Saying farewell by foot 2

On my last full day in Santa Fe, I decided to take one last walk around town. I was following a book of classic photographs of the city, and it was fun to compare what it looked like 50 years, 100 years ago. While it has since been architecturally gentrified, a few elements can be seen beneath the stucco and fake adobe, the most beautiful being a Corinthian column found beside the Plaza Cafe. And the town grows on, the sound of jackhammers accompanying me at one point.

To retrace a historical walk here is done best in winter, when the town is brown and dusty, recreating the very impression that disappointed so many who'd just arrived after long months spent on the Santa Fe Trail. But the sky, and my mind were clear, joy creeping in to the point that I found myself somewhat sad to leave it behind. Then I remembered that I am now a tourist again, doing what a tourist does. Being a resident here creates an entirely different mindset, one of constant anxiety of how to afford life in such an opulent place, one in which you are so busy committed to simple survival that you have little time to do such walks in the first place...



...and my final morning. I drive south, to walk the La Cienguella Petroglyph Site as the sun comes up. I follow the cloud of my breath, through the fence and up the canyon toward the rim. Befitting the name, there are literally hundreds of petroglyphs up and today I find...none.

I'd heard from more than a few people that Santa Fe is a place that either accepts you or spits you out. I always hated hearing that. It made me anxious and more than a little angry, as if the town itself was elitist. But our luck proved such rejection. Then something ironic happened. From the moment we chose to return to Japan, we lost our connection to the spirit of the place. The fires of summer kept us out of the hills that we love. Then we found ourselves somehow missing all the Native dances we'd hoped to attend. And I no longer saw petroglyphs. New Mexico seemed through with us.

And that felt so perfect somehow. So I simply stopped looking, and turned back to my car...


...Yet on my final walk before leaving the States, the land once again lifted her skirts and allowed me a glimpse of her secrets. I drove from my mom's house up to Albuquerque's Petroglyph National Park. Rabbits jumped through the dawn, grass twitching before their noses in the fog. Here and there were shapes and figures of various shapes and angles, many looking like bizarre sci-fi images. They were accompanied by graffiti of the people who followed, and you find yourself less offended by something scratched in 1910 than by something from 2010. Finding petroglyphs becomes a Buddhist exercise in awareness. If you stop a moment and truly look, the figures begin to pop pop pop out all over the hillside. Standing here I remembered a conversation Miki and I had at the Three Rivers Site, about whether these figures stood alone individually, or whether they were all connected as a greater narrative, the whole landscape like an old Chinese scroll painting. To miss one element was to miss the meaning of the whole thing. It was said that it was predetermined that they be drawn in such a way that they are visible only under certain conditions and only to certain people. To be privy to the whole narrative was a privilege.

And for whatever reason, I was allowed this blessing. As I continued to walk, I found that I instinctively knew exactly where the petroglyphs were. And at trails end, standing before the final wall of volcanic stones etched with figures, I suddenly got such a feeling a sadness at leaving this land that it nearly crushed me. I will return of course, this being where my family lives. But for a brief moment, I revisited all the places of beauty from the past two years, saw once again the faces of those with whom I smiled. I am blessed.


On the turntable: John Coltrane, "Coltrane"
On the turntable: William Least Heat Moon, "River Horse"

Saying farewell by foot

We arrived at the gate at Tent Rocks prior to its 8 am opening time. It took awhile, but eventually a car drove up and let us in. Pete and I parked in the empty lot and broke trail, moving jacketless through cold shadows thrown by clifftops not yet overcome by a sun still going through its own wake up rituals. We moved through the twisty slot canyon, atop hard-packed snow so that we were walking a foot or so above the actual trail. The canyon fed a bowl ringed by high hoodoo sentinels decked in white. We ascended the slippery path toward the mesa top, finding rocks sticking above the ice just where we needed them, then sat awhile up top with the 360 degree view. When it was time to go, we searched for an alternative route back, hoping to avoid the ice of the way up, but what we saw below was steep and much more perilous. So we gingerly retraced our steps, and slipped back through the canyon to our warm car.

I'd wanted to drive up to Bland and the Dixon Apple Orchard to see how they were faring after the fires and floods of summer. But the road itself was blocked by a tall concrete barricade that looked like it meant business, forcing us to turn back. Past Cochiti Lake, up La Bajada, and through Waldo Canyon to Madrid for burgers and beer. A side road took us out through Gallisteo and Eldorado before we eventually circled south again for a surreal night at Sunrise Springs. My room seemed to have no heat, but they wouldn't relocate me to another, despite us being the only apparent guests. But the place was relaxing as usual, the grounds peaceful. Pete and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hot tub, before ending up at the Blue Heron with a bottle of South American red... ...early the next morning, I met up with Musai to bounce along an unpaved county road to the Montoso peak trailhead. We bushwhacked our way to the peak in the hoofprints of some wild horses. The top of the mountain is ringed by its bottlecap of volcanic rock, thrown here thousands of years ago in what must've been a helluva roar when the Valles Candera went up. We'd both been quite cold when we started walking up, but we'd warmed significantly with our labors, and sat awhile at the crest beside a small jar that held a pencil and pad for people to write their names. If this evidence is to believed, only two people summited last year, and no one since June. We made our way to the rim of White Rock Canyon, moving across snowfields. The snow was hard for the most part, but all too often we'd break through to mid calf. What was free of snow was muddy and slow going. We found what looked to be the most likely place to ascend to the river, along an arroyo that ended in free-fall. I climbed down a little further, but could find no route that looked safe. It was disappointing, especially since the trail paralleling the river looked flat and easy. We sat awhile here, eating lunch quietly, enjoying the Rio Grande crawling past 800 feet below. Then we followed the rim, trying to find the Pack Trail marked on our map, scouting the route the Musai will take when he returns after the snow is gone. It was a long slog back to the truck, confused by our lack of landmarks but for the surprisingly dense juniper that we were forever pushing through. The excess energy involved in brushing their branches aside, in lifting legs out of snow and mud, exhausted us. Mentally taxing too was the monotony of landscape. Musai and I navigated it differently, he using a GPS that seemed on the fritz, me by heading toward landmarks out on the horizon. Somehow, we both got it wrong, circling somehow to eventually find the truck in a place other than where we'd thought...


...in the morning, I met Taylor and Bernie for an easy hike up La Bajada again, this time following the left fork. A pair of paragliders rode the currents thrusting up the rocky hillface from the hot desert below. Atop the mesa, we cut across the sand, the path mercifully wide and open compared to my battles with low vegetation with Musai on the previous day. We stopped for lunch at a notch that marked the end of the canyon, into which we dropped past the piles of volcanic rock arranged in rows. These may have been the man-made ruins of an old pueblo that had once been in the area, though I couldn't make out anything resembling a structure or kiva. This canyon was also the canvas for petroglyphs, but those too eluded any recognition. It was a reasonably easy descent down to the Santa Fe River. It's river valley was wide and grassy and tempted us into taking a long break. We talked about the nature of living in the wild and the skills associated with it. How hunter/gatherers living more on instinct than those later agrarians that needed to rely on intellect in order to plan their crops. We followed the river out of its valley, jumping it a number of times before walking the berm of an acequia that took us directly to a grove of cottonwoods that threw shadows across the car...

...up to the desert landscape near Abiquiu, whose land took on yet a different character than that of the previous two days. Taylor and I did the brief walk up to Echo Amphitheater, where the Alianza Federal de Mercedes had founded their separatist nation. The path was frozen over, perpetually thrown into wintertime shadow. This walk was just a taste for the greater walk later up Kitchen Mesa. It was a lovely hike, along a path that led through a broad valley before climbing diagonally up the canyon wall to a chimney, up which we scaled, aided by the ropes attached to the notch. From here we walked across the mesa top to the edge, but not too close as it was crumbling away to drop 600 feet. Taylor and I sprawled across the wide rock, taking in the scenery and the warm day, making like lizards for the next couple hours. As we talked, we'd often toss a pebble in the air, which would fall back to earth with a hollow sound. We laughed about how narrow our perch must be, and we laughed harder when, safely below again, we noted the voluminous pile of debris beneath where we'd been sitting an hour before...


On the turntable: Herbie Mann, "African Suite"

Ups and Downs

To use the word road was to be charitable. It is amazing to think that it was actually better back in the 1930s, when it was one of the more difficult stretches of Route 66. Comrade Jay was at the wheel, demonstrating remarkable skill in keeping the tires at the crest of the ruts, like a surfer trying to stay atop a large and difficult wave. We eventually left the truck at a place just before the road dropped down the steep black face of La Bajada. Far below to our left was a wide stream winding between banks lined with tall cottonwoods threadbare this late in autumn. Before us, the land fell away, with tall utility towers marching across the desert floor toward the Sandias and Mt Taylor further out in Navajoland. We made our way downward before those black walls speckled yellow with lichen, and other fossilized sea life living on now only as colors. Wide enough for walkers, it was hard to imagine people actually driving this steep narrow road, especially in the early automobiles of the day. Local natives used to wait here for drivers too timid to take on the hill themselves. They'd offer their skills for a small fee, then negotiate the hill in reverse, typically the strongest gear often that time. It didn't take us that long to walk the switchbacks down to the stream. We sat beside an old bridge, attempting to solve all the problems facing American society over the course of lunch. That accomplished, we made our way back the way up to the truck, ascending close to 1000 feet in about 30 minutes.

Not far away stands Tetilla Peak, whose name alludes to the obvious small breast of a shape that stands out at the southern end of the Santa Fe landscape. I'd long admired her curves from my bedroom window, my eyes often draw away while writing in this very blog. We left the truck beside a water tank pockmarked by the blasts of a shotgun, shells scattered amongst our feet. New Mexico's landscape is littered with similar scenes, these inanimate objects being only slightly less intelligent than the person blasting away at them. But with a sense of similar purpose we trudged up the hill just before Tetilla, dropping again somewhat before making our way up the breast itself. There was no trail to speak of, just a placement of feet atop rocks that resembled a hodgepodge arrangement of cobblestones. Walking in time to my rapidly increasing breath, I was thankful both for choice of sturdy boots, and for the fact that the rattlers were now passing the season deep underground in slumber. Just below the peak, the walls of Tetilla become sheer, a solid rock nipple rising erect toward the sun. We sat awhile with the ranges: the Sangres, the Jemez, the Ortiz, the Sandias, purple limbs stretching away in four directions. Filled up, we began moving downward, rushing along a sheer and perilous route, gravity with a hand ever upon our backs. It was quick going over rolling and rocky footholds.

The real adventure was to come. Our usually reliable Sierra Club guidebook mentioned that a longer 20 mile ride out along the mesa took us over a road in far better condition than what we'd come in on. This was somewhat true, until we hit a Y-junction, then another. Before long we weren't sure of our bearings, only that Santa Fe lay out there in front of us. The next challenge was the road, which worsened by the mile. Often, we'd forgo road altogether and cut across the desert awhile. It was beautiful country up there, moving along the low juniper trees growing redder as the sun began to fall. Occasionally Taylor and I got out of the truck to move large stones off the road, though it could hardly be called that by now. Jay made an astute observation that with New Mexico roads, the devil you know is better than the one you don't. At some point I tried the GPS on my phone and was surprised that I had reception. This helped a great deal, and we followed what looked to be the most direct route. Just as the sun dropped from sight, our tires hit tarmac. Out here, we laughed at a small landing strip, laughing that this is the place where Santa Fe gets all her drugs. Relaxed now, we turned on the radio, talked about football. Then we reached the locked gate. There was nothing to do but backtrack. The GPS revealed a road to the left, which we bumped along until...another locked gate. I jumped out of the truck to find another way through. It looked like we might have to sleep out here, and walk back to town to find someone to let us out. Two pickups raced past just the other side of the gate. Frustrated, I jiggled the padlock, and found it open.

We got back to town two hours later than expected, missing entirely the holiday party we'd hope to attend. Jay dropped Taylor and I back at my place, where we talked over tea about the joy of the hikes, and the fun had in unexpected adventure. Then the conversation began to be peppered with words like "If" and "Had We," spinning off completely then into the realm of the hypothetical and its usual permutations.


On the turntable: The Who, "Who's Missing"
On the nighttable: Oliver LaFarge, "The Enemy Gods"

The Syncline

The drive home was done blind, the windshield never fully defogged, the snow falling against it lightly but steadily. The following day's hike to the remote Ortiz range didn't look promising. In the morning, I awoke before dawn, the only light being the blinking of my cell phone. As expected, the conservancy had canceled. One of my hiking companions then came up with a wonderful alternative.

I'd hiked with Musai before, having met him at REI. He drove us south past the Ortiz, whose crowns were capped with the unseasonal snow. The Sandias further south were likewise draped, their dark mass sloping gradually from the desert floor like a cresting wave, the top breaking into dense cloud that threatened to spill over into Albuquerque. Just shy of the city we turned west, leaving behind the silhouettes of balloon that dotted the sky. Not far now to White Mesa. Between it and its neighboring Red Mesa was the syncline.

We left the truck beside the highway and once through the fence were on our way. The was land was BLM managed, now cut with a new course for bicycles and motorbikes. We moved on a diagonal away from them, making a heading toward a pair of canyons that cut the earth much further up. After cresting a small hill we came across a small fenced area, that served no conceivable purpose but to protect a pile of burned oil cans and tires strewn about. Beyond this, the desert floor began to harden and crack. Inexplicatedly, we crossed a small grassy marsh, here amidst the dryness of stone. I quipped that I'd love to bring a New Yorker here and tell them that this too is desert. Then we reached the first of the small washes. Usually they're dry but today they flowed brown after a few days of heavy rain. At the bottom of a wider wash stood a lone cottonwood, tall and proud and just beginning to go into color. Apparently the washes flow more often than first thought.

We followed this low canyon awhile, gazing down occasionally at small falls sliding across rock and welling into shallow pools. In a day or so all this water will be gone, seeping into the ground now cut into low knobs of stone. It was tough going, attempting to find the lines with least obstacles. Ponderosa pines began to appear a few at a time, the lack of water keeping their heads low, groomed like natural bonsai. Their numbers began to increase, until forming an organized line that ran uphill in a straight line toward the mesa above. This paralleled another fence, man-made this time, which had been placed across the line of our ever deepening canyon. We found a way through, then scrambled up to higher ground.

Soon, we were standing above the large canyon. Dropping down into a smaller side canyon, we took lunch in a sunny spot with a nice view. Before moving on again, I peed a short distance away, a riddle for the animals who no doubt have little exposure to man. Musai suggested we finished the walk to the mesa top in silence. As I walked, I eyed the sandy ground, brushed my hands against juniper and pinon. This was the landscape of home, now approaching 7000 feet. Musai began signalling wildly at one point, but it was only later with words that I got that he'd seen a large and lean coyote wander past with purpose.

Meanwhile, I was keeping myself occupied with the not infrequent sight of heaps of small twigs piled up atop stones or sometimes amidst prickly pears. While logic dictates that this is the random work of pack rats, the romantic in me saw them as places where Natives had fallen in war. Over the centuries, others had come by and placed a twig there in order to appease the spirits. It all reminded me of the stone cairns piled high in Buddhist lands across the sea. This line of thinking carried on further with the discovery of small holes bored out into the large boulders in the canyons. Now, I'm nearly certain these were the work of water that had found its way through small cracks and channels in the rock. Yet the way that most of these holes were along straight lines helped me envision small shelters built from the juniper that covered the terrain. A resting spot for sheepherders perhaps? Overall, I thought how hard it is to read culture in landscape, when one is outside that cultural matrix. A Jemez man strolling this land could no doubt recognize innumerable things, where I merely saw plant and stone. The desert landscape itself is hard enough. In Japan, I'm pretty adept at reading the landscape, of recognizing the elements that had shaped my previous journeys across its face. But looking back now, I could recognize little, completely unsure along which way we'd come. No wonder it is so easy to die in the desert.

We reached finally the top of Cuchilla Mesa. Its name is in the knife-edge that run 1000 foot above the desert floor. To the East were the familiar ridge lines of the Jemez, the Sandia, the Sangre de Cristo. Beneath them, the Pueblos of Jemez and San Ysidro were dwarfed beneath all this scenery. To the West, a canyon ran parallel to the one we'd followed, cutting deep and dramatically into the valley floor.

We began to make our way down, following a side canyon that ran steep and deep. This was true canyoning now, over and around huge stones, ducking through scrub. The day was hotter now. All morning, clouds and wind had kept us bundled up, but the work of descending the canyon had us shedding layers quickly. It is hard to dress for hiking in New Mexico, especially in the desert. By late afternoon, we were back on the desert floor now, having once again passed down through four distinct environments, each unique in vegetation and topography. Despite what I've written above about easy disorientation in the desert, during the final hour we somehow followed the same route we'd used in ascending. We obviously had chosen our path well.

Near the truck, we stopped and had a last snack break in a boulder field littered with enormous rocks that had calved from the cliff above. The next candidate stretched itself like a diving board into the space above us. As we sat, I revisited the feeling I'd had throughout the day of being an extra in some cowboy film, induced of course by the number of classic Westerns I've watched since moving back to NM. Another common denominator was the theme of generations in our talk, particularly the topic of fathers and sons. These talks seemed rich and cathartic for both Musai and I, and I'll reflect often on them as I chart new territory in building a relationship with my newborn daughter. 'Generations' seems fitting, as we walked through day that was at once three seasons, an autumn day flavored with the heat of a summer passing and the snows foreshadowing what's to come.

(Musai's own take on the day can be found here.)


On the turntable: Charlie Rich, "Behind Closed Doors"
On the nighttable: Peggy Pond Church, "Bones Incandescent"

Tesuque Creek

Look there in the snow
Beside the frozen creek!
The paw prints of a great cat.

On the turntable: Mallikarjun Mansur, "Maestro's Choice"

Up the Bishops Lodge Watershed

It was a cozy Sunday morning, with the fire and the coffee and the words and colors of a Taos painter. But overnight, a fresh coat had come out of the dark. The outer world called and I could resist no longer.

Aside from the thin coat on the ground, fresh dust would sometimes fall from shadows darkening an otherwise bright sky. I stepped off road down into arroyo, my feet rolling atop the unknown contour of root and stone. This was the animal world, their tracks a calligraphy across an otherwise white sheet: the oval of rabbit, the half-moon of deer, the trident of bird. Overlapping these were the broad prints of predators, coyote on the move, and perhaps even cougar. Yet the animals chose not to reveal themselves, but for a handful of flushed birds.

My own prints bisected juniper, passed reverently beneath Grandfather Spruce. They followed the curve of the arroyo until arriving at a low earthen wall too crumbly to climb. I turned and paralleled my path back down, gravity in my favor this time. I wondered how the day's traffic would be altered, new detours around the mark of boot, the scent of man, and the sung strains of "Powderfinger" still lingering in the air.


On the turntable: Mumford and Sons, "Cecil Sharpe House, 10-11-10"
On the nighttable: Mabel Dodge Luhan, "Winter in Taos"

The High Country: Deception Peak

A month ago, Miki asked me how I would spend a week off. Without thinking, I immediately answered, "four days in the mountains, three at my desk." It hadn't even occurred to me that I could do this. Which frightens the crap out of me, how accustomed I have become to my heavy schedule, as if it is perfectly normal to do little else but work.

So I cleared a week for my own use. The first day, Miki and I hiked the Bear Wallow/Borrego loop, my eyes scanning the forest floor for that massive vertebral column I'd see on this trail a few weeks ago. The air was cooler, and the trees coming into color made it seem a whole different place. We arrived back at the trailhead to meet a few of my fellow REI employees and the rangers who would lead is in a full moon trail clean-up. We were given our matching T-shirts, hard-hats, and glow sticks which we tied to our shoelaces. Not far down the trail we got to work, smoothing down small rises and creating channels for a more efficient water run-off. Being a guy, I had good fun using a couple new tools, a double sided axe called a 'Pulaski', (which I continually referred to as a 'kowalski,') and a heavy, metal rake thing called a 'MacCloud (though to me it was a 'McMillan and Wife'). After an hour or so, we moved off trail down to a camp area, for a campfire. With the autumn moon rising through the pines, we celebrated not in the usual Japanese way with tsukimi dango, but with the more American s'mores.

The following morning, Miki and I were once again heading to the high country, to meet Derek and Amanda for a hike up Aspen Vista. The trees that give this trail its name were ablaze with yellow. The hike took us up a fire road and into blue spruce country. Near the ski area, we had lunch under one spruce, as camp-robbers flew near to get a hand-out. We were happy to oblige, tossing stale bread into the higher branches. It was a perfect autumn afternoon, with the birds above and most of northern New Mexico far below. We stayed below the ridge until it curved downward like the crook of an elbow. From here, we shot straight up to Raven's Ridge, with Nambe Lake far below and winking at us until we got above tree line. From the summit of Deception Peak, the beauty of the deeper Pecos was revealed to me once again. The crumbly knife ridge over to Lake Peak teased, as did the trail further on to Penetente. Resisting these temptations and chose to instead sit in the sun up here awhile. Far across the high desert, canyons of deep rock led into those nooks where the Anasazi thrived. Within a month, when the snow once again takes the high country, those canyons will be our sole playground.

We could resist the colors far below no more. Heading off trail, we shot straight down the mountainside, into a riot of white and blue and gold. It went from summer to autumn within minutes. We eventually found a small trail, as a large dog bolted from between the trees. The previous winter must've been hard up here, for dozens of trees had fallen across the trail, with us climbing over or ducking under, in a back-country game of pick-up sticks. Back on the main trail again, we wondered if it were possible that the color had deepened even more since our ascent, as dozens of hikers passed us, kids and dogs in tow, heading one last time toward higher ground before the snows of October once again cover it all.


On the turntable: Ozomatli, "Coming Up"
On the nighttable: Robert M. Utley, "High Noon in Lincoln"

Tsankawi

We sit on the edge of a cliff, watching the storm drift past. Once again I find myself atop a mesa on sacred native land, just out of reach of rain and lightning and thunder. Three of the four of us share Irish blood, so naturally our conversation leads us to that Emerald Isle, moving from there to Tibet, from the Bronx to Piedmont, CA. Across the ravine are the concrete towers of Los Alamos labs, birthplace of the bomb that flattened the city where my wife's people come from. I follow her eye line over there. Someday, we'll need to bridge this gap and complete the pilgrimage.

I later find myself alone, off-trail across this mesa topped out with scrub. It narrows to a dull, rounded edge, like the prow of a ship cutting across this ancient seabed. I sit awhile on a disembodied boulder, wondering what to call those peaks over there, still snow-capped this late in Spring. Brother raven flies over to check me out, squawking a greeting. The rain eventually drives me from this aerie, and I scramble down the rock face, leaping the last few feet onto the next shelf. There's far less wind on this eastern face. I follow a narrow white band as trail, passing beneath petroglyphs and yellow splashes of lichen. I find a cave and climb in, to meditate on the crystaline sand floor and dip into Nanao. I come across this:

Underground deep
fossil cave dark

you sit down
might be midday

someone comes in
you can't see him, hear him, touch him

still someone with you for sure;
is he friend or devil?

you don't care
all the same

you smile
he looks blank
I burst into laughter

no body
wave after wave

On the turntable: Julian Cope, "Rite Now"