I must massage a bunch of photographs for the next posting, and that will take most of the time I would today spend researching and writing the next chapter of Java Chronicles. However, here’s a digression - I told you there would be digressions.
Drinking (alcohol that is) always depresses me, which is why I don’t drink often, and never drink very much. Forget the dehydration, it’s the loss of outlook that I consider a hangover. Its probably been this way as long as I’ve been an adult, but it really became apparent once I trained in Reiki. I found then that the slightest amount of alcohol grossly inhibited my sight, and, discovering also that the effect lasted a couple of days, I stopped drinking at all for a few months. Now, I just accept the consequences, and indulge rarely.
Anyway, I saw some excellent music last night, had a couple of beers, and felt happiness in the company of friends. That’s a special kind of happiness, the kind that nothing can ever take away, and it comes from the kind of distributed love that sustains the members of any community. But, the morning was different. I woke to a chill, grey day, and thought of “California Dreaming”.
A little cat jumped up on my bed, and snuggled up to my chest, purring and pushing his forefeet and closing his eyes - giving the kind of soft love that a cat gives so well. And I felt the emptiness that’s been residing in my heart for months now. Having let slide the denial and distractions I had applied like a compress over a pavement burn, I felt the emptiness prominently. I didn’t want to be feeling that way, but that’s not the kind of thing one really gets a choice in. Once you open yourself to another, when the options are closed off, grief is inevitable. Still, why can’t it be sunny?
Seeking optimism, I thought of collating photographs of Colorado, and the joy of re-living the experiences in order to share them with you all. And, then, I realized that I have the power to travel back to Cerrillos, or Taos, or the Rio Grande in my mind, and to dwell in the sun and adventure. And, it would be so very easy to spend the next couple of hours catatonic, but happy. But, that’s not the way forward, and the cat, Gabriel - the messenger, is insistent.
So, “California Dreaming” could not be suppressed, and I have my own version. I wondered why I had felt such a strong sense of homecoming in New Mexico, particularly in the area around Santa Fe. I recalled that although I was born in Manhattan, and I have long claimed my formative years to have been as a city kid, in truth I spent my infancy and toddlerhood (no, that’s not recognized by the spell checker) in the hills of Burbank. Yes, that’s right, my earliest experiences of the environment beyond my mother are of the sun and heat and canyons and hills of California, and those are not so very much different than the surroundings at Madrid, or Cerrillos! In that child mind that is at the core of us all, I had indeed come home to where I had been nurtured!
So my friends, I owe these thoughts to a little black and white cat, whose greatest adventures are batting a stuffed mouse around, or boxing with a Maine Coon twice his size, or some mysteries he keeps from me in his wanderings outside. I will correct the photographs today, but will wait for some sunny hours to re-visit Colorado with you.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Durango, or, How I Survive a Dip in Pagosa and Discover a True Paradise!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The way to Colorado lies on the western side of the Carson National Forest, continuing up the Rio Chama valley towards the San Juan mountains. As I said before, the highlands (higher lands?) of the Carson National Forest are really a southern spur of the San Juan Mountains. To the west is a vast expanse of high plains. So, the San Juan’s, which already have some snow on them in October, dominate the landscape. They are magnetic!
In the town of Chama, 84 turns left towards Dulce, and NM 17 bears off to the northeast, right into the San Juan’s, through Cumbres Pass (10,022 ft) and La Managa Pass (10,230 ft), back towards the Rio Grande National Forest and the Rio Grande valley. This is very inviting, and actually had been an alternate route from Taos, but I’m intent on getting to Durango, so I postpone this trip for another time - some summertime!
Driving west on 84, the terrain is clearly wetter, there are grasslands, creekbeds and thick spruce and aspen forests. Halfway to Dulce from Chama, 84 turns northerly into the San Juan foothills, and starts to wind between lush ranches and forests. Sometime after crossing the border into Colorado, I notice a sign on the shoulder, rather like the “mowing ahead” signs we see here during the summer, but this sign says instead “Cattle Drive ahead”. Cattle Drive Ahead? I’ve got to know!!
Digressing again, at one point in that European trip from 1970, I was in Austria. Austria is a very beautiful country. They had, maybe still have, a policy that for every tree cut, two must be planted. As a result, there is no barren terrain, there are farms, towns, cities, and forests. I had gotten to Austria from Munich (ah - there’s a story for that city too), via Salzburg, to Graz. At Graz, I was able to tour an armory from the 16th - 17th centuries. The Moors had been invading Europe (I understand that Flamenco is a consequence of those invasions into Spain), and at Graz a large armory of weapons and armor had been assembled to repel the invaders. Indeed, the defenders were successful, and although there was much fighting at Graz, the taking of Vienna was thwarted, and the invaders were fought to a standoff. The armory has been preserved intact since 1551! Then, and I’m supposing that is no longer true today, on payment of a small fee, I was able to wander the five floors of weapons, arrayed as if in a warehouse - which indeed it had been - without inhibition. My strongest memory of that afternoon, other than the amazing freedom to wander about and touch pieces that would be behind glass if in NYC, was noticing one breastplate with a perfectly round, roughly 5/8 inch diameter, dent in it. I supposed that the breastplate had saved its wearer from a lead ball shot from some archaic wheellock firearm.
After Graz, I went to a campground in a small town called Langenwang, a bit closer to Vienna. There are many stories to tell about that stay, but the one that belongs here is about cattle. One day, headed I recall not where on one of the pastoral roads, I became engaged in a cattle drive. Well more of a milk drive, because they were milk cows being herded from one pasture to another, or from pasture to barn. My little white Opel became surrounded by large, thankfully docile, black cows, guided by a somewhat amused and annoyed herder with - yes - a staff! The Brothers Grimm appeared in my backseat, a white swan landed upon my hood, and I awaited a clear road, entertained Grimmly.
But in Colorado, it seems there are no cattle on the highway! Then, just as I’ve been lulled by the exquisite valley, there in front of me is a herd of perhaps 50 steers! They’re moving downhill, on the opposite side of the road, and traffic is backed up behind them as if they were a stopped schoolbus. They’re accompanied by a half dozen riders, men and women, and three or four dogs. The riders are keeping the cattle moving downhill, and keeping them to their lane (double yellow after all!). The dogs are nipping at the strays’ heels, and the riders are directing the dogs and generally pressing the back of the herd. All wearing cowboy hats of course (except the dogs)!
84 ends in Colorado at Pagosa Springs. To the right (east), lie the San Juan mountains and Wolf Creek ski area (for those of you who like to know those kinds of things). Pagosa Springs is located on the San Juan River, which is about the size of the Musconetcong there. There’s not a lot to Pagosa Springs, its rather a main street (Pagosa Street) sort of town, with a lot of restaurants and motels on the way in. I’m heading for the resort however, and on spotting some steaming pools, I turn off the main road. Fortuitously, I’ve found the resort, called, appropriately enough, “The Springs”.
The concierge plays the silly “its Saturday, I’ll have to see if there’s anything available” game with me while she evaluates me, and finally I get a room. Access to the various pools comes with the room, and although the room is expensive, it’s a lot easier to lodge there than to go elsewhere, buy a day ticket and have to go back and forth. They provide nice heavy terrycloth bathrobes, and soft towels on demand. There are perhaps a dozen different pools, in different sizes, at different temperatures, and with different amenities (waterfalls, better looking women). There’s also a small number of “adult” pools in a segregated area. I ask what do they mean by “adult”, and the best I get is that children aren’t allowed. Duh! I saw nothing else that actually distinguished the adult pools from the others, other than a fairly elegant gas fired outdoor fire place of the circular basin sort, but maybe I just wasn’t there at the “right” time.
The air was cooling quickly as the sun was heading towards setting, and I went for the hottest pool, which at 111 degrees was pretty toasty. A bit of time in there, and I moved on to a slightly cooler, but slightly larger pool nearby. Getting bored there, I went back to the hottest pool. That pool was about waist deep, and access was via a single step at the side with a central handrail. When I had first gone in, I noticed a large chip out of the concrete plaster covered step. I wanted to avoid stepping on that loose chip when going back, so I carefully looked into the pool for the chip, and stepped down with my right foot so as to land just to the left of the chip. Unfortunately, the step was not a continuous ledge, and I kept going! An intense pain shot into my left thigh as I tried to stop my fall, and the best I was able to do was slow myself down enough that I maintained just a little bit of decorum as I kept from landing on another occupant! Ow! I still don’t know exactly what I did to that muscle or tendon, but I could barely walk and couldn’t ascend a stairway!
I soaked my leg, took some aspirin, rested a bit, and headed out for dinner, choosing an Asian restaurant listed in the resort guide. You guessed it, I tried walking instead of driving. Well, I had thought that getting my throat cut and my spine disassembled gave me some empathy with the various injured people I’ve run into over the past 30 years investigating accidents. Well, that was nothing compared to trying to walk what turned out to be about two miles (round trip) in the chilly Colorado evening, with my left leg unable to support my weight unless I had my knee locked. I thought about Gunsmoke! The worst was that every dozen or so steps, I’d lose control, my leg would flex, and the pain would stop me in mid-stride.
After dinner, I went back into one of the pools (adult) to soak my thigh, took some more aspirin (wonder drug) and Xanaflex (another wonder drug) to keep whatever was injured from spasm, and went to sleep.
Sunday, October 10, 2010.
The next morning another dip, an inept encounter with two cute women whom my pain didn’t keep me from eying up, but whom my limp kept me from being comfortable with, a walk (no, I don’t give up - I’m a stubborn German) into town looking for film, and back into the car for breakfast and then Durango!! That leg continued to give me trouble the next few days, and made some of my intended excursions impossible, but so it goes!
Oh. The sulfur. I forgot about the sulfur. The air in Pagosa smells like sulfur. The springs are sulfur water. The sulfur gets into your pores. Even clothing that you’ve put onto your dry body after showering winds up smelling of sulfur. Three washings at home and my bathing suit still smells like sulfur. I’m sure the water is healthful, some people even drink it, but everybody smells like they got seriously paranoid with some 1950's acne remedy!
The road to Durango lies through Bayfield. The terrain is hilly, and the road is mostly narrow as it winds between the various hills. No longer are there the expansive vistas of New Mexico, in fact, at some points I rather felt like I was in the southern Appalachians - perhaps Tennessee or western Virginia. Rounding a sweeping bend I saw a sign for jerky: elk jerky, deer jerky, buffalo jerky. HAD to stop. Wound up in a nice half hour discussion with the woman running the stand, and she told me that her jerky was pure (not true), and good (quite true). She used to live in Durango, until it got too crowded for her, so she moved to Bayfield. Now, I’m having a hard time conceiving that any place in the Four Corners area is too crowded for anybody, too commercial perhaps, but too crowded - no. So, I open a discussion about New Jersey, and what too crowded might mean to me. Its all in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure that somebody from Delhi thinks New Jersey really is the Garden State! She is quite cordial, assures me that I’ll like Durango, and welcomes me to move to Bayfield! The 25 or so dollars of jerky sustained me quite nicely at odd times over the next few days, along with the plentiful supply of Brach’s Harvest Mix that I had imported from New Jersey.
Finally, Durango. Unfortunately for Durango, the approach is through a modern built-up commercial area and is rather unattractive. But, again trusting to the Fates that have guided me well for many travels over many decades, I finally make an opportune but illogical right turn, and wind up on the road to Fort Lewis College! That road crosses Main Avenue, and I’ve arrived! Cruising around a bit, I locate the restaurant where I’m going to meet a friend, and then drive up to the College to get my mental map firmed up.
Durango is pretty much a Main Street city on the Animas River. There are serious ridges, mountains, and mesas on the east and west of the City. The old City is on the eastern side of the river, at the foot of the mesa on which Fort Lewis College is built. There’s a residential district starting just a block off the main street, leading up to the edge of the mesa. Mostly small homes, with front porches, landscaped lawns, trees, people out walking and bicycling - perfectly charming. I got a little lost, disoriented at least, and obtained some directions from a woman tending her garden, without getting that dose of fear that exists whenever I (as a stranger) try to communicate with a woman on the street in New Jersey. Maybe she was armed.
I’ve a little time to kill, so I park my SUV near the restaurant, Carver Brewing Company, and walk Main Avenue. It was very inviting. No closed stores. Couples, singles, children, elders, walking the street, shopping or just strolling. Real stores, a real record shop, a real camera store, some tourist establishments, a huge candy store, restaurants, whatever you could want. Really not much bigger than a good sized NJ mall, but about an order of magnitude more diverse, and infinitely more attractive!
Two PM arrives, my friend arrives (by the way, did I mention that one can find parking on the main street?), and Carver Brewing turns out to have some of the best beer I’ve ever tasted! I get some recommendations for lodging, and finally check into a small 1920's hotel, the Leland House, that was converted from an apartment house, and which is associated with the 1890's Rochester Hotel just across the street. The place is decorated in early 20th c. boxing memorabilia and historic Durango photographs. I’m loving it!
A quick shower, a brief rest, and back out onto the streets. Durango has a working, narrow gauge steam railway, with an associated museum and well equipped repair and restoration shop. The whistle blows regularly, as the train crosses many streets on its route north to Silverton, and even the sound of steam is audible at my lodgings! Wanting some photos (I didn’t bring my flash, and now was the first, and only, time I regretted that omission), I walked down to the terminal, and watched the machinations of moving engines and cars about for the next day. The light was waning however, and no photos were possible.
Dinner at a Mongolian restaurant, which was wonderful, and I’m thinking that perhaps I could call my kids up, have them ship my stuff, and that I could move to Durango the next morning.
The way to Colorado lies on the western side of the Carson National Forest, continuing up the Rio Chama valley towards the San Juan mountains. As I said before, the highlands (higher lands?) of the Carson National Forest are really a southern spur of the San Juan Mountains. To the west is a vast expanse of high plains. So, the San Juan’s, which already have some snow on them in October, dominate the landscape. They are magnetic!
In the town of Chama, 84 turns left towards Dulce, and NM 17 bears off to the northeast, right into the San Juan’s, through Cumbres Pass (10,022 ft) and La Managa Pass (10,230 ft), back towards the Rio Grande National Forest and the Rio Grande valley. This is very inviting, and actually had been an alternate route from Taos, but I’m intent on getting to Durango, so I postpone this trip for another time - some summertime!
Driving west on 84, the terrain is clearly wetter, there are grasslands, creekbeds and thick spruce and aspen forests. Halfway to Dulce from Chama, 84 turns northerly into the San Juan foothills, and starts to wind between lush ranches and forests. Sometime after crossing the border into Colorado, I notice a sign on the shoulder, rather like the “mowing ahead” signs we see here during the summer, but this sign says instead “Cattle Drive ahead”. Cattle Drive Ahead? I’ve got to know!!
Digressing again, at one point in that European trip from 1970, I was in Austria. Austria is a very beautiful country. They had, maybe still have, a policy that for every tree cut, two must be planted. As a result, there is no barren terrain, there are farms, towns, cities, and forests. I had gotten to Austria from Munich (ah - there’s a story for that city too), via Salzburg, to Graz. At Graz, I was able to tour an armory from the 16th - 17th centuries. The Moors had been invading Europe (I understand that Flamenco is a consequence of those invasions into Spain), and at Graz a large armory of weapons and armor had been assembled to repel the invaders. Indeed, the defenders were successful, and although there was much fighting at Graz, the taking of Vienna was thwarted, and the invaders were fought to a standoff. The armory has been preserved intact since 1551! Then, and I’m supposing that is no longer true today, on payment of a small fee, I was able to wander the five floors of weapons, arrayed as if in a warehouse - which indeed it had been - without inhibition. My strongest memory of that afternoon, other than the amazing freedom to wander about and touch pieces that would be behind glass if in NYC, was noticing one breastplate with a perfectly round, roughly 5/8 inch diameter, dent in it. I supposed that the breastplate had saved its wearer from a lead ball shot from some archaic wheellock firearm.
After Graz, I went to a campground in a small town called Langenwang, a bit closer to Vienna. There are many stories to tell about that stay, but the one that belongs here is about cattle. One day, headed I recall not where on one of the pastoral roads, I became engaged in a cattle drive. Well more of a milk drive, because they were milk cows being herded from one pasture to another, or from pasture to barn. My little white Opel became surrounded by large, thankfully docile, black cows, guided by a somewhat amused and annoyed herder with - yes - a staff! The Brothers Grimm appeared in my backseat, a white swan landed upon my hood, and I awaited a clear road, entertained Grimmly.
But in Colorado, it seems there are no cattle on the highway! Then, just as I’ve been lulled by the exquisite valley, there in front of me is a herd of perhaps 50 steers! They’re moving downhill, on the opposite side of the road, and traffic is backed up behind them as if they were a stopped schoolbus. They’re accompanied by a half dozen riders, men and women, and three or four dogs. The riders are keeping the cattle moving downhill, and keeping them to their lane (double yellow after all!). The dogs are nipping at the strays’ heels, and the riders are directing the dogs and generally pressing the back of the herd. All wearing cowboy hats of course (except the dogs)!
84 ends in Colorado at Pagosa Springs. To the right (east), lie the San Juan mountains and Wolf Creek ski area (for those of you who like to know those kinds of things). Pagosa Springs is located on the San Juan River, which is about the size of the Musconetcong there. There’s not a lot to Pagosa Springs, its rather a main street (Pagosa Street) sort of town, with a lot of restaurants and motels on the way in. I’m heading for the resort however, and on spotting some steaming pools, I turn off the main road. Fortuitously, I’ve found the resort, called, appropriately enough, “The Springs”.
The concierge plays the silly “its Saturday, I’ll have to see if there’s anything available” game with me while she evaluates me, and finally I get a room. Access to the various pools comes with the room, and although the room is expensive, it’s a lot easier to lodge there than to go elsewhere, buy a day ticket and have to go back and forth. They provide nice heavy terrycloth bathrobes, and soft towels on demand. There are perhaps a dozen different pools, in different sizes, at different temperatures, and with different amenities (waterfalls, better looking women). There’s also a small number of “adult” pools in a segregated area. I ask what do they mean by “adult”, and the best I get is that children aren’t allowed. Duh! I saw nothing else that actually distinguished the adult pools from the others, other than a fairly elegant gas fired outdoor fire place of the circular basin sort, but maybe I just wasn’t there at the “right” time.
The air was cooling quickly as the sun was heading towards setting, and I went for the hottest pool, which at 111 degrees was pretty toasty. A bit of time in there, and I moved on to a slightly cooler, but slightly larger pool nearby. Getting bored there, I went back to the hottest pool. That pool was about waist deep, and access was via a single step at the side with a central handrail. When I had first gone in, I noticed a large chip out of the concrete plaster covered step. I wanted to avoid stepping on that loose chip when going back, so I carefully looked into the pool for the chip, and stepped down with my right foot so as to land just to the left of the chip. Unfortunately, the step was not a continuous ledge, and I kept going! An intense pain shot into my left thigh as I tried to stop my fall, and the best I was able to do was slow myself down enough that I maintained just a little bit of decorum as I kept from landing on another occupant! Ow! I still don’t know exactly what I did to that muscle or tendon, but I could barely walk and couldn’t ascend a stairway!
I soaked my leg, took some aspirin, rested a bit, and headed out for dinner, choosing an Asian restaurant listed in the resort guide. You guessed it, I tried walking instead of driving. Well, I had thought that getting my throat cut and my spine disassembled gave me some empathy with the various injured people I’ve run into over the past 30 years investigating accidents. Well, that was nothing compared to trying to walk what turned out to be about two miles (round trip) in the chilly Colorado evening, with my left leg unable to support my weight unless I had my knee locked. I thought about Gunsmoke! The worst was that every dozen or so steps, I’d lose control, my leg would flex, and the pain would stop me in mid-stride.
After dinner, I went back into one of the pools (adult) to soak my thigh, took some more aspirin (wonder drug) and Xanaflex (another wonder drug) to keep whatever was injured from spasm, and went to sleep.
Sunday, October 10, 2010.
The next morning another dip, an inept encounter with two cute women whom my pain didn’t keep me from eying up, but whom my limp kept me from being comfortable with, a walk (no, I don’t give up - I’m a stubborn German) into town looking for film, and back into the car for breakfast and then Durango!! That leg continued to give me trouble the next few days, and made some of my intended excursions impossible, but so it goes!
Oh. The sulfur. I forgot about the sulfur. The air in Pagosa smells like sulfur. The springs are sulfur water. The sulfur gets into your pores. Even clothing that you’ve put onto your dry body after showering winds up smelling of sulfur. Three washings at home and my bathing suit still smells like sulfur. I’m sure the water is healthful, some people even drink it, but everybody smells like they got seriously paranoid with some 1950's acne remedy!
The road to Durango lies through Bayfield. The terrain is hilly, and the road is mostly narrow as it winds between the various hills. No longer are there the expansive vistas of New Mexico, in fact, at some points I rather felt like I was in the southern Appalachians - perhaps Tennessee or western Virginia. Rounding a sweeping bend I saw a sign for jerky: elk jerky, deer jerky, buffalo jerky. HAD to stop. Wound up in a nice half hour discussion with the woman running the stand, and she told me that her jerky was pure (not true), and good (quite true). She used to live in Durango, until it got too crowded for her, so she moved to Bayfield. Now, I’m having a hard time conceiving that any place in the Four Corners area is too crowded for anybody, too commercial perhaps, but too crowded - no. So, I open a discussion about New Jersey, and what too crowded might mean to me. Its all in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure that somebody from Delhi thinks New Jersey really is the Garden State! She is quite cordial, assures me that I’ll like Durango, and welcomes me to move to Bayfield! The 25 or so dollars of jerky sustained me quite nicely at odd times over the next few days, along with the plentiful supply of Brach’s Harvest Mix that I had imported from New Jersey.
Finally, Durango. Unfortunately for Durango, the approach is through a modern built-up commercial area and is rather unattractive. But, again trusting to the Fates that have guided me well for many travels over many decades, I finally make an opportune but illogical right turn, and wind up on the road to Fort Lewis College! That road crosses Main Avenue, and I’ve arrived! Cruising around a bit, I locate the restaurant where I’m going to meet a friend, and then drive up to the College to get my mental map firmed up.
Durango is pretty much a Main Street city on the Animas River. There are serious ridges, mountains, and mesas on the east and west of the City. The old City is on the eastern side of the river, at the foot of the mesa on which Fort Lewis College is built. There’s a residential district starting just a block off the main street, leading up to the edge of the mesa. Mostly small homes, with front porches, landscaped lawns, trees, people out walking and bicycling - perfectly charming. I got a little lost, disoriented at least, and obtained some directions from a woman tending her garden, without getting that dose of fear that exists whenever I (as a stranger) try to communicate with a woman on the street in New Jersey. Maybe she was armed.
I’ve a little time to kill, so I park my SUV near the restaurant, Carver Brewing Company, and walk Main Avenue. It was very inviting. No closed stores. Couples, singles, children, elders, walking the street, shopping or just strolling. Real stores, a real record shop, a real camera store, some tourist establishments, a huge candy store, restaurants, whatever you could want. Really not much bigger than a good sized NJ mall, but about an order of magnitude more diverse, and infinitely more attractive!
Two PM arrives, my friend arrives (by the way, did I mention that one can find parking on the main street?), and Carver Brewing turns out to have some of the best beer I’ve ever tasted! I get some recommendations for lodging, and finally check into a small 1920's hotel, the Leland House, that was converted from an apartment house, and which is associated with the 1890's Rochester Hotel just across the street. The place is decorated in early 20th c. boxing memorabilia and historic Durango photographs. I’m loving it!
A quick shower, a brief rest, and back out onto the streets. Durango has a working, narrow gauge steam railway, with an associated museum and well equipped repair and restoration shop. The whistle blows regularly, as the train crosses many streets on its route north to Silverton, and even the sound of steam is audible at my lodgings! Wanting some photos (I didn’t bring my flash, and now was the first, and only, time I regretted that omission), I walked down to the terminal, and watched the machinations of moving engines and cars about for the next day. The light was waning however, and no photos were possible.
Dinner at a Mongolian restaurant, which was wonderful, and I’m thinking that perhaps I could call my kids up, have them ship my stuff, and that I could move to Durango the next morning.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Durango? Or, how I get Distracted again!
Saturday, October 9, 2010.
Another exquisite morning in Taos, and my goal is Durango! I’m not actually supposing that I’m going to get to Durango, but Pagosa Springs would be close enough for the day! Out of Taos by the way I had come, but now with fresh batteries in the camera. First stop is the Rio Grande canyon to get the photos that had been missed on the way in. The vendors are beginning to set up in the parking lots on the eastern side of the bridge, and the canyon is dark with the morning shadows.
A walk out onto the bridge! I’m reminded, writing here, of my 1970 trip to Europe. One of the stops there was a campground in France, on the Gard River, at the Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is the remains of a circa 19 BC Roman aqueduct, originally constructed as a part of the water supply system for Nimes, France. It is reputed to be the highest of the Roman aqueducts (160 feet), and one of best preserved. Camping came with the opportunity to swim in the river, at the feet of the ancient structure. The swimming was delightful! I don’t recall the entire range of opportunities, but I vividly recall standing in mid-calf deep water, and watching sizeable fish hover in the eddies a foot downstream of my legs.
People have been crossing the aqueduct for centuries, in fact it owes its preservation to its use as a toll crossing in medieval times. Seeing others on the top, I decided to see what the top was about. Access to both the conduit and to the top was an easy climb in lightly wooded terrain. The top is wide enough to drive a car across, and appears strong enough to do so.
However, walking across, along the center of this causeway that one couldn’t possibly fall off of, peripheral vision announced to me in no uncertain terms that I was walking at least at 60 MPH, and I was completely out of control of my movements. Uncanny. Not vertigo - the sensation stopped as soon as I stopped - but instead a breakdown in my visual feedback system. A sense of being unable to keep control of my balance and position while walking. I suppose I could have shut my eyes and the sensation would have gone away, but that seemed like a pretty bad idea! By focusing on the pavement, and maintaining that concentration, I was able to walk, but it was extraordinarily difficult. Makes me wonder what a child, just learning to walk, experiences!
The same experience did not occur on the Rt. 64 bridge, apparently because the guardrails - which were non-existent on the Pont du Gard - were in peripheral vision, and thus my brain was receiving familiar visual cues.
Pont du Gard, looking downstream.
Pont du Gard again, looking more or less upstream. Swimming was at the foot in the foreground, hidden by the trees on the slope. Got up to the top at the end at the far left of this photo. Some steps had been cut into the top of the second tier and the bottom of third tier, that one could ascend to the top of the third tier.
By the time I finished taking photographs, a good number of vendors had set their wares out. Right at the end of the bridge, there was an older woman with tables of jewelry out. Browsing briefly, I immediately found some lapis earrings and a lapis stone, pierced as for a pendant. I knew that lapis would look stunning with my daughter’s hair (and I’m still hoping that she’ll pierce her ears that I can buy her many more earrings), and, knowing that a dear friend of mine is enamored of cobalt glass, I thought she’d enjoy lapis also, and would be able to work the lapis stone into a necklace for herself.
It was the vendor’s birthday, and we talked of her residence in the region. For years she had to haul water, but recently a communal well was drilled (she said the well had to go to the depth of the river), and water became plentiful! Wishing her a happy day, I walked on to see what else might be around.
Nearby there was a young man with a table full of turquoise and malachite cabochons at extremely low prices. It turned out that most of the pieces were flawed in some way, which gave reason for the attractive prices. However, I rather like some types of flaws in stones - as in wood and people, it is the flaws which give the character (I better think so because I’ve got lots n’ lots of flaws). One particular piece of turquoise, which looked like Sleeping Beauty, caught my attention, and it will be worked into the headstock of the OM sized guitar I’m finishing up now. Marked at $3, but he reduced it to $2, without asking, because of the flaw. To me, the flaw looks like a star in an azure sky, perhaps Venus at dawn.
Across the highway, to a leather worker. Extraordinarily energetic individual, years ago I would have said “speed freak”, but we got into a long discussion the drug trade in NM, during which he vociferously denied using any drugs. He explained that the (more or less) center of drug trafficking in northern NM was Espanola (remember I wrote that I didn’t like the energy in Espanola?). His leather work didn’t appeal to me, but he had a photograph of the bridge and canyon, that a friend of his had taken, for sale as both a postcard (dramatic color) and a panoramic print (dramatic format). I bought both.
Back into the car, thinking the next stop would be Pagosa Springs, but that was not to be. Just a few miles along, I passed the unusual, glittering, seeming free-form buildings that I had noticed on the way in to Taos. Earthships! There is an information center and model building, and an invitation to see what they’re about. Well, they are indeed impressive, and quite self-sustaining. I’ll leave it to your interest to search them on Google, here are some passing comments.
The primary construction modules are used automotive and small truck tires. The tires are stacked in courses like bricks, and then filled with rammed earth. The technique allows for curved walls, domes, etc. Where stuccoed with adobe or cement, the walls are fairly uniform. Where not covered, they are (to my eye) ugly, and smell of tires. I can’t help but think that while a more or less beneficial use of otherwise hard to recycle waste, it can’t ultimately be healthy to breathe the outgasses over years.
Elsewhere, and in addition to tires, walls are constructed with glass bottles and jars, wine bottles seeming to be predominant. I asked, and was told that bottles are readily available from willing donors. In that system, the bottles are laid on their sides, sometimes with the necks cut off, in adobe, and adobe plastered over. Where bottles are used with their necks cut off, the cut ends facing each other and to the center of the wall, a light transmitting wall can be constructed - yielding the glittering walls I had seen from the road.
Flat roofs are covered with rubber membranes, and collect water in 10,000 gallon cisterns.. They use conventional toilets, plumbed to a more or less conventional septic system, but instead of a subterranean leach field they use effluent gardens. Those gardens are not used for edible crops. I asked about composting toilets, and was told that they had been tried but had not worked out very well.
Graywater is filtered and used to irrigate interior gardens, used for ornamentals and kitchen garden type crops. As a result, the building interiors are rather more humid than the arid exteriors, and quite pleasant.
Building costs are high.
Leaving the Earthships, 64 runs westerly towards 84. North on 84 is towards Colorado and Pagosa Springs. South on 84 is towards Ghost Ranch. Now, it being Saturday, I’m expecting to eventually encounter traffic. But no, the very few cars I encounter ascending this southern spur of the San Juan mountains are inoffensive, and there is ample time to pay attention to the beauty. I decide that I’ll head south towards Ghost Ranch when I reach the option point.
On ascent, which starts immediately after leaving Tres Piedras, the terrain changes from the mostly flat sagebrush plain to rolling, but continuously ascending hills, rather like the foothills of the Poconos here in the east. The slopes are steeper though, and the vegetation is different. Where the Poconos are mixed hardwoods and some fully shaped conifers, Carson has mostly aspen and many precisely spired spruces. It being October, the aspens are gold against the spruces, exquisite! There’s an occasional lush farm, quite remote - and quite beautiful! I’m supposing winters are difficult.
This supposition is reinforced on the westerly side of the range spine. There, multiple switchbacks yield grand vistas, and the land seems harsher, like its been exposed to many millennia of cold, wet winds. There are many places where the road has apparently been washed out, and the washes filled with asphalt. I think that I don’t want to be on that road in the kind of weather that causes such powerful streams to flow over the roadway so as to excavate it and carry it in the chasms adjacent.
On reaching 84, I turn left towards Ghost Ranch. Why Ghost Ranch? Well, I want to see what Georgia O’Keefe saw. For the most part, we don’t get to see the environments in which artists have lived. Monet’s Giverny has been preserved that we can see what he saw, and we are free to see the places Ansel Adams photographed, but we can never see what Edward Hopper saw, and the Hudson Valley has been developed even beyond what the Hudson River School artists feared. Oh, yes, I’m sure you can come up with examples I’ve missed, but regardless of what you show, you will never be able to say that it is usual to be able to see what an artist of the past saw. Thus, to me, in October, 2010, I have a rare opportunity!
On the way south, there’s a small sign, a turnoff to Echo Amphitheater. I can’t resist, even though the name is itself an echo of all those roadside attractions billboarded into notoriety elsewhere. It’s a Bureau of Land Reclamation site, and there’s a trivial user fee, payable in cash or check only. The parking lot is at the head of a canyon, and a paved path leads into the canyon. There a signs warning to stay on the path as the terrain is sensitive, and there are a few pleasant, paved picnic sites just off the main path.
The walls of the canyon rise on both sides of the path. The distance between the walls is but one or two hundred yards. To the right is an eroded promontory revealing epochs of aggregation of the seabed. The lower strata are mostly pale red iron, then there comes a slightly darker region still iron red, then a chalk white region, topped with ochre and then earth brown. I wonder how far back into time I am walking.
The promentory at the easterly end of the northern wall of the canyon. That grey layer at the very top is what we would call topsoil. Its perhaps 20 - 30 inches thick in this photo.
The northern wall, or at least the top of it!
At the back of the canyon, there is indeed a natural amphitheater. The lower strata have eroded, and there is an enormous conchoidal fracture in the upper strata, such that a dome has formed. This is my first experience with such rock formations, and it opens my eyes to the possibility. There is even an oculus, though which running water has left a stain on the underside of the half dome. Of course, the echo must be tried!
The amphitheater itself. The above photos are to the right of this spot, and behind. There is a rocky ascent near the bottom of the amphitheater, that one can better get to the focus of the semi-dome.
Returning to my car, I see the first of many more shallow, conchoidal caves that have formed in the cliffs easterly of Echo Amphitheater. Days later, at Mesa Verde, I realize that most of the abodes there exist beneath such convenient fractures. The earths grow increasingly more colorful! Still, as beautiful as the colors of the earth at the Amphitheater are, they have not prepared me for arrival in the region of Ghost Ranch. To the west, in this arid land, is a lake! Apparently Rio Chama, which runs southeasterly from the Chama River Canyon Wilderness area, was dammed, creating a body of water called Abiquiu Lake/Reservoir.
To the east is Ghost Ranch, which extends in a semi-circle perhaps 2 miles away from the road, and to the foot of a large mesa. At the northerly and southerly ends of the ranch area, the mesa comes right up to the road. Its not startlingly high, but it is startlingly colored. While truth is that it is a limited palette, it seems that all the colors of an artist’s palette are there. No wonder Ms. O’Keefe chose to live there, she had chosen to live with her pigments! On closer examination, it is really only the iron reds that are present, tempered by occasional chalky, white strata, and occasional reduced iron greys. But, the impression is of a riot of color!
A lake! I can smell it!
There's no way a photo can do the colors justice.
I’m hot; I’m thirsty - the lake has tantalized me. And, while I was able to refill my water bottle at Echo Amphitheater, the water was so soft as to be flat and alkaline tasting and I’m wondering what it might do to my digestion; and I’m hungry - all I’ve had to eat is raisins and crystallized ginger from Albuquerque. A stop for gas finds a large convenience store, where I’m able to get water, but nothing that seems healthy to eat. So, back on the road, and more raisins on the way north to Pagosa (anybody remember Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska”?) I wonder what he ate?
Another exquisite morning in Taos, and my goal is Durango! I’m not actually supposing that I’m going to get to Durango, but Pagosa Springs would be close enough for the day! Out of Taos by the way I had come, but now with fresh batteries in the camera. First stop is the Rio Grande canyon to get the photos that had been missed on the way in. The vendors are beginning to set up in the parking lots on the eastern side of the bridge, and the canyon is dark with the morning shadows.
A walk out onto the bridge! I’m reminded, writing here, of my 1970 trip to Europe. One of the stops there was a campground in France, on the Gard River, at the Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is the remains of a circa 19 BC Roman aqueduct, originally constructed as a part of the water supply system for Nimes, France. It is reputed to be the highest of the Roman aqueducts (160 feet), and one of best preserved. Camping came with the opportunity to swim in the river, at the feet of the ancient structure. The swimming was delightful! I don’t recall the entire range of opportunities, but I vividly recall standing in mid-calf deep water, and watching sizeable fish hover in the eddies a foot downstream of my legs.
People have been crossing the aqueduct for centuries, in fact it owes its preservation to its use as a toll crossing in medieval times. Seeing others on the top, I decided to see what the top was about. Access to both the conduit and to the top was an easy climb in lightly wooded terrain. The top is wide enough to drive a car across, and appears strong enough to do so.
However, walking across, along the center of this causeway that one couldn’t possibly fall off of, peripheral vision announced to me in no uncertain terms that I was walking at least at 60 MPH, and I was completely out of control of my movements. Uncanny. Not vertigo - the sensation stopped as soon as I stopped - but instead a breakdown in my visual feedback system. A sense of being unable to keep control of my balance and position while walking. I suppose I could have shut my eyes and the sensation would have gone away, but that seemed like a pretty bad idea! By focusing on the pavement, and maintaining that concentration, I was able to walk, but it was extraordinarily difficult. Makes me wonder what a child, just learning to walk, experiences!
The same experience did not occur on the Rt. 64 bridge, apparently because the guardrails - which were non-existent on the Pont du Gard - were in peripheral vision, and thus my brain was receiving familiar visual cues.
Pont du Gard, looking downstream.
Pont du Gard again, looking more or less upstream. Swimming was at the foot in the foreground, hidden by the trees on the slope. Got up to the top at the end at the far left of this photo. Some steps had been cut into the top of the second tier and the bottom of third tier, that one could ascend to the top of the third tier.By the time I finished taking photographs, a good number of vendors had set their wares out. Right at the end of the bridge, there was an older woman with tables of jewelry out. Browsing briefly, I immediately found some lapis earrings and a lapis stone, pierced as for a pendant. I knew that lapis would look stunning with my daughter’s hair (and I’m still hoping that she’ll pierce her ears that I can buy her many more earrings), and, knowing that a dear friend of mine is enamored of cobalt glass, I thought she’d enjoy lapis also, and would be able to work the lapis stone into a necklace for herself.
It was the vendor’s birthday, and we talked of her residence in the region. For years she had to haul water, but recently a communal well was drilled (she said the well had to go to the depth of the river), and water became plentiful! Wishing her a happy day, I walked on to see what else might be around.
Nearby there was a young man with a table full of turquoise and malachite cabochons at extremely low prices. It turned out that most of the pieces were flawed in some way, which gave reason for the attractive prices. However, I rather like some types of flaws in stones - as in wood and people, it is the flaws which give the character (I better think so because I’ve got lots n’ lots of flaws). One particular piece of turquoise, which looked like Sleeping Beauty, caught my attention, and it will be worked into the headstock of the OM sized guitar I’m finishing up now. Marked at $3, but he reduced it to $2, without asking, because of the flaw. To me, the flaw looks like a star in an azure sky, perhaps Venus at dawn.
Across the highway, to a leather worker. Extraordinarily energetic individual, years ago I would have said “speed freak”, but we got into a long discussion the drug trade in NM, during which he vociferously denied using any drugs. He explained that the (more or less) center of drug trafficking in northern NM was Espanola (remember I wrote that I didn’t like the energy in Espanola?). His leather work didn’t appeal to me, but he had a photograph of the bridge and canyon, that a friend of his had taken, for sale as both a postcard (dramatic color) and a panoramic print (dramatic format). I bought both.
Back into the car, thinking the next stop would be Pagosa Springs, but that was not to be. Just a few miles along, I passed the unusual, glittering, seeming free-form buildings that I had noticed on the way in to Taos. Earthships! There is an information center and model building, and an invitation to see what they’re about. Well, they are indeed impressive, and quite self-sustaining. I’ll leave it to your interest to search them on Google, here are some passing comments.
The primary construction modules are used automotive and small truck tires. The tires are stacked in courses like bricks, and then filled with rammed earth. The technique allows for curved walls, domes, etc. Where stuccoed with adobe or cement, the walls are fairly uniform. Where not covered, they are (to my eye) ugly, and smell of tires. I can’t help but think that while a more or less beneficial use of otherwise hard to recycle waste, it can’t ultimately be healthy to breathe the outgasses over years.
Elsewhere, and in addition to tires, walls are constructed with glass bottles and jars, wine bottles seeming to be predominant. I asked, and was told that bottles are readily available from willing donors. In that system, the bottles are laid on their sides, sometimes with the necks cut off, in adobe, and adobe plastered over. Where bottles are used with their necks cut off, the cut ends facing each other and to the center of the wall, a light transmitting wall can be constructed - yielding the glittering walls I had seen from the road.
Flat roofs are covered with rubber membranes, and collect water in 10,000 gallon cisterns.. They use conventional toilets, plumbed to a more or less conventional septic system, but instead of a subterranean leach field they use effluent gardens. Those gardens are not used for edible crops. I asked about composting toilets, and was told that they had been tried but had not worked out very well.
Graywater is filtered and used to irrigate interior gardens, used for ornamentals and kitchen garden type crops. As a result, the building interiors are rather more humid than the arid exteriors, and quite pleasant.
Building costs are high.
Leaving the Earthships, 64 runs westerly towards 84. North on 84 is towards Colorado and Pagosa Springs. South on 84 is towards Ghost Ranch. Now, it being Saturday, I’m expecting to eventually encounter traffic. But no, the very few cars I encounter ascending this southern spur of the San Juan mountains are inoffensive, and there is ample time to pay attention to the beauty. I decide that I’ll head south towards Ghost Ranch when I reach the option point.
On ascent, which starts immediately after leaving Tres Piedras, the terrain changes from the mostly flat sagebrush plain to rolling, but continuously ascending hills, rather like the foothills of the Poconos here in the east. The slopes are steeper though, and the vegetation is different. Where the Poconos are mixed hardwoods and some fully shaped conifers, Carson has mostly aspen and many precisely spired spruces. It being October, the aspens are gold against the spruces, exquisite! There’s an occasional lush farm, quite remote - and quite beautiful! I’m supposing winters are difficult.
This supposition is reinforced on the westerly side of the range spine. There, multiple switchbacks yield grand vistas, and the land seems harsher, like its been exposed to many millennia of cold, wet winds. There are many places where the road has apparently been washed out, and the washes filled with asphalt. I think that I don’t want to be on that road in the kind of weather that causes such powerful streams to flow over the roadway so as to excavate it and carry it in the chasms adjacent.
On reaching 84, I turn left towards Ghost Ranch. Why Ghost Ranch? Well, I want to see what Georgia O’Keefe saw. For the most part, we don’t get to see the environments in which artists have lived. Monet’s Giverny has been preserved that we can see what he saw, and we are free to see the places Ansel Adams photographed, but we can never see what Edward Hopper saw, and the Hudson Valley has been developed even beyond what the Hudson River School artists feared. Oh, yes, I’m sure you can come up with examples I’ve missed, but regardless of what you show, you will never be able to say that it is usual to be able to see what an artist of the past saw. Thus, to me, in October, 2010, I have a rare opportunity!
On the way south, there’s a small sign, a turnoff to Echo Amphitheater. I can’t resist, even though the name is itself an echo of all those roadside attractions billboarded into notoriety elsewhere. It’s a Bureau of Land Reclamation site, and there’s a trivial user fee, payable in cash or check only. The parking lot is at the head of a canyon, and a paved path leads into the canyon. There a signs warning to stay on the path as the terrain is sensitive, and there are a few pleasant, paved picnic sites just off the main path.
The walls of the canyon rise on both sides of the path. The distance between the walls is but one or two hundred yards. To the right is an eroded promontory revealing epochs of aggregation of the seabed. The lower strata are mostly pale red iron, then there comes a slightly darker region still iron red, then a chalk white region, topped with ochre and then earth brown. I wonder how far back into time I am walking.
The promentory at the easterly end of the northern wall of the canyon. That grey layer at the very top is what we would call topsoil. Its perhaps 20 - 30 inches thick in this photo.
The northern wall, or at least the top of it!At the back of the canyon, there is indeed a natural amphitheater. The lower strata have eroded, and there is an enormous conchoidal fracture in the upper strata, such that a dome has formed. This is my first experience with such rock formations, and it opens my eyes to the possibility. There is even an oculus, though which running water has left a stain on the underside of the half dome. Of course, the echo must be tried!
The amphitheater itself. The above photos are to the right of this spot, and behind. There is a rocky ascent near the bottom of the amphitheater, that one can better get to the focus of the semi-dome.Returning to my car, I see the first of many more shallow, conchoidal caves that have formed in the cliffs easterly of Echo Amphitheater. Days later, at Mesa Verde, I realize that most of the abodes there exist beneath such convenient fractures. The earths grow increasingly more colorful! Still, as beautiful as the colors of the earth at the Amphitheater are, they have not prepared me for arrival in the region of Ghost Ranch. To the west, in this arid land, is a lake! Apparently Rio Chama, which runs southeasterly from the Chama River Canyon Wilderness area, was dammed, creating a body of water called Abiquiu Lake/Reservoir.
To the east is Ghost Ranch, which extends in a semi-circle perhaps 2 miles away from the road, and to the foot of a large mesa. At the northerly and southerly ends of the ranch area, the mesa comes right up to the road. Its not startlingly high, but it is startlingly colored. While truth is that it is a limited palette, it seems that all the colors of an artist’s palette are there. No wonder Ms. O’Keefe chose to live there, she had chosen to live with her pigments! On closer examination, it is really only the iron reds that are present, tempered by occasional chalky, white strata, and occasional reduced iron greys. But, the impression is of a riot of color!
A lake! I can smell it!
There's no way a photo can do the colors justice.I’m hot; I’m thirsty - the lake has tantalized me. And, while I was able to refill my water bottle at Echo Amphitheater, the water was so soft as to be flat and alkaline tasting and I’m wondering what it might do to my digestion; and I’m hungry - all I’ve had to eat is raisins and crystallized ginger from Albuquerque. A stop for gas finds a large convenience store, where I’m able to get water, but nothing that seems healthy to eat. So, back on the road, and more raisins on the way north to Pagosa (anybody remember Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska”?) I wonder what he ate?
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