Silence. Stars. Wind. Dust. Rock — Desert Notebook

Las Cruces, NM; these are outside our windows. Image via Wikipedi

We’re showering off a lot of dust after five days in the desert, on 26,000 acres of silent, creature-claimed land. It has reminded me how much I miss being outdoors, around animals and far away from frenzy.

Some notes:

–   A BMW Z-4, robin’s egg blue, barreling along I-10 between Tucson and Deming, NM, two cats loose inside its minuscule cockpit, plus a middle-aged female driver.

–  An outcropping of smooth, red boulders an hour east of Tucson that looked like the surface of another planet or the set for a George Lucas film.

–     The sun gleaming off the sands at White Sands National Monument so brightly that, without sunglasses, my eyes were blinded.

–     Seeing cactus, and the white sands, ringed by snow.

–     The “white” sands are more of a creamy pale beige, the color of a palomino horse or a latte or a camel-hair coat. Wet, they were cool to the touch, with the consistency of pastry dough.

–     Silence so thick you can hear yourself digesting.

–     There are two ways to see the landscape – in awe, staring across 30 or 60 or 100 miles of it to a distant ring of mountains, their spires often softened by a scrim of  rain or a snowstorm. Or on your knees or bent over like some ancient crone, marveling at the tracks of the lizards, rats, pocket mice, roadrunners and others whose presence is often only visible in their tiny markings in the dust and sand. Bring binoculars.

–     Mountain lions are real and all around us. At the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, which attracts birders from around the world for its eagles, hawks, sandhill cranes and herons – among others – there were signs posted at every viewing site warning visitors of a lion in the vicinity. “Do not run, bend down, turn away,” it warned. “Try to make yourself appear bigger than the lion.” Given that the lion recently seen near our ranch house is about eight feet in length, I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that. “Here,” suggested our host, throwing her jacket up high above her shoulders and spreading out her arms.

–     Realizing that a mountain lion nearby is frightening to several species at once. We had planned to spend one day in the saddle, and at 10:00 a.m., Cyndi, the ranch manager’s wife and I were ready to go. I had packed a lunch and she brought her .22 revolver in a fanny pack, ready to fire a warning shot if necessary.

While we were ready, the horses were decidedly not; Beau bucked her off several times and made clear she was simply not going anywhere. My horse, Ziggy, was almost as skittish, turning in endless tight circles and clearly spooked. Then my sweetie mentioned the low yowling noise he’d heard about 100 yards from the house the previous night, about an hour after sunset. Dennis, the ranch manager, rode to the end of the corral – where the horses had spent the previous night. “There’s tons of fresh scat. It’s definitely a mountain lion,” he said. The scat was about three times the size of that of a domestic cat. That was enough for me. There went a safe hike, or a ride. We toured in the truck instead.

–     The dual presence of ancient history – arrowheads and potsherds 1,000 years old buried in this former Apache nation – and 21^st. century speed. Sonic booms are normal here as F-117 Stealth Fighters seam the sky. Every day, the local radio station announces if I-70 is clear for traffic or temporarily closed due to activity at the White Sands Missile Range. Near Cutter, NM, billionaire Richard Branson plans to build his Spaceport, from which he’ll launch fellow plutocrats into space for joyrides.

–     Chloride, NM used to be Bromide and once was Pyetown, named for a British prospector.

–     Sheer, massive, unimaginable scope. The ranch where our friends have their home is 26,000 acres, shared with a small group of others. Reaching the house, down by a creek, means opening three separate gates and rattling over gravel roads around steep hairpin turns. You make sure your gas tank is filled, that you’ve got water, that your flashlight batteries are fresh.

–     Three hungry horses that see you coming with a full grain bucket put Grand Central at rush hour into perspective.

–     Incredible wealth and severe poverty cheek by jowl. The Armendaris Ranch, whose gates you pass on the way to the Bosque, belongs to Ted Turner, whose three ranches here are said to encompass one million acres of New Mexico. Along the roads, everywhere, are clusters of battered trailers, the last, cheapest form of housing.

–     Fire in the woodstove, fresh coffee, wind through the cottonwoods. Bliss.

–     The velvet muzzle and whooshing exhalation of a happy horse eating from your hand. The late afternoon sun through their mane and whiskers makes a halo.

–     Stars that touch the very outer edges of the horizon, constellations you’ve never seen in a blackness only possible far from light and air pollution.

–     Gates keep the animals safe, the predators out. They have to stay closed. Stupidity or carelessness can, and will, kill you.

–     Glistening with grease, filled with meat and re-fried beans, accompanied by a very cold Coke, freshly-made frybread may kill you, but you’ll die with a smile.

–     Mismanagement of the best property can offer wealth re-distribution, sometimes into the hands of those who actually know what to do with it. The naïve and over-eager man whose nearby dude ranch, with its 12,000 square foot house, went bankrupt right before Christmas meant that Ziggy, Dude and Beau cost this ranch’s manager $500 each, sold by the bank, instead of their regular price of $3,500 apiece. Assets can come with hooves.

–     Water is more valuable than land here. If you abuse your carefully and hard-won water rights, they can, and will, be taken from you by the government.

–     Vanity seems, blessedly, pointless. The best beauty tip? Moisturize, every hour. You can feel the moisture being sucked from your skin.

–     Best purchase? A jacket the color of mesquite, lined with fleece, with big pockets and long sleeves, bought at the truck stop in Lordsburg, NM for $14.99.

–     When you’re riding in the flatbed and the driver stops abruptly, it will be a pile-up of cartoon-ish proportions.

–     An afternoon sky filled with low, gray lenticular clouds explains many Georgia O’Keefe paintings.

–     When you get up in the morning, best to shake out your shoes. Two little lizards, each the length of my middle finger, skitter across the floors of the ranch house. That rustling in the night was one of them traversing the pages of The Sunday New York Times. He especially enjoyed the Arts and Leisure section.

–     You can hear and see people long before they arrive – thanks to their dust clouds and gravel crunching audibly for miles.

–     Seven Gambel’s quails, squeaking beneath a tree.

–     Crushing a juniper bush and sniffing its tart, resiny smell on your fingers.

–     A roadrunner, standing still, keeps fluffing up the feathers on his head and raising his long, narrow tailfeathers, as if preparing for liftoff.

–     Being reminded you’re a brief flyspeck on this, or any, landscape, one species among many competing for limited resources.