13 posts tagged “new mexico”
The view out my office window. My camera phone over-adjusted for the brightness of the snow, which is why it looks so dark, but either way, it's not what most people would imagine New Mexico to look like!
Here are some pics I took of Angel Peak about two years ago. I just now uploaded them to Flickr. Angel Peak is a rock formation in the middle of some beautiful badlands in the Southeast area of San Juan County, New Mexico. Because of the lay of the land, it's visible for about a hundred miles in every direction, making it quite the landmark.
Yesterday, Strix and I went to the Harvest Fest at the Wines of the San Juan Vineyard, which is on the Easterly side of the County.
The vineyard is in a beautiful location near a little unincorporated village called Turley. We've been here before, near a shear bluff and in a copse of huge trees, enjoying good music, good wine, and a nice breeze. Yesterday, the breeze wasn't so much a breeze as a gail. The wind was terrible, and kept kicking up little sandstorms, and yet everyone stayed and enjoyed themselves anyway.
On the way in, looking back to the highway. Yes, it's an oil well in a vineyard.
We got there just in time to hear the last couple of sets from the Stillwater Steel Drum band, which is made up mostly of children, but they were really good. Unfortunately, we missed the grape stomping contest.
Christmas lights made out of shotgun shells adorned one of the artist vender boothes.
I couldn't get a clear shot of the tasting bar, because of how many people were there.
The outdoor tasting area. You can see how sandy the soil is here, which you would think would be difficult to grow anything in, but it's actually not a bad kind of soil to grow wine.
There are several tiny little houses on the property, presumably where the proprietors live.
A little walkway leading back to the pond. Strix is on the left side of the frame taking a pic of the house above.
A pic of another house, with vines out front, and the gorgeous bluff in the background. The picture doesn't do it justice, that bluff rises up out of flat ground just on the other side of the highway about six hundred feet straight up.
The worst thing about this garden would be going out and picking the peacock feathers out from between the plants every morning. Yes, they have peacocks on the property, too, but they had them all locked up and out of the way for the festivities.
Okay, there are drawbacks to living the rustic life, like having to use outhouses. But, hey, horses!
A couple more views of the bluffs, near sunset.
I've said it before about New Mexico: we do "dramatically dead trees" better than anyone else.
If you find yourself at Wines of the San Juan someday, I suggest the following wines: Girls are Meaner (their Gewurztraminer) or the Manzanaras Red (red Zinfandel). Strix really likes the Blue Winged Olive, their Muscat, but only get that if you like your wine really sweet.
We watched the Milagro Beanfield War at the library. That's right, the library. They have a night every once in a while where they play a movie in their multi-purpose room, then we discuss it and differences between it and the book.
I had seen this a long time ago, but had forgotten quite a bit of it. It's set in New Mexico (very rural New Mexico), and is about a little fictional village called Milagro. A resort is being put in, which threatens to destroy the town. They don't have a whole lot of options, since most of the town's residents used to make money from agricultural pursuits, but they sold all of their water rights some time ago. One of the residents decides to use the water from the irrigation ditch going across his property anyway, growing a beanfield in the middle of what was supposed to be the resort, causing an escalating conflict between the townspeople and the politicians and the developer who want to see the resort go ahead.
It was interesting watching this movie again after living in New Mexico for a while. Water rights are a serious issue here, and contrary to what other people in the discussion group thought, they were not imposed upon the citizens by the government, wanting to control things. They were put in place to keep someone from moving in upstream from you and diverting all the water you needed for your crops. The reason the people of Milagro didn't have water was because they sold off their rights, forgetting their "roots," so to speak. For me, then the story is one of redemption - getting back what you foolishly gave away in a moment of weakness.
There is a strong magical-realism component to the story, which I liked. It lends credibility to the story being one of the Spanish/Hispanic culture in New Mexico.
Here are some old photos of Chaco Canyon I just now got around to uploading to Flickr.
If you live "out East" and are thinking of moving to New Mexico, there are a few things you ought to know. I had to find out the hard way.
1. You might want to come visit us first, just to see if it's for you. No, you don't need a passport. Contrary to many, New Mexico really is part of the United States.
2. If you live anywhere east of the New Mexico-Oklahoma border, you may think that where you live has a distinct name, like "Missouri" or "Tenesee" or "Rhode Island." It doesn't. In New Mexico, where you live is referred to simply as "out East." Once you move here, you'll henceforth be required to refer to the place you came from as "back East." Furthermore, you, and all your kinfolk, are "Easterners." Nevermind that people from Arkansas would rather eat undercooked roadkill (and they really, would, too!) than refer to themselves as an Easterner, that is what they are to people in New Mexico.
3. Yes, that really is the New Mexico state seal. There's a reason why it's usually really small, so you can't quite make it out.
4. New Mexico is the fifth largest state (again, it is a state) in the U.S., but is 36th in population with less than two million people spread over 121,000 square miles. (That's two megapeople spread over 315,000 square kilometers, for those of you who use metric.) That gives us a density of about 15 people per square mile. Compare this to even a rural state, like Missouri, which has over 80 people per square mile. In other words, we're damned near empty.
I was actually driving to a conference in Hobbs, New Mexico, with a co-worker once, passing the vast expanse of nothingness that that is the stretch between Vaughn and Roswell, and she commented that there couldn't really be a population problem in the world as long as there was still this much empty space. "Millions of people could live out here!" she exclaimed. "Yes," I said, "but they'd get awfully thirsty."
5. Yes, Hobbs has conferences. Don't ask me why.
6. Not everyone in New Mexico believes in U.F.O.'s, but don't tell the tourism bureau that. They're actually counting Little Green Men in their visitor statistics.
7. New Mexico has a love-hate relationship with Texas. A couple of years ago, it was discovered that a sliver of the border area that had long been thought to be in Texas was actually in New Mexico, and subsequently all of the residents in that area suddenly became New Mexican citizens. A New Mexican legislator opined that adding that many Texans at once to the population of New Mexico would cause the state's average I.Q. to drop. On the other hand, a lot of New Mexicans are originally from Texas, so you'll find a lot of sympathy here for them, too. Texan refugees are usually identified by their accents.
8. Here's how you dress for a typical day in New Mexico: put on everything you own, and gradually take it all off over the course of a day. This morning when I went to work there was frost on my windshield. This afternoon it got to almost 80°F. Good luck planning for that.
9. Here's how you dress for a wedding in New Mexico. Wear a dark suit, preferrably three-piece, with a silk tie. Or, wear cut-off jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, whichever you prefer. If you want to class up the latter ensemble, throw on a bolo tie.
10. Chili isn't what you think it is. Being from almost anywhere else in the country, if you order chili, you are probably picturing something with meat, beans, tomatoes, and various seasonings in a chunky, stew-like preparation. Chili is actually a sauce that is served over almost everything, and if you order anything in a restaurant in New Mexico, the question from the waitress's mouth will be, "Red or Green?" This has officially been designated as "the state question." This refers to chili sauce made from red chiles or green chiles. Be prepared to answer this question.
Red chili is somewhat spicier than green, usually, but many believe green chili has more flavor. If you aren't sure, most places will let you order it "Christmas" style, which is red and green together. In some restaurants, this is referred to as "de colores."
Chiles and piñones (a type of pine nut) can be bought from roadside vendors all across the state, and there are a lot of places you can go and get freshly roasted chiles.
However you get your chili, I hope you like it, because if you move to New Mexico you will be eating it with every meal, every day, for the rest of your life.
11. We aren't Arizona. For some reason, if people know enough about New Mexico to know that we are a state, they picture us as being full of saguaro cacti and being one big wasteland of desert and tumbleweeds. First, New Mexico doesn't have saguaros. That's Arizona. Second, as I mentioned, New Mexico is big. Very big. If you can think of a terrain type that occurs in the continental United States, you can find it somewhere in the state of New Mexico. However, don't be disappointed if you had hoped to see tumbleweeds, because we have them. We have many, many of them. You can come look at my back yard, if you want to see tumbleweeds.
12. Just because there is a road doesn't mean that your car can go there.
13. That's not Klingon they're speaking. It's Navajo.
14. New Mexico has the highest number of PhD's per capita in the country. All of them live in Los Alamos. Okay, there are a couple dozen in Albuquerque, and five or six spread through the rest of the state, but for the most part they live in Los Alamos, building quarks or something like that. Occasionally, they venture out through the rest of the state, pointing and laughing at the rest of us.
15. Glowing in the dark is perfectly natural. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you live on top of an abandoned uranium mine.
16. Yes, that really is a junked-out 1960's model camper trailer out in the middle of the sagebrush with no water or electricity and tires on the roof to keep it from blowing away. It's also someone's home. Don't feel bad for them; they like it there.
17. If you live in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, congratulations! Your vote counts.
18. New Mexico is a land of extremes. For instance, we have highest numbers of any state of Mormons with drinking problems and Baptist with sexual addiction of anywhere in the country.
19. Despite what you learned in your high school Spanish class, "mañana" doesn't mean "tomorrow." It means "next Tuesday." Ironically, "next Tuesday" means "when Mel Gibson is elected Prime Minister of Israel."
20. Gasoline is more expensive the closer you live to a refinery. That's because the gas is "fresh."
21. Finally, New Mexico is a diverse, beautiful, extreme, wild place, and a damn fun place to live. Don't worry, you'll love it. Just, don't tell anyone where you're moving to. They'll try to talk you out of it.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We went back to the White Sands National Monument to take the Sunset Stroll, a ranger-guided tour that didn't start until about an hour before sunset. Before the tour started, we got some more shots of the dunes.
A sand pedestal.
Picnic benches in a sea of white sand.
Shadows on the sand.
Sunset itself was somewhat ruined by the clouds. But I liked the way the sun looked behind the clouds here.
Mountains to the north at sunset.
The clouds finally cleared a little after the sun had gone down, making the mountains look like their on fire. [Edit: I had the pic on the right blown up to poster size and framed it as a Christmas present to my grandmother.]
Originally posted on my old blog on February 23rd, 2006:
We started the day at White Sands National Monument, south of Alamogordo. If you're not familiar this White Sands, its the world's largest gypsum dune field, encompassing 275 miles of land, some of which extends into the White Sands Missile Testing grounds.
The edge of the dunes.
Images from one of the trails. It looks just like snow, and this morning it felt like it could have been. It was just a little over freezing, not that there was any moisture to freeze.
The sand is very fine and captures perfect tracks of whatever walks through it. These appear to be the tracks of a kangaroo rat.
These tracks look like they were also made by a hopping animal of some sort, but I couldn't tell you what. No thumbnail of this one, since a smaller version of it would just look white.
These are bird tracks, which were all over the place. In a few places, the prints were much larger and there was a lot more space between them. Those prints I imagine to be from a roadrunner.
A number of plants grow in the dunes. Some of the larger ones, like this one, have extensive root systems that anchor the sand. The dunes move slowly over time, being shifted by the wind, but when a plant's root system anchor the sand a pillar is left behind.
Certain trees could also live in the dunes. In the interdunal areas, the water table is only 18 inches below the surface, but on the top of the dunes, like here, the trees have to extend their roots as far as 25 feet to find water. [Edit: I since had this photo blown up to poster size, had it framed, and gave it as a gift to my brother at Christmas. It's probably my favorite from this trip.]
Here and there, you can find dunes that are sprinkled with small particles that are actually crumbled particles of fossilized plant root systems. In some cases, the particles are actual fossils, which no longer have any wood fiber in them. In other cases, the fossilization process is incomplete and the particles still have wood fibers in them. The center of this shot shows a larger piece of a root that is still being fossilized by exposure to the sand. Some of the smaller particles around it are fully fossilized.
It was still early in the day, but one of our goals for the day was to go to Mexico, so we left the park with the idea that we would return the next day for the Sunset Stroll, which is a ranger-guided tour.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 22nd, 2006:
After lunch, we went west on highway 380, then south on 54 to Three Rivers, and from there to the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. This is short mountain which has over 21,000 glyphs drawn on what seems like every sizeable rock all the way up the to the peak. These glyphs were drawn by the Jornada Mogollon over 600 years ago.
Three Rivers Petroglyph Site
No glyphs here, but I liked the way this outcropping looked. The rocks here are so black that they shine, which is probably why the site was chosen by the Mogollon for their canvas.
There are steps for the first half of the trail, with the steps at the bottom of the hike being much wider than near the halfway point where teh steps disappear entirely. I don't know who laid these stones - whether they were arranged like this by the Mogollon or by explorers later on.
The rocks in the foreground have have the first glyphs that we saw on the hike. In the background, you can see the parking area where we started.
Some of the petroglyphs at Three Rivers look very much like other New Mexico petroglyphs, but some of the Three Rivers glyphs are surprising. The depiction of human faces are among those that look suprisingly modern.
The symbol in the second and third shots is one that is seen at a number of petroglyph sites. According to the guide pamphlet at the Three Rivers site says that in Mesoamerica, the symbol is associated with Quetzalcoatl, but that other researchers suggest that the dots represent corn or a population count. I doubt that the symbol represents a particular deity, since it is found in the glyphs of a number of different Native American cultures, but I believe it probably does have a religious significance. If it was a population or harvest count, I'm not sure why the Mogollon would have painted it on a rock halfway up a mountain.
This face is enough to give a guy nightmares.
This is a marker on the trail telling the visitors about some of the landscape features. The mountains beyond the marker are the Sacramentos, and the tallest peak is Sierra Blanca.