When I awoke from an early nap I took after the massage, I thought that dinner might help. Walked to the Hollar where I had a great beer from Albuquerque, Marble IPA! Followed by dinner and more beer. Huge, thick slides of pork loin, braised in some rich, dark sauce, served over mashed potatoes, and topped with delicate, thin stalks of asparagus!
I was staying at the Java Junction, which has one delightful room, rather an efficiency apartment, available. Continental breakfast included, and the coffee is stellar! There's a deck in back of the apartment, and it gets dark and quiet at night. There are more stars than I've ever seen before - even when sailing!
Next morning, I immediately got to talk with some of the residents of Madrid. The water in Madrid is loaded with sulfur, although not nearly as much as the springs at Ojo Caliente or Pagosa. The residents claim the sulfur comes from the mining. Maybe. Anyway, drinking water is either imported, or complex filters/purifiers are used.
One of the men who were telling me tales of Madrid was one of the original settlers (squatters), who got in on the original sales of the lands. Madrid used to be a coal mining town, the museum director told me Madrid is the only place where hard coal is found overlying soft coal. For those of you who don’t understand the significance of that, hard coal (anthracite) is formed from soft coal subjected to pressure over a long period of time. Thus, if anthracite is overlying soft coal, the ground flipped upside down! Don’t ask me how that happened, but looking at those dramatic landscapes, Disney’s Land Before Time comes to mind. Anyway, about Madrid. The entire town had been owned by one man, who had inherited it, and who also allowed the squatters. Perhaps he partied with them, I didn’t ask. Despite some objections from some others, and the intervention of the Courts, he simply sold the land off to the squatters at trivial cost.
Later, on to Cerrillos! Cerrillos used to have turquoise mines, the claim is that they had been worked for at least a millennia before the Spanish started extracting turquoise, silver, and gold. The mines seem to be pretty much played out now, but stones are still mined, and I suspect that there are still traces of gold and silver to be found. However, as the mountains are now part of a preserved area, open for hiking, etc., I suspect that collecting is prohibited.
The streets are a pale ochre dirt, and surprisingly wide. While there may be a time when people are abundant, at 10:00 AM on a weekday morning I saw only the town drunk, two construction workers, and a small group of tourists looking for a particular shop. The construction workers told me that a film was about to be shot the next day. The town drunk told me that the dog, who was hanging out in the main intersection of the town (where there was actually a stop sign), and more effectively stopping me than the sign, just wanted to chase the tires.
The town is often used for films, as it has a relatively untouched Old West character about it. I easily fell into the fantasy, and could see Cisco Kid brushing the dust off his shoulders, while Gary Cooper faced him down thinking he was out to rob the bank! Poor Cisco, always misunderstood!
I met an artist there, a man who makes constructions, sort of paintings but more three dimensional, from used abrasive belts. He collects the vari-colored belts from various donors - the belts come in many widths up to about 52 inches, and all have residues of whatever had been sanded - into abstracted pictures or fully abstract patterns. They are sort of like sand paintings, and beg to be touched. He claimed to be the only person doing this work, and sells worldwide for high prices.
The man also offered to sell, or rent, me a home he had built next door to his studio for his son. Seems his son lives with his family in NJ, and doesn’t want to move to Cerrillos, so they are trying to sell the home. Nice place, and I’d like to escape NJ, but I’m thinking Cerrillos might prove to be a bit too quite for me - after all, it is officially a ghost town! I haven't yet learned that you very much must look beneath first impressions in NM - there's a LOT of substance beneath the protective coloration!
Lunch a bit farther north, and then back towards Madrid and through it towards Albuquerque to see Sandia Crest. At 10653 feet, it would be the highest altitude I’d ever been at (previously, at age 24, about 9300 feet in the Alps), so the adventure moves on. I’m already feeling the altitude in Madrid and Cerrillos, and I’m feeling a little intimidated at the extra 4000 I’m about to add, but I’m thinking breathing deeply is working, and I still have more lung capacity available. (I’m conveniently ignoring the issue - which I wasn’t to discover until I spoke with a ranger at the top of Sandia Crest - that the problem isn’t lung capacity, it’s the number of red blood cells available, and that it takes about two weeks to adapt). Of course incipient anoxia is almost as good as beer in losing inhibitions.
Sandia Crest is quite beautiful, and I recommend it highly. But, unless you’re adapted, don’t try to bike up it, or walk up it. I found just the last 50 or so feet exhausting. Not heart pounding, just exhausting. I asked a ranger I met near the summit about the geology. I was wondering how, if the area was an ancient seabed, there appeared to be volcanic formations. He explained that the formations were not volcanic at all. It seems that the plate that forms North America is moving underneath the Pacific Plate in CA (yes CA is going to drop into the sea). The plate is also sinking on the East Coast (which is why we have such a long continental shelf). The plates don’t bend to well, so in a series of cataclysms the plates fractured east of the Rockies and rose in approximately 150 foot increments, to raise the seabed more than a mile above sea level. Granite rocks, presumably from the crust underlying the seabed, were literally upended to form pinnacles. The ranger described that the cataclysms created such heat and shockwaves that life was (more or less) extinguished for hundreds of miles. Doesn’t sound like a good day!
Back down the mountain to Madrid, and a little shopping - silver and turquoise for my daughter! Madrid is a cute town, lots of shopping for all those who need more things. Some local artisans remain, and they're a delight to talk with. The redistribution of wealth away from the middle class has hit them hard.
Soon thereafter back to the Hollar for too much of that great IPA, some long and inebriated discussions with an award winning washboard bass player who claimed to play with Willie Nelson, and made the best BBQ, and a very dark walk back to Java Junction. I don’t remember dinner, but I know I enjoyed it!
sounds like you've converted, ascended, etc, ron!
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