Remote ranch adventures, days 2-3

To adequately cover all we have done since yesterday morning would take time and bandwidth I do not have. We are whirling dervishes spinning across a remote ranch as if it's a giant pinball game: Here is a century-old cemetery in which a family of crytpo-Jews are buried. Their ancestors came from Spain via Mexico and these generations lived and died on the land that is now this ranch. Their gravestones still rest within a beautiful dry-stack, rock-wall rectangle, some turned topsy by time, shifting land, roots and wind; a cross placed snugly in the top peak of a Star of David adorning one, tells us what their residents wouldn't or couldn't have.

There is Fort Hatch, surrounded by land still turning up the treasures it's held for decades: arrow heads; bullets; wagon bolts; hand-forged nails. The arrow heads are crafted from rock not native to this part of the country; once you know what to look for, the colors stand out against the more muted hues indigenous to this land. Fort Hatch was once considered as a Civil War outpost but was ultimately thought to be too far from Texas and so was abandoned for War purposes. These walls, also dry-stack, remain.

Here a clearing full of petrified wood, trees-now-rocks nestled among prickly pear cacti and their scrubby and succulent friends. You can make prickly pear jelly, if you're willing to pluck the spiny magenta barrels from the more aggressively spiky paddles, boil and then scrape them clean, juice and cook them down. Not me, friends.

There is the bed of what was once the inland sea, a body of water that covered most of what is now New Mexico. We walk across it, marveling at the passage of 75 million years.

There is the surreal Star Axis, brainchild of the eccentric mathematician-artist Charles Ross, soaring out of a Ross-made chasm in the mesa. Nearly forty years in the making, the steps leading to the star hole sit parallel with Earth's axis and lead you to spot Polaris in perfectly due-North fashion. Each stair, when completed, will be marked with the point in time, both past and future, at which you can see Polaris from that vantage. The stairs climb eleven stories, and the views are breathtaking. Don't ask me for additional explanation. It's all entirely too-mathy for me to really understand, but it's very cool. You can read more via the Star Axis link above.

To be continued because I am SO pooped.

Where I am

New Mexico

To Santa Fe

Y'all, yesterday was twenty-in-one. My alarm woke me at 4am. Groggy and with no sense of time or place, I pulled myself to a seated position and then remembered my cab was coming in less than a half-hour. Love notes left for all my boys, snacks packed, last-minute things shoved into my suitcase, and to the airport I went. I slept most of the way to Dallas, grabbed a much-needed coffee, met up with Lili (of my writing group), boarded the plane to Santa Fe, talked/slept all the way there, deplaned, met Laura for the first time, grabbed our luggage from the sweetest, tiniest "baggage claim" west of Lake Charles and headed into town.

As we wandered Santa Fe's streets and main plaza, it felt completely new to me; I had zero memory of any bit of it at all. Our family trip all those years ago must really have been clouded by my post-encephalitis haze. It's a much smaller, dustier city than I expected; really not a city at all but a town of 69,000 or so. Everyone was so friendly, and an air of laid-back, culturally-rich, artistically-inclined uniqueness blew along on the tails of the gentle breeze all around.

There is zero humidity here, an incredible thing that makes the crisp fall air that much more invigorating. We had a New Mexican enchilada lunch, went to a fabulous coffee shop -Ohori's- and to the shop next door where I easily could have gone broke; it's the kind of place where you are convinced you need at least one of everything. Then to an olive oil and vinegar store where we tasted at least a dozen delicious samples, to a chocolatier and to the stunning Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis. Chile ristras hung everywhere and their scent pervaded town, a tannic, woody, herbal smell that makes you want to grab a gallon of water and get busy eating.

A glance at our watches put a spring in our step, for we had to do all our grocery shopping for four days before heading out to the ranch. At the market, we each grabbed a cart, divided the list we'd crafted on the way and shot off like Top Chef contenders on a ticking clock. Short ribs, wine, flour, oil, fruit, bushels of greens, cheese, pasta. It was an outrageous load but with three foodies and a Subaru, what were we to do?

Delightful.

To the ranch

After packing the car to the gills, we headed east out of Santa Fe towards the town of Anton Chico, the closest village to our final destination: a 60,000-acre ranch somewhere just beyond Anton Chico's orbit. It was an easy trip and a lovely one. We passed the Glorieta mesa (roughly 30 miles long!) and the town of Glorieta (aka the Gettysburg of the west), Starvation Peak, and all manner of scrub, brush and other-worldly rock formations. Approaching a fairly non-descript road, we turned left, leaving pavement behind. For ten miles or so, we bumped and bucked our way deep into the heart of this old ranch. How one ever truly comes to know such a vast expanse of unmarked land boggles the mind and inspires awe.

It is believed that The Long Walk passed over this land, right in front of the home in which we're bunking. It's amazing to think about such horrors happening in such a beautiful, peaceful (now) place. Cattle, dogs, and the cutest kitten in the world (after Nutmeg of course) came to visit. This kitten wants to come home with me, and I am all over that except for the obvious. And Rosa, a lovely woman from Michoacán greeted us with a home-cooked meal of Mexican rice, carnitas chili and just-made corn tortillas. Food, wine, conversation, laughter, and then, sleepily, to bed.

I slept like a baby until the chihuahua, Mimi, woke me up.

Photos coming when I find a cell hot spot!