Unexpected Surprise on a Hike in the Rocky Mountains

When is the last time you were the recipient of a totally unexpected good deed from a stranger?  Ours happened yesterday, and the story is worth re-telling.

We set our for a hike in the mountains, and, never having tried the area around Ward, Colorado (elev. 9000+ feet) we decided to try that area.  One of our guidebooks had suggested the Brainard Lake area as especially promising.  We drove into Ward, one of the hardscrabble Colorado towns not frequented by tourists.  If you ever wonder where the 1960s counterculture went, just take a trip through towns like Ward.  I stopped at the general store (advice from locals is always welcome) and found a friendly attendant who suggested if I did not want to purchase a map, I could take a look at the store copy.  As I said, the old counterculture is alive and well.  She suggested the Sourdough Trail because it is a loop (hikers end up where they began) and she also suggested that the entrance fee for cars to Brainard State Park is $9.00, but we could probably park just outside the park entrance for free.  I love insiders' advice!

So we headed up, up, up to Brainard State Park, and left the car outside the entrance.  Cost savings:  one map and one parking fee.  The hike to the Sourdough Trail was an easy two miles; the trail was well marked; and, best of all, we were the ONLY ones on the trail.  We stopped several times just to listen to the silence.  The Sourdough Trail was wonderful, proceeding through aspen groves, pine forests not yet ravaged by the pernicious beetle that has hit the Western Slope so badly, and came out into a huge meadow full of wildflowers just about lunchtime.  After lunch in our paradise, we decided it was time for a little yoga in the wild.  Perfect!

We faithfully followed Sourdough trail signs and cam out at Camp Dick campgrounds, which did not look at all like we remembered.  We hiked on down the road, assuming we would arrive at the entrance and our car and found that the trail had not been a loop at all!  When we found a campground host, he got out his map and we found that we were over 9 miles from where we had entered.  After a 9 mile hike, we had 9 miles to go?  Major panic.

Then this friendly stranger from Yuma, AZ, working here in the summer, asked if we would like for him to drive us to our car.  Would we like it!  We were overjoyed.  After we returned to our car, we went back to the store in Ward, and this time we purchased a map.  It turns out that there is a loop, but it involves switching to the Wapiti ski trail halfway around the loop.  If we had only known....

It was an adventure.  And we lived to tell about it and to hike another day.

Blessed Event?

Yesterday morning Noreen noticed a deer on the berm, just a few feet from our bedroom windows, so she  rushed outside to shoo it away.  The deer seemed resistant and acted as if she did not want to leave.  Noreen came back in saying, "those deer are so persistent!  I couldn't get that one deer out of the yard."

Fast forward an hour or so when the furniture repair people were arriving to return some furniture we were having fixed.  The truck driver said, "look at that little bitty deer."  I no longer jump when I hear mention of wildlife in our neighborhood (unless it is really wild) so I just commented that we get a lot of deer around here.  When he said he had never seen a deer so small, I decided I had to take a look.  So here is what I found:

This fawn had just been born!  No wonder the Mama had been hanging around!  Either she had heard that there are good eats at this birthing station or she had just given birth and was reluctant to get too far away from her fawn.

This baby was so still and so serene that I thought something must be wrong with it, and I started imagining all kinds of bad scenarios such as its having been abandoned by its mother, and the like.  It was even willing for me to rush inside and grab the camera and then comfortable posing while I shot pictures.

I continued checking on the fawn every 30 minutes or so, and, sure enough, in about an hour the spot was bare.  Mama must have rescued Bambi!

Some animal faces are so homely that I say it is a face that only a mother could love.  In this case, I'd say this is a face that everyone can love.

Progress on the mint

The mint is growing well, and it's a good thing, as the Kentucky Derby is not far off!  This year we have four varieties of mint--spearmint, peppermint, orange mint, and basil mint.  Sounds like the basis for some awesome mint juleps!

The Spring Garden

The spring garden is alive and well, and we are enjoying its bounty daily. 

I am still learning what can grow when in this new environment, so the picture represents both fall and spring plantings.  The carrots on the left were sown in October, and made it through our strange winter very well.  We have been eating the carrots from March on.  On the other hand, the beets sown at the same time did not make it through the winter, and the beets on the right were sown in March.  The Swiss chard in the pots at the rear were planted from seedlings in October, but they appeared dead as winter yielded to spring in February.  Then they started growing again!

The roses and clematis in the back of the picture (the front of the garden) came through the winter perfectly, and the climbing roses have already produced one profusion of fragrant flowers, and are now forming buds for the second bloom.  The big surprise was the Lady Banks rose:

 This profusion of blossoms was a wonderful surprise!  We planted an identical rose near the house which has to date produced one or two puny yellow flowers.  This plant--only a year old--was a riot of blossoms for several weeks.  How ironic that it is safe (from the deer) inside our fenced compound, since this is the one rose that deer will not nibble on!

The peach tree had many blossoms that are now tiny fruits.  The challenge this year will be to harvest the bounty before some critter does (as happened last year).  

The nectarine tree (planted bare root last year) had several blossoms which are now tiny fruits, but the apricot tree is still in its youth, and not yet producing.  I have big hopes for next year!

The pole beans are growing vigorously, and the peas began producing tender little pea pods almost as soon as the plants were out of the ground.

Hot weather is beginning to set in, so the spring harvest will take place over the next couple of weeks, and tomatoes and peppers will soon take their places.

Fiesta!

After a long respite, the blog is back!  And what better way to bring it back than the river parade at San Antonio's Fiesta!

 

Almost everyone has heard of San Antonio's famous river walk, the most impressive man-made tourist attraction of any city anywhere.  In fact, the San Antonio river is real, but before some genius dreamed up the river walk it was just a sleepy little muddy stream.  Now it is a year-round tourist destination, with all its trendy shops, hotels, and restaurants.  Well, not exactly a year round destination, as the city fathers drain the river in January to clean out a year's worth of gunk so that the rest of the year it can look pristine.  Don't ever make the mistake of a vacation to San Antonio when the "river"  is just a smelly trench through town!

 

And what is Fiesta?  A week-long party celebrating San Antonio culture--and the best event is surely the annual river parade.  Imagine a parade made up exclusively of people like the Shriners--those men in fezes who ride little motorcycles and have a very good time doing so.  This parade is made up of floats with a lot of participants having a lot of fun.

And, there are a lot of spectators, also having a very good time (this year the crowd estimate was 250,000).

This rather large family of ducklings was hoping for bread crumbs from the merry makers, but instead all that was thrown from the floats was candy!

The most fun for me, of course is watching the reaction of the children to the parade, and one child in particular.

Lest it appear that the parade is all fun and games, it is important to note that each float is sponsored by a firm or an organization and highlights one of the children's agencies in San Antonio.  This year the Cavaliers, the sponsors of Fiesta, will donate over $200,000 to support children's programs in Bexar County.  To date the event has channeled over $2.2 million into such agencies as Boys and Girls Clubs, Eva's Heroes (an organization founded by Eva Longoria for children with special needs), and Child Advocates of San Antonio.

 

 

My Christmas Offering--Franz Biebl

Christmas is so many things to me, and one of the most special aspects of Christmas is the music.  Everyone knows Schubert's  "Ave Maria," but the version by the German composer Franz Biebl, though lesser known, is even more sublime.  This angelic song may sound ancient, but in fact it was written in 1964.  The Biebl version was first brought to wide public attention by Chanticleer, but I think this rendition by the St. Olaf Choirs is even  better.  Listen to it now, and return to it often.  Merry Christmas!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKMPfkbIZ1c&feature=related

Wassailfest

One thing I have learned after a couple of years in New Braunfels--this town likes a party!  And, given the German origins of the area, the celebrations are usually called a Fest.  Wassailfest is the official welcome to the Advent Season in preparation for Christmas.

Even though the original settlers were German, the town embraces multiculturalism.  No matter that wassail is an English libation:  put together the popular warm English beverage and the German heritage and we have a new coinage--Wassailfest!

As thousands of people stroll the cordoned-off streets, merchants offer free wassail, service groups offer all manner of food for sale, and everyone seems to be offering the music of the season.  How multicultural is the festival?  Well, as we drank English wassail, we were served a German bratwurst wrapped in a Mexican flour tortilla!

Most of all, however, the Wassailfest is about lights, decorations, and music.  It seems as if everyone is making music--from choirs to brass bands to a steel drum orchestra.

A children's choir singing in front of the most-decorated house in the downtown area.

     

A local handbell choir

Another children's choir on the town green

Music came from both young and old

And, of course there was a "living"  nativity scene:

What made this manger distinctive is that, rather than the shepherds watching their flocks by night, in this case it was the angels keeping care of the livestock.

Even the courthouse, scene of serious county business, is decked out for Wassailfest!

Backyard Drama

 

There is a reason that this fine specimen of a buck will likely go loveless during this fall mating season.  The reason?  This fellow who is also waiting patiently for the same doe:

Yes, the two pictures were shot on the same day, a few seconds apart.

Advent, 2010

Advent begins on Sunday, 28 November, which hardly seems possible.  Isn't there a lot more autumn ahead of us?   I think what is throwing me off is the recent warm spell in Central Texas. It just doesn't "feel" like winter is upon us yet!  The weather prognosticators are predicting a cold front will roar through on Thanksgiving afternoon, so perhaps that will aid in the seasonal adjustment.

Trinity Church Wall Street has for several years produced an online Advent Calendar which they offer freely to everyone.  The calendar can be accessed daily and can be embedded on blogs and web sites.  I discovered the Trinity calendar last year and found it a good devotional tool and I am happy to share it with others.  Access the Trinity calendar at this address:

Trinity Wall Street Advent Calendar

Blessed Advent!

The Colors of Autumn

One of the most colorful events of autumn I have ever experienced is a cranberry harvest, the time when the bogs are flooded and the berries separated from the scrubby bushes they grew on.  The berries rise to the top of the water in an explosion of color that rivals the foliage surrounding the bogs.

The best place I have found to marvel at the riot of crimson is Carver, Massachusetts, a town settled by liberated slaves, and the best time for observing the harvest from the dry shoreline is Columbus Day weekend.  

First the bog is flooded by a system of locks and dams.

Then a contraption that looks like a giant tricycle is run through the bog, releasing the berries from the bushes where they have been growing all summer.

At first there are only a few berries that slowly float to the top as the harvester steers through the bog.

As the labor continues, more and more berries appear.

 

 Slowly the flooded bog looks less like a pond and more like an artist's palate.

 

 The bog changes right before your eyes.

Who ever thought that cranberries are simply red?  In fact they are crimson, pink, white, and every shade of red in between.

As you watch the palate evolve before your eyes, slight currents in the water flow through the berries making pictures that move.

Performance art in nature!

Click on any of the pictures for a larger view, and you can almost see the picture change before your eyes.

Early Winter? Detour to Cape Cod?

When you look at these pictures, it is easy to imagine a winter snow scene.  Or even a visit to the Cape Cod National Seashore just down from Provincetown.  

 

In fact, this is the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico, the world's largest gypsum dune field, aka White Sands National Monument.

We detoured to White Sands after leaving Ruidoso, wending our way back to the El Paso Airport by a circuitous route, and we were glad we did so.  The area is both unique and impressive.  And we were also glad that there were no missile firings on the day of our visit.  The monument is closed when there are "activities"  at the nearby White Sands Missile Base.

 

The gypsum of White Sands (hydrous calcium sulfate) comes from a dessicating lakebed to the west, with the wind producing the dunes usually seen at a seashore.  These are "active"  dunes, moving as much as 30 feet per year.  The movement comes as the wind blows the sand into a dune, which gets higher and higher, making the leading edge of the dune (the slipface) steeper and steeper.  Finally the force of gravity pulls the dune down, now a little farther to the east than when the movement started, and the entire cycle begins again.

The area averages about 10 inches of precipitation each year, which makes it even more astounding that the dunes sustain substantial animal and plant life.

Some plants have learned to adapt to the harsh conditions by quickly growing an elongated stem when a windstorm has buried the plant under a ton of sand.  The plant literally digs itself out.

How I long to return to this magnificent area at dawn and at dusk, when shadows play over the dunes!

A Journey Back in Time

Perusing one of the tourist brochures of the Ruidoso region, this entry caught our attention:

Lincoln is a village forgotten by time. Its only street is lined with adobe homes and

buildings dating from its colorful and often violent past. There are no

gas stations or convenience stores in Lincoln, and only one public

telephone. It wasn't always so peaceful. Gunshots, some fired by the

infamous outlaw Henry McCarty alias William H.Bonney (Billy the Kid)

often echoed in the surrounding hills during Lincoln's territorial days.

Today's visitors can see the Old Lincoln County Courthouse Museum and

walk in the footsteps of Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, and other

characters of the Old West--famous or obscure. Because it looks much as

it did a century ago, it isn't hard to picture the Kid's escape from the

courthouse jail, the shootouts, and the more peaceful inhabitants taking

cover as bullets flew.

So we decided to drive over and check it out for ourselves.  Enjoy the images! You can click on any image to enlarge it on your screen.

Serendipity

The first family in American art for many years has been the clan begun by N.C. Wyeth, an accomplished artist best known for illustrations in children’s books.  N.C. Wyeth’s greatest contribution to American art, however, was surely his children whom he mentored and their children still active today.  We had no expectation of encountering the Wyeth circle on our trip to New Mexico, and the encounter came about in an unusual way.

N.C. Wyeth’s famous son, Andrew Wyeth, is one of the best-loved American artists of the twentieth century.  We visited the Farnsworth Museum http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/wyeth-center in Maine several times while we lived in New England, a wonderful little museum with a renowned collection of works by the Wyeth family.  Though the Wyeths are especially associated with New England and Pennsylvania, where Andrew lived and worked for most of his life, one member of the family went west.  Henrietta Wyeth, sister of Andrew, and also a student of her father, met the dashing West Point graduate Peter Hurd, who came to N.C. Wyeth for art instruction.  Later Henrietta and Peter married, and they returned to Peter’s native New Mexico, where they lived and worked for the rest of their lives.

Years ago my father purchased an original lithograph by Peter Hurd which I have now had since his death.  Though Peter Hurd never achieved the fame of his brother in law Andrew, he remains one of the important western artists still today.  Which brings us to our “discovery” on a trip to the western village of Lincoln, New Mexico, the last stronghold of the notorious Billy the Kid.

While driving from Ruidoso to Lincoln we whizzed by a road marked “Peter Hurd Loop,” made a hasty U turn and drove into a dusty village (no paved roads) called San Patricio, and arrived at the La Rinconda Gallery http://www.wyethartists.com/ .  There we met a chatty curator with a vague personal relationship with Michael Hurd, the son of Peter and Henrietta, and while we roamed the galleries displaying prints and paintings of the Wyeth clan, Michael himself came in and introduced himself.

There had been no mention of La Rinconda in the tourist brochures we consulted, so we chalked this encounter up solely to serendipity.  As was this parish church in San Patricio, a pure and simple example of New Mexico church architecture.

Pistachios

If anyone had asked, I would have said that pistachios come from California, like almost every other agricultural crop (avocados, strawberries, marijuana, etc.) On this trip we learned that pistachios also come from New Mexico!

Imagine our surprise, driving through the high plains—mountains still ahead of us—to spot an orchard by the road, right there in the desert. Row after row of pistachio trees ran right up to the highway, with roadside businesses hawking the bounty of the arid countryside.

This discovery called for a stop—a good thing. How could we have missed the world’s largest pistachio?

And what treasures the vendors had to tempt the weary traveler? Pistachios with chile pepper seasoning, habanero popcorn, and most surprising of all, lollipops with a genuine stinging scorpion embedded in the solidified high-fructose corn syrup! The desert is indeed full of bounty if one only knows where to look.

A Visit to New Mexico

Thirty four years ago in August, 1976, we went to a new resort for our honeymoon—the Inn of the Mountain Gods, located in the ancestral home of the Mescalero Apaches, just outside Ruidoso, New Mexico.  This week, to celebrate Noreen’s birthday, we returned to the Inn to see if the facility and the environs had improved over what we experienced then.  The short answer is that everything was better even than we had remembered it.

One can have no doubt why this region was sacred to the Mescaleros.  Driving out of El Paso the traveler sees mile after mile of desert, displaying every shade of grey and brown.  Leaving Alamogardo, however, the road begins to climb, the hills turn into mountains, and green replaces brown.  Then you catch a glimpse of Sierra Blanca, the 12,000 foot peak (site of the downhill area Ski Apache) which presides over these lands.  The effect is magical indeed.

The modest buildings of the Inn of the Mountain Gods have been replaced by a new facility situated so that Sierra Blanca is always visible from the huge picture windows, changing in appearance during the hours of the day as the sun rises in the sky and as clouds move by. 

We dined looking at Sierra Blanca, and we left our bedroom drapes open to glance at it when we were in our room.  One day we drove to the base of Ski Apache and hiked up onto the mountain to experience it that way as well.

 We ran each morning across the lake from the hotel in the foothills of Sierra Blanca, and one morning were treated to a small herd of elk grazing on our trail through the woods.  We learned later that the Mescaleros have a herd of approximately 4200 elk that they manage in the tribal lands.  One night we tried a tenderloin of elk for dinner (verdict: sweet and delicious).

One memory from 1976 was the discovery of a sweet little church in the woods—the Church of the Holy Mount—so we decided to seek it out on this trip.  The church is still there, though somewhat enlarged, and now with the town of Ruidoso all around it.  The view of Sierra Blanca over the altar is still as breathtaking as we had remembered it.  No wonder the legend over the front door of the church is from the Psalms:  “I will lift my eyes to the hills.”

Inside the church we found a new addition—a wooden statue of San Miguel, carved by a local artist.  The sculptor rendered his own local vision of Revelation 12:9—the “satan”  whom San Miguel is vanquishing is a western rattlesnake, whose eyes are fixed squarely on those who come to view the sculpture.

More of our “finds”  to follow.