Cocoposts

These recent camping trips I forgot silverware, my thermos, and my battery radio.

Late summer Navajo Lake. Rain rain rain rain. Rain rain rain rain and some more rain. After the record summer heat you could almost hear trees sigh.

Dad used to say that camping in the rain is not nearly as bad as camping in the wind. This is true. Now I’m remember why my mother refused to go camping.

The plan was two nights at Chaco Canyon but if you know the road you know it was too wet for that. I headed north anyway.

Navajo Lake State Park

I picked a spot in the campground above the marina among the old pinyons and junipers. It had a view of the lake. I mistook the drone of a gas compressor for boats at first. But the drone never stopped and seemed to grow louder at night. It started raining again.

We’ve created national sacrifice areas out of many of our public lands – notably for oil and gas in the Permian and San Juan basins of New Mexico and Texas and mining, timbering, and grazing everywhere else.

Navajo Lake was part of the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project and was constructed between 1958 and 1962. The government took the villages and farms of an estimated 200 mostly Hispanic families for this reservoir. Its creation flooded the three fertile river valleys of the Los Pinos, San Juan, and Piedra rivers.

The reservoir sits in the mineral juicy San Juan Basin and what was probably not included in the valuation of the villagers’ condemned land was future oil and gas revenue. It’s unlikely surface owners knew the extent of the mineral resources under their land or their rights regarding leases. But it’s extremely likely others did. Drilling in the San Juan Basin boomed in the fifties as demand expanded with new gas pipelines around the state and to California.

Today all of the land around the lake, including within the state park itself, is a pattern of wells, well pads, roads, storage tanks and piping infrastructure. They paint it all green but doesn’t help unless you squint, block your ears, and don’t drink the water. Have you heard about fracking?

This place is beautiful anyway, which is saying something.

My camp assemblage included dry wood that I was confident I could use after all the rain. Fire restrictions had been lifted – everywhere but this park. Red tape around fire rings and grill hung limp in the mud so I started a fire. State Park law enforcement pulled up just as I got it going.

He wore sunglasses and his thumbs were hooked in his bullet proof vest. That’s not a propane fire is it? He swaggered a little. No. Obviously, I wanted to add but just tried to smile sheepishly. He said there were fire restrictions. I looked up at the overcast sky, which I thought must have looked even darker through those sunglasses. I said, Seriously? He got stern. You’ll have to put that out. Now. It was infuriating but I walked dejectedly over to the fire began moving logs with the tongs.

Did I mention that the gas compressor sound is 24/7? It grew louder as the world grew quiet and dark. The monstrous noise seemed to fill the sky and eat the trees and stars. I set up my bedroll in the car and slept deeply anyway.

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