I grabbed this picture from World66, a wiki style travel guide. It was taken by R X Garcia. These are the Sawtooth Mountains in New Mexico, as you approach them on Forest Service Road 6a. I know because I was there this weekend. I went backpacking in those mountains. If you have some desert rat in you, and you enjoy isolation, then I shouldn' t tell you about this place because you might go and make it less isolated. There are no population centers of any size near this area.
From the time we turned on to the dirt road, we saw no one. Where we parked the van, in the plains below the mountains, we saw the usual fire rings and occasional beer bottle. Once we entered the mountains we saw none of that. No trails, no campsites, no fire pits, no trash, no sign of human kind. No lights, no human sounds. Even when you got to the top of one of the mountains, the vista is strikingly empty of people.
This is my holy land.
4 comments:
I'm less desert rat than you, but I share your awe of the Southwest. I really enjoy living someplace different from the place of my childhood. Lots of opportunites to say wow.
That sounds really great.
It was.
Jae and are trying to go hiking every weekend this year. It doesn't work out EVERY weekend, but trying makes it frequent. Does us a world of good.
4 June 2007
After the storm, my mind cleared.
And a high wind arose and blew the tropics north.
running quartz crystals through a blender.
sand through your engines.
bubbles in your bays.
estuaries reaching out toward forbidden seas...
sand through your eyes.
5 June 2007
Calm as baby's breath
as peaceful as the storm's eye
Clouds spread and drawn with rough strokes of stratospheric winds
a warm and windy tropical day.
7 June 2007
Black water at dusk.
Lighting on the horizon.
Warm winds coming in across the darkening waters.
A flash of white wings as an egret takes flight.
And Thunder like God clearing his throat.
8 June 2007
Morning star in the still of the clear, dark waters.
a sky as clear eyed as a young girl.
bruised and tattered storm remnants limp off in the gathering light.
9 June 2007
Tickled her fancy.
giggling all the day long.
pretty good for a Saturday.
Clouds on the lake floating aimlessly by.
She smiled big--grinned really.
12 JUne 2007
A silver sky
ripe for the mirror.
you can not see yourself in this mirror
you can only see others
moreover, you can only see what others choose to expose.
Their houses, their boats, their sea-doos.
Birds skimming low over the water could
like as not
see them selves if they were to look down
as they skim low over the water
but they never do.
Rather they allow their reflections to chase them
quick and sharp over the still, glistening waters
while the bird's mind remains ever fixed on
food, or other birds, or escaping those damn noisy humans.
A dense forest impenetrable as a gaze.
13 JUne 2007
Like angry bee's eyes
the metal screen seen through the bamboo blinds.
A million insects dot the lake spreading micro ripples
14 June 2007
Of Fly Catchers and hidden lakes.
Of sleeping lizards and morning dew.
It is of birdsong and misty dawns
and fleeced clouds floating in a still pool.
The waters ripple awake in the gathering morn.
The first water birds head out for the far shore.
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