is intense. As kids we called the whole stretch the “Million Dollar Highway.” It probably costs at least that much every year just to maintain it. It is now apparently only called that between Silverton and Ouray. According to wiki, it’s the portion twelve miles south of Ouray – that last hair raising portion through Uncompagre Gorge, that gives the highway its name. Quick glances at faces in oncoming cars show passengers expressing worry or terror. 

    The highway is a staggering and impressive drive all the way from Albuquerque. It’s US 550 the entire way – Bernalillo on the Rio Grande Valley to Montrose on the Western Slope – through some of the most interesting geology in the west. Portions follow routes used in prehistory and the Old Spanish Trail. In the San Juans a man named Otto Mears built the first tollroads on parts of what became 550. Then he built the first railroad to Silverton. Collectors of railroad memorabilia love his Silverton Railroad passes, printed on buckskin and adorned with silver filigree. 

    It’s nice to divide the drive into two parts with a stop in Silverton for relief from the cliff-clinging road. A free Shakespeare production of As You Like It in intimate little Anesi Park that night was delightful. Multiple sponsors included UpstART Theater That Moves. The play was also preformed in Ouray.  

    The Silverton history museum has expanded from the old jail to a mining boarding house donated to the San Juan Historical Society and moved to town. In and under those buildings is everything related to mining but a live burro. A mineral exhibit has me transfixed and I stare at innocent looking yellow uranium powder for probably too long wondering if it’s safe.  

    My second concern on the morning of no electricity, is no hot coffee. I thank my stars for the cold brew I bought yesterday in Durango and sit in my car taking big gulps while admiring the looming mountainsides. They’re illuminated like a stage backdrop by the rising sun. No stage production could match it. Somewhere someone is whistling. 

    The whole county seems to be lined up in the one coffee shop with a generator. There are delicious pastries. A hot cup takes over ten minutes. Everyone is listening to city workers – big guys in work clothes talking loud and greeting each other as they file in between the tourists. One guy says marijuana is a gateway drug and another says it sure was for him. The whole place erupts in laughter.

    When the lights finally come back on no one cheers. A sense of camaraderie evaporates. I leave for Ouray and another old Victorian hotel.  

    I love old places, including big richly storied western hotels. I worked at an old resort near Denver for a summer in college. It was memorable. I can smell it now – old wood and dust. The work was grueling – dragging an old vacuum cleaner to hillside cabins, cleaning all day after serving breakfast then cleaning up to serve dinner. The six of us lived in a bunk room under the porch with no insulation and touchy wiring. No one could use a blowdryer without blowing a fuse and this was the late seventies so that was a problem. We got one day off a week, separately. I would drive to Denver in a borrowed VW beetle alone to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

    It was pretty – that canyon and the trees and the grand old three-story tower. We rattled the bones of that building at square dances in the lobby, attendance at which was mandatory. Sometimes people played the piano. The whole place seemed alive. 

    Give me an old hotel over a new dull and anonymous one any day. But some people think that’s what a hotel should be. They don’t want character, just sleep. Preferably with electricity. Ideally with no unpleasant smells. 

  • Sonoran

    The interstate is very bumpy and busy past the Arizona border. It is best viewed from a distance as it stretches out in the distance on the descent from the mountains. Trainline-like lines of tractor trailers move back and forth.  You barely see the car. When you’re on the interstate it’s like that too. Cars are outnumbered by big trucks.

    Somewhere west of another place named for Apaches  I see my first glimpse of saguaros waving welcome.

    Gadsden Purchase was 45,000 square miles the US ripped-off from Mexico in 1854 for a transcontinental route and a railroad magnate’s aspirations. Mexico pretty much ripped it off from the Apaches who probably ripped in off from the Mogollon and Hohokam and Ancient Puebloans. It never stops. All this within a millennium. 

    Subdivisions punch holes in the Sonoran desert. It is an honor and a tragedy to be this close. Like petting an endangered fish. I baby talk to a javalina from the swimming pool. The relentless wheel spins as the desert is blanketed with boxes and asphalt. What will be next, you can’t predict. So breathe the delicate morning air. Enjoy the native desert. Come back when it’s cooler.

  • Rock Hound

    “You’d think this far away from “civilization,” here he used air quotes, “that you wouldn’t hear cattle screaming all night .”

    The Deming Luna Mimbres Museum lives up to its moniker, “The  Biggest Little Museum in the Southwest.” The old Armory building is a standout. The volunteer staff know their stuff. The gift shop has a great selection of books on geology, archaeology, and history. Native American artifacts, including a Mimbres pottery collection, take up much of the first floor. Down a long hall is the stunning mineral collection larger than those of Silverton or Ouray museums in Colorado. As I said in a TACA post, it’s a museum hoard of gems and geods and dreamy-deep geological details.  

    Is five tents too many?

    Camped for the first time in decades. I sort of got suckered into buying another tent called Coconest and then hauled everything camping related all around Tucson metro for two weeks before camping two nights in one place.

  • The Valley

    They came from the north. Slowly at first.

    We were here already.

    Sadie flipped her thick blond braid back. Her little mutt ducked. Chocky glanced over at Cat who rolled her eyes.

    People were here six hundred years before your family, Sadie.

    White people.

    That’s not true either.

    First to legally claim the land.

    Nope.

    Well what then? Tell me why Cozy Y exists if its not because of the Simpson family – my great grandfather and what he started…

    She sighed deeply and sort of petered out, knowing what she was in for.

    Nevermind. Just nevermind.

    Chocky was braiding leather at his workbench in the small adobe they called the bar.

    Catherine “Cat” Dobs wouldn’t “nevermind.”

    Marriage! That’s why! Your great grandfather married into the richest and oldest family in the valley.

    That and the 30,000 acre land theft.

    Chocky added this quietly but Sadie was out the door, slamming the screen in her little dog’s face.

    She knew all this now. She’d read the first draft of Cat’s book about her family. But it was obvious to her friends she was in denial.

    .

    I’ll tell you what he was first to do. Cat had that edge to her voice that made Chocky duck like Sadie’s dog.

    He was the first to systematically loot all the ancient sites within reach of his bulldozer. That’s what he was the first to do.

    Chocky shook his head again. Not exactly. He wasn’t the first at that either. Treasure hunters were looking for the San G

  • Silver Summer 2024

    Silver City is good. It’s the kind of place that reminds you of other places you remember fondly, more for size and seeming out of another era than for a busy scene. As an early and current mining town, the proverbial Wheel of Fortune has rolled over this place again and again. The copper mines can be seen from space. The area’s history is intriguing and unique.

    There are lots of books about The Black Range and The Gila, and the Apaches and earlier native groups like the Mimbres. People have been coming, going, displacing, absorbing, and dominating each other from prehistory to present.

    Mountains are turned upside down for copper. Rebellion over cows and public lands. I needed to see more.

    Things come around. Sometimes better. A flood in 1895 washed out Silver City’s Main Street leaving a 55 foot deep trench. So main street became the next street over and the trench is a linear park. 

    This is a popular way collectors display arrowheads and the Deming museum has a record number of them.

    Mimbres pottery is a beautiful reminder of prehistory. Western New Mexico University has a huge collection. I stumbled into a docent who gave me a tour and overview, including the history of the 1917 Arts and Crafts building where the museum is housed. 

    The copper mines could be a set piece for “KAOS” with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus sitting in a giant excavator. Zoom in from space on one of the miles-wide pockmarks. They loom up and over the horizon as funny-color fake mountains. A friendly cowboy in the brew pub said when dust from blasting settles on cars it eats away the paint, “and that can’t be good.” He knows dust, being from Animas, Arizona, near where dust storms frequently close I-10.

    I stayed at the Murray Hotel, a downtown classic. It is solid, simple, nice. 

    The Swedenborgian Church of North America was incorporated first in 1861 as the General Convention of the New Jerusalem. Emanuel Swedenborg was an early eighteenth century Swedish philosopher and mystic with some interesting views.

    I like to pretend I’m like the Hotel Inspector. That reality show follows famed hotelier  Alex Politizzi around Britain as she visits and critiques hotels and B and Bs. I don’t have her background, experience, heritage or chops, but I know good vibes and clean sheets when I feel and see them. 

    I also see that cool Mondrian inspired mural on the back wall and smell the sweet little bakery downstairs around the corner. 

    Rear of Murray Hotel
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