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The Valley

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  • 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