April 2010 Archives

(First, I must apologize to someone, though I'm not entirely sure to whom: I think I accidentally deleted a bunch of comments. I was trying to clean out some of the spam that was sent to this site's mailbox--some 2000 pieces so far this year--and in the process I seem to have deleted some stuff that wasn't spam at all. If you care to re-send your comments, though, they should reappear. --PC)

What with all the posting about our trip west, I haven't had much call to mention what's been going on around the homestead. I suppose I should correct that.

It's been, as most springs are for Woodberry Forest faculty members, a fairly busy time. We had one stretch where we put out two issues of the school newspaper, the Oracle, only two weeks apart. (Ordinarily, we release them only once per month or so.) I sat in as keyboardist for our annual Invite-back Weekend science show, adding a little musical flavor as Paul Vickers and Greg Jacobs delighted our prospective new students by blowing up balloons full of hydrogen and making fun of Britney Spears. I scored a bunch of papers, assigned a bunch of grades, and interviewed three applicants for our technical theater position. I read several thousand pages of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, leaving me only a few thousand pages to go. I saw the year's first Barn Swallow and heard the first Barred Howl firing off its who-cooks-for-you call in the woods beside our house.

Oh, and I was visited by the Ghost of University Past.

When I spent my junior year of college at Manchester University, I had the good fortune to be just down the hall from one Robert M. Lloyd, a first-year student of Management Science. Rob's old chum from his boarding school days, Simon Cleaver, was also attending Manchester, studying physics, and he spent nearly as much time hanging out in the halls of Grosvenor Place as Rob and I did. The two of them took me in hand to teach me the finer points of Real Ale and British driving laws, while I taught them about "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" and eating pizza with one's hands. We've stayed in touch over the years, but we hadn't all met since 1999, when I was directing the Woodberry in Oxford program, but that was over a decade ago, and we were long past due for a reunion.

As luck would have it, though, Rob and I, along with Kelly and Ian, were able to touch base a few months ago. Rob has been assigned to the British Embassy in D.C., where his expertise in international terrorism is highly valued. (Note: this is NOT because Rob is an international terrorist.) He invited us up to his flat in Georgetown, where he took us out for Thai food, introduced us to the wonder that is Dogfish Head Brewery's Raison d'Etre ale, and promised that Simon would be coming for a visit sometime in the spring.

Sure enough, in early April, Simon was able to shake free for a couple of days and hurtle across the pond for a brief visit. With his wife Steph currently taking care of both a toddler (Kirsty) and a six-month-old (Samuel), he couldn't stay long, but Rob made sure to drive him down to our place on what turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous spring day, and I made sure to get photographic evidence that all three of us are still healthy, happy, and continuing to age in the appropriate fashion:

(L-R: Simon, me, Rob)

But we've had a couple of other visitors to the homestead in recent weeks, including this handsome fellow who turned up by the back fence one afternoon:

He was moving slowly to the right, heading for a clump of bushes on the far side of the fence, obviously intending to sneak up on something.

About two seconds after I snapped the pic above, he jumped into the air and landed with all four feet on top of something small and furry. He then took a leisurely trot back toward the woods:

I never did figure out exactly what it was that Fantastic Mr. Fox was hunting, but it was a treat to get such a long look at him. Between this and my encounter with that coyote in Cottonwood Campground, April has been a wonderful month for watching wild canines.

Hmm. What is it they say about mad dogs and Englishmen?



3:22 PM

With our departure from the Chisos, we all knew that we'd seen most of what we wanted to see in Big Bend, but we hadn't quite explored every nook and cranny yet. We drove back over the ridge to the junction with the main road, having determined that we'd be heading to the far southeastern corner of the park, Rio Grande Village, for one last look at the river and perhaps a glimpse of the Boquillas Canyon.

I settled into the passenger seat and flipped open a field guide, scoping out the morning's birds, while Dad took one more shift behind the wheel. We probably hadn't made it more than half a mile down the road when Dad shouted out the word I'd been waiting for all week: "Roadrunner!"

In a flash, I had dropped my book and set my eyes on the road ahead of us. There, at a full sprint, was a gangly knot of streaked feathers moving across our path. It rocketed into the brush to our right, long tail and crest vanishing as suddenly as they'd appeared, but all three of us had seen it and knew it as a Greater Roadrunner--no question.

That put the exclamation mark on the trip, though I'll confess to a mild disappointment that we didn't see it in New Mexico, where it's the state bird. Nonetheless, it was delightful to lay eyes on one at last, and we attacked the next 20-odd miles of park road with a more positive outlook as a result. That was good, because the landscape was becoming as desertish as we'd seen it anywhere:

A glimpse to the southeast told us quite clearly where the river was, though: where all the green was:

Rio Grande Village, like Castolon, was a small gathering of buildings largely catering to campers; there was a store, a restaurant, a handful of showers and toilets, a laundromat, and a gas station charging half again as much per gallon as any place outside the park. We snagged a couple of sandwiches and occupied a picnic table long enough for me to note that the bright green trees here were just as attractive to Vermilion Flycatchers as the ones at Cottonwood Campground had been; several of the bright orange-red males were flitting about in the shade near our lunch spot.

Before long, however, we were up and ready to drive over the only miles of paved road in the park that we hadn't driven over already, and after a few curves, we found ourselves at the Rio Grande itself, looking over into Boquillas del Carmen, Mexico.

The village is not a large one, and I can't guess what its economy is based on, but it's clearly visible from the low bluff on the U.S. side, and its proximity has created something of a tourist-based industry. All around the parking area were small souvenir stands, offering walking sticks, belts, jewelry, and various other Mexican tchotchkes for the consumer with a few extra dollars in his pocket. These handicrafts arrived on the American side through the very simple expedient of having a few guys from Boquillas ride through the shallows on horseback:

A few hundred yards down the road from the overlook is Boquillas Canyon, and we figured that as long as we were in the neighborhood, we might as well examine it up close. Before we could reach it, however, I spotted a frustrating bird off to the left: small and sparrowlike, but with a pronounced bit of black-and-white plumage. I hopped out of the car with my binoculars and wandered off into the desert--well, for a few yards, anyway--trying to get a good look at the bird. I could see several of them, darkish atop the heads, and bearing heavy seed-eater bills, but the main field marks of note were the stripes down the side: a pronounced white stripe atop a pronounced black stripe.

I had absolutely no clue what that meant.

Realizing I'd need my field guide for further investigation, I trotted back to the car and joined Ian and Dad for a few more yards until we parked the Enclave at the Boquillas Canyon lot; the only remaining pavement untraveled by Cashwells had now been deflowered. I rapidly flipped through my guide, coming up with nothing remotely plausible, while Ian and Dad suggested that we take the short footpath up into the canyon's entrance. I agreed, but because I was distracted by the pressing bird issue, I neglected to bring my camera on our walk.

The canyon's walls are several hundred feet high--not so startling as those at Santa Elena on the other end of the park, but still pretty impressive to those of us whose local "canyons" are woody slopes measured in the dozens of feet, rather than the hundreds. There were ravens and vultures winging along the heights, a Black Phoebe or two did the tail-wag for us, and we could see a number of sizable turtles sunning themselves on the far side of the river. At one point in the canyon, the watercourse was narrow enough that Ian and I were each able to toss a pebble across, fractionally increasing the size of Mexico at the expense of our motherland. Yes, I know, we're not Real Americans.

Ian's main fascination with the canyon was the sizable (and fairly steep) slope of sand that had collected on the northern wall, and after a few minutes of staring, he pronounced himself ready to surf down it. I took a look through my binoculars and reasoned that it wouldn't hurt him any worse than any other desert materials in the area, so he trotted off with my blessing. He climbed up the slope for at least seventy feet before turning, squatting, and attempting to slide, but the sand wasn't entirely conducive to smooth movement. Eventually he came across a piece of cardboard left by a previous downhill practitioner and hopped aboard it with somewhat more success. Nonetheless, when he returned to the waterside to rejoin me, he was a) ferociously thirsty from his exertions, and b) carrying sand in every fold of his clothing and possibly some bodily orifices. Luckily, I didn't walk around in the desert without a water bottle, so we were able to get him rehydrated and head back toward the car. On the way, we passed the collection jar for Victor, the Singing Mexican, whose a capella renditions of traditional songs (including the one that, I'm ashamed to say, I know only as the theme of the Frito Bandito) took good advantage of the natural acoustic properties of the canyon walls. I don't know what kind of living Victor made, but it was at least good enough that he'd been able to afford an aluminum canoe to get him back and forth to Boquillas.

And that was pretty much that. Back into the car, back on the road to Panther Junction (where a ranger assured me that my mystery birds were Lark Buntings not yet in their full breeding plumage--one more lifer for the day), and back to Fort Stockton, where we celebrated our return to civilization with a tasty steak at K-Bob's and a good night's sleep.

The next day we returned to Midland and got ready for the flight home, pausing in our preparations only long enough to visit The Bar, Midland's finest beer joint, where the coasters have a picture of a dog at gunpoint--yes, the one from the old National Lampoon cover--along with the legend "If you don't drink at The Bar, we'll shoot this dog." With a cute waitress at our table and Shiner Bock on draft, I was bound to be happy, but my Bar Burger was the capstone on the experience: a gigantic beef patty whose diameter exceeded the bun's by a good inch, topped with cheddar jack cheese, grilled mushrooms, red onions and--la piece de resistance!--roasted Anaheim peppers. If it wasn't the best burger I've ever had, I certainly couldn't begin to guess at what could have put it in second place.

And that was that: back to the airport to turn in the Enclave. Back to Houston, where Ian and I said goodbye to Dad and put him on his plane to Raleigh. Back to Dulles, where Kelly met us at bedtime and drove us home anyhow. If the Pecos River itself was a bit disappointing at first glance (see below), I can't say anything remotely similar about the land around it.

Thanks for the hospitality, podners.




1:40 PM

Our hotel in Fort Stockton had the undeniable advantage of being placed next to an IHOP, so we were at least well-fed when we went to bed after our nine hours in the car. That was important because I needed both Dad and Ian to be in a good mood when I asked them to get up and get on the road by six a.m.; the best time to see birds is right after sunrise, and I wanted to be in Big Bend at first light.

Because they're both good sports, or perhaps because their resistance was low following a massive load of carbohydrates, they agreed, and when the alarm went off at 5:30 the next morning, they were both reasonably cooperative as I prodded them toward the car. Dad even volunteered to drive, allowing me to spend the first hour of the trip south marveling at the lack of light pollution. There were no street lights; there were no radio antennae flashing; there were hardly any lights at ranch houses. Except for the occasional set of headlights, there was nothing to compete with the stars. Finally, not quite an hour from the park, the eastern horizon began to appear, and as 8:00 rolled up on our dashboard clock, the sun fell on a small cluster of highlands ahead of us: the Chisos Mountains.

As you can see, it's not a big range, measuring only about a hundred square miles, all of them within the park, and it squats in the middle of Big Bend almost like a spider with its legs curled up. What it lacks in area, however, it makes up in height and therefore in biological diversity. Its highest point is Emory Peak, over 7800 feet above sea level, and that upward reach helps trap moisture, as well as offering isolated and relatively sheltered niches for animals and plants who wouldn't make it in the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. The forested slopes of the Chisos are the only place in the United States where you can see the Colima Warbler, a Mexican species which was, alas, still several weeks of migration away from Texas when we got there, but even before we reached the mountains, I was already finding plenty of interesting species to observe:

This was the youngest of the three javelinas we encountered in the park, about ten miles from the Chisos. Though they are related to pigs, javelinas (technically known as Collared Peccaries) are no longer classified in the Suidae family, which is restricted to Old World species, and are instead given their own family Tayassuidae in the order Artiodactyla, which also includes hippopotami, antelopes, deer, sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as pigs.  I can also attest that they are remarkably unfazed by the sight of an SUV hitting the brakes, backing up forty yards, and rolling down its windows to allow adults and teenagers to hang out and snap photographs.


9:19 AM

And now it was time for the long haul.

Arising in Carlsbad, where we'd had a decent but blindingly white meal (owing to overgenerous portions of melted cheese) at a local Mexican joint the night before, we piled into the Enclave and headed south. WAY south.

The straight shot across the state line into Texas on Rte. 285 would have been simplicity itself, except that we had to reset the clocks. Again. This was the sixth time we had adjusted our watches on this trip.
*We'd landed in Texas on Saturday and set our watches back an hour to Central Standard.
*That night, however, was the switch from Standard to Daylight time, so we had to move them ahead an hour.
*When we entered New Mexico on Sunday, we entered Mountain Daylight time and moved them back again.
*Just yesterday, on our hasty visit to McKittrick Canyon, we'd had to briefly switch to Central Daylight again to make sure we didn't get caught in the park.
*And then we went back to Mountain Daylight when we headed back to Carlsbad.

Needless to say, this shift to Central Daylight was accompanied by much whining and worrying about whether we were doing it right, and for a few seconds, I was actually setting my watch BACK an hour before I realized it had to be the other way around. I think.

By comparison, picking a route was simplicity itself. We took 285 to Pecos, where we faced a choice. We were lodging for the next two nights in Fort Stockton--not the town nearest to Big Bend National Park, no, but the nearest one with vacant hotel rooms. There are only two roads that lead into Big Bend; one runs from Alpine to the park's western entrance, the other from Fort Stockton through Marathon to the northern entrance. Reasoning that we'd be taking the Fort Stockton route at least three times in the next few days, we opted to take the trip from Pecos to Alpine on the way to the park.

It was a good choice. Pecos itself was not an especially lively burg, but our trip down Rte. 17 began taking us closer and closer to the Davis Mountains, where the overwhelming grey-brown flatness of the desert started taking on hints of green and signs of rolling hills. We also got to take the trip's first section of interstate highway, sending the car up to a 100% legal 80 mph for a few minutes before we exited in Balmorhea. The town was by far the lushest and most well-appointed we'd seen in many a mile, with bright flowers and freshly-painted homes, and it gave us a renewed sense of hope that we might see something beautiful or surprising in West Texas after all. The Davis Mountains themselves were generally low and largely treeless, but the road rolled through and around and over them, allowing us views of stark rock formations, small river valleys, and clusters of pinons here and there. We passed through the town of Fort Davis and decided that no matter how expensive the gas was, we'd better stop and get some. We were three hours from Carlsbad, and we had another two to go to reach Study Butte at the western entrance to the park.

We filled the tank and continued south through Alpine, a town which had the sort of cheery self-confidence a town can get when it knows it's the final outpost of civilization. Lying at about 4500 feet above sea level, with about six thousand people, it's not honestly mountainous, but it's the last town of any size that lies near Big Bend--assuming you consider eighty miles away "near." Basically, if you're planning on getting supplies before you venture into the park, this is your last chance. Before Alaska joined the union, Alpine had the distinction of being the largest town in the largest county (Brewster Co.) in the U.S. It's also a proud part of the western tradition of representing the local high school by painting or building a large capital letter on a nearby mountainside; Dad and I had seen plenty in Utah in 2008, but the big white A looming over Alpine was the first such letter we'd turned up in Texas.

And then, there we were, accelerating down Rte. 118 and waiting for Big Bend to roll up over the horizon. And waiting. And waiting. The terrain grew increasingly mountainous, and the foliage returned to its desert colors, but the vast (and mostly empty) road kept pushing ahead.

Finally, we came around a curve and discovered the entrance to Big Bend, rightly described as the most remote national park in the Lower 48. After such a lengthy drive--the five-plus hours were the longest straight stretch we'd attempted on this trip--we decided it was time to get out of the car and get touristy. Landscape photos of the Chisos Mountains, the small range that stands in the center of the park, and closeups of the local yuccas were our first priority:


3:50 PM

Sunrise in Alamogordo involves a rather tardy sun peeping over the walls of the Sacramentos to the east:

It's pretty to look at. But the most impressive sight is to the north, or would be, if not for the signage downtown:

That's Sierra Blanca, 11,000 feet of snow-topped mountain. Purty. But not on our route to our next stop, Carlsbad, which lay back across the Sacramentos and southward. Leaving Alamogordo on Route 82, we almost immediately began climbing into one of the prettiest sections of New Mexico we'd yet seen, high mountain villages (such as the aptly named "Cloudcroft") set along wooded ridges where snow was still piled in skiable amounts. After a few miles, these yielded to a narrow green valley with small farms along the banks of an overflowing creek, the Rio Panasco. Most peculiar was the fact that every pasture along the river was occupied by either a handful of deer or a small flock of Wild Turkeys. Dad couldn't believe they were turkeys; there were just too many of them, too far out in the open. We finally decided to stop and snap a picture of a trio we saw strutting through a pasture, one member of which had caused us mild consternation by having so much white in its plumage:

Apparently western toms have white where the eastern toms have chestnut brown, but I still thought this was rather a lot of white for a turkey; we speculated that it might have a bit of feral turkey in its background, but I suppose that there must be genes for white plumage in the wild population or there wouldn't be any white domestic birds.

We soon turned out of the Rio Panasco valley and were abruptly in yet another variant on the trip's theme of Empty Spaces. For the next twenty-odd miles, we rode along a ridge through fields of... uh... well, I guess you'd have to call them fields because they definitely weren't woods, but there sure wasn't much in them. Not even cows. Instead we saw enormous expanses of empty grazing lands, with sagebrush, the odd low scrub bush/ prickly pear/ cholla plant, and not much else. No houses, no barns, not even power lines. Heck, not even much in the way of windmills. There was only the road, the hills, and the horizon. The tiny, decrepit village of Hope interrupted the monotony for a few moments, but aside from the sad irony of the name, there was little to notice. By the time we reached the far side of town, the road builders weren't even bothering to put in curves. We drove the last twenty miles into Artesia with only four truly necessary turns of the steering wheel.

At that point, we were in familiar territory for a few dozen miles, having passed through Artesia and Carlsbad on the way from Midland to Roswell, but before long we were back into trailblazing mode, heading south from the town of Carlsbad to the caverns with which it shares its name.

We arrived at the Carlsbad National Park entrance in the early afternoon only to discover that the parking lots outside the visitors center had already filled. As a result, we were instructed to park the car at the Whites restaurant/gas station/snack bar/tchotchke emporium and take a shuttle van up to the entrance to the caves. Obligingly cramming ourselves into the back seat of the van, we were a little more cramped than we'd have liked (see below)...

...but despite the close personal contact with our fellow tourists, we whirled up the seven miles or so of Walnut Canyon to the top of the mountain that sits atop the caves. Once there, we faced a choice: either go in through the natural entrance to the caves and work our way down more than 700 feet to the "Big Room." Alternatively, we could take an elevator down from the visitor's center directly to the Big Room and walk around it. The Big Room itself was indicated on most tourist information materials as the must-see part of the caverns, but the natural entrance was where the hordes of bats and lesser nighthawks might be seen... at least, they might if you happened to visit the cave after April. Given that fact of migration and the desire not to wreck Dad's bum knee this early in the trip, we opted for a descent by elevator.

The Big Room itself is a massive cavern, roughly cruciform in shape, with passages leading to lower caverns as well as to the main entrance, and with numerous speleological formations of widely varying sizes, shapes, and colors. The formations are an immediate attraction to any photographer, but their location creates a bit of a problem. Since there's no natural light 75 stories below ground, every step of the path around the Big Room must be artificially lit, and every formation the Park wants to show off must be presented in some semi-theatrical fashion. The ambient lighting, however, is still pretty dim, so the use of a flash is indicated in some areas... but using a flash almost inevitably washes out the image. Here's what I mean:







8:02 PM

Having successfully logged my life bird for New Mexico, I took the passenger seat of our rented Buick, an enormous bronze Enclave, and sat back as Dad drove through the cold rain over the Sacramento Mountains into Alamogordo.

The overall emptiness of the lands around me continued to impress, though the increasing altitude did lead to more interesting formations and vegetation, not to mention more interesting weather. The temperature was in the low 40s when we left Roswell, but the further west we got on Highway 70, the lower the Enclave's thermometer dropped. Before long, we were looking at the mid-30s, and the rain was taking on a decidedly whitish cast. A few miles beyond that, we finally had to admit it: it was snowing.

The snow was landing on hillsides covered in a variety of plants not seen down in the Pecos valley. Small evergreens had begun popping up, mainly pinon and juniper, as well as a funky-looking plant that seemed to be made of gigantic pipe cleaners, and the folds and rises of the earth were a welcome change from the almost oppressive flatness and emptiness of the places we'd seen so far--places where a bare-branched pecan grove was a scene of almost astonishing lushness. Despite the inclement weather, the overall character of the land was kinder here, and small villages and farms began popping up as we climbed. Even a few signs and stores catering to tourists appeared.

Before long we were into the mountains proper, where the reasons for the change in signage became clearer: we were approaching a resort area. There was skiing, some of it up on top of Sierra Blanca, but more importantly, there was an Indian reservation, and if there's one thing I learned on my last sojourn in the American west, it's that Indian reservations are hot tourist attractions--at least if there's gambling. And here, the Mescalero Apache tribe had gambling. As we passed through Ruidoso Downs, the trees of Lincoln National Forest gave way to a dog track, numerous hotels, restaurants, you name it.

As we turned south into the reservation proper, the tourist attractions largely disappeared, but the trees did not, and though the snow had stopped, we could still see it everywhere around us:

We passed through the town of Mescalero, where both Dad and I noted a striking difference between it and the towns we'd seen in the Navajo lands of the Four Corners area; there was new construction, plenty of public artwork proudly featuring tribal themes, and a generally more affluent vibe than we'd seen near Ship Rock in 2008. I don't know if the tourist dollars are the only reason for the difference, but Mescalero definitely looked like a more appealing place to live.

Finally, we coasted down the far side of the Sacramentos, and it was immediately apparent what lay ahead of us, just beyond Alamogordo:

Yep, there they were: the legendary White Sands. A basin of gypsum crystals worn down to grains by wind (and occasional water), and the home of both White Sands Missile Base and White Sands National Monument.

We pulled into Alamogordo, grabbed lunch at a Sonic drive-in (by far the most common fast-food option in this part of the world), dropped off the bags at the hotel, and drove off to WSNM to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss, in a nutshell, is this: around 250 square miles of pure white dunes, some rising to enormous heights:


That's Dad getting his camera bag from the Enclave, while Ian scopes out the landscape from atop a dune. This wasn't anywhere close to the tallest dune we saw; it was just the one we climbed, having reached the end of the eight-mile drive into the heart of the monument's grounds. By the time we reached this area, even the stubbornest yuccas had given up on trying to eke out a living on the sands, and the drifting grains were so numerous that they had to be cleared from the roads by snowplow. From the top of the dunes, the view was all but extraterrestrial:

Okay, granted, the eerie quality of the scene was not one bit decreased by the enormous bank of storm clouds roiling to the east, but I think even under clear skies, this would have been pretty striking. Interestingly, with a ski resort within driving distance, many of the folks in the Alamogordo area come out to the park for purposes of using the sands as snow; they bring their sleds and discs and plow happily down the slopes, rejoicing in the fact that gypsum doesn't store heat that well, allowing them to avoid burning their bare feet (or other body parts) in the sand. The signs at the monument even warn visitors to take care when "sand surfing," though we did not see anyone trying to hang ten on a board.



7:41 AM