Southwest New Mexico
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023: Burro Mountains, Hikes, Problems & Solutions, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
My headache had been so bad on Saturday, I didn’t expect to hike on Sunday, and turned off my alarm before going to bed. But I woke up feeling good for a change and took a leisurely approach to deciding where to go. I couldn’t do any of my usual hikes because of deep snow, flooded creeks, or deep mud, and exertion was making the headaches worse so I wanted something without a lot of elevation gain. And it was getting too late for a long drive so I also needed something close to town.
I decided to check out a segment of the national divide trail, a little farther south, which I believed would be completely unused this time of year. I’d never been there and wasn’t even sure there would be a recognizable trailhead, but I printed a topo map, bundled up, and headed out into sub-freezing temps under a clear blue sky.
This would be a meandering route through open woodland across a rumpled basin, a maze of low hills and shallow drainages between 6,000′ and 6,400′, trending north toward the small mountain range southwest of town that I’ve climbed over a hundred times in my short midweek hikes. I was starting where the national trail crosses the highway south, and at best, if conditions were really good and my headache didn’t intervene, I might make it the entire 8 miles to the popular trailhead at the foot of the mountains. I knew it wouldn’t be a spectacular hike but I expected to make good time and hoped to achieve more mileage than in all the difficult snow hikes of the past two months.
This segment of trail crosses multiple cattle grazing allotments, encountering gate after gate, and several dirt roads used by ranchers and off-road enthusiasts. I began to notice mountain bike tracks during the first couple of miles, which makes sense, because even competitive mountain bikers seem to do most of their riding on gentle trails.
About two miles in, I heard voices behind me, then a whirring sound, and stepped aside to let a biking couple ride past, followed by their dog. They appeared roughly my age, were overdressed for the weather, and were riding slow, hence the dog had no trouble keeping up. I’d never seen adult mountain bikers ride so slow, and while I was friendly as usual, I was sorry they had to haul these expensive, resource-intensive machines out, further distancing themselves from nature, instead of using the feet they were born with.
I encountered them again, returning, shortly before reaching the graded forest road at the midpoint of my hike. They had stopped to chat with a male hiker, also our age, who was heading up the trail with his dog. We all agreed this trail had suddenly become popular because it remained snow-free and less muddy than others near town. Having caught up with the single guy, I knew I was faster than him, so I continued up the trail, observing to myself that no one can seem to do anything anymore without a dog by their side.
When I reached the graded road I saw the male hiker’s car, a new Honda SUV. On this 8-mile segment of trail, he was only walking 2 or 3 miles total, and the mountain bikers were doing about 8 miles out and back, which is nothing for a bike, but is a decent workout for a dog. This jibes with my experience of dog people. With few exceptions, when you own a dog, your main priority is not to stay fit or experience wild nature. Dog people may say they’re going for a hike, but what they really mean is that they’re obligated to walk the dog(s), ideally for a half hour a day, and they seldom go farther on foot than 2 or 3 miles.
Once past the graded forest road, the trail begins a gentle climb into the foothills of the low mountain range. A mile or so past the road I approached another gate with a middle-aged woman on a horse and two more dogs. The dogs ran to meet me, and the woman waited for me to open the gate for her. She said she was trying to train a “new horse” and it wouldn’t carry her close enough to open the gate from the saddle. Of course getting off the horse would be too much trouble, I thought to myself. But I’m always nice to strangers as long as they’re nice to me.
After letting them through I kept climbing until I came out on a series of broad, heavily grazed grassy ledges overlooking dozens of miles of alluvial landscape to the east, punctuated by low hills and bounded by distant ranges. I’d been diligent about hydrating and realized I was running low on water, despite having plenty of time to reach the next trailhead. I normally bring 3 liters in winter, but had packed only 2 this morning, with the idea of a shorter hike, before deciding on this trail. I hated to turn back now, when I could practically see the trailhead only a mile or so away across the foothills, but dehydration would definitely bring my headache back, so I just went another quarter mile, then reluctantly turned around.
I hadn’t gone too far back before meeting the equestrienne and her entourage of pets. She’d started at the northern trailhead, and like the male hiker I’d met earlier, she was only doing about a 3 mile round-trip. As is typical, I was the only serious trail user among the whole day’s crowd.
Returning, I walked slower and paid more attention to habitat. The maze-like basin south of the foothills was just high enough for a few pinyon, but consisted mostly of open juniper-oak woodland with bunchgrasses, beargrass, and various shrubs in between. I remained frustrated to be unable to do the full distance, but was grateful my headache hadn’t returned. It was an easy hike I wouldn’t be anxious to revisit, but it’s always interesting to see a familiar landscape from a slightly different vantage point.
Two miles from my vehicle I came upon yet another party, a couple my age, this time with two obviously expensive purebred dogs, one a big shaggy wolfhound. They struggled to restrain the dogs as I passed. Like I said, I’m always friendly, but after passing them I’d exhausted my tolerance for pet owners.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, pets were for kids, in affluent or midde class families. Working class families couldn’t afford pets. The lifespan of cats, dogs, and horses is how long it takes humans to become adults, so as you became an adult, you left your pet behind. Childless adults, and parents whose kids had grown up, did not have pets.
In subsequent decades, as capitalism and technology increasingly fragmented human communities and isolated individuals, turning social services into commodities, individuals became lonelier, more vulnerable, in need of companionship their dwindling human relationships couldn’t provide. With the advent of social media in the new millenium, childless, socially isolated adults acquired pets in order to share and get “likes” from distant people called “friends” that they could only interact with digitally.
But social media can’t fully explain the epidemic of pet ownership among adults. Why do most childless adults now own pets, whereas virtually none did when I was a child?
The most common answer I’ve heard is that “I’ve always had one”. But this is simply acknowledging a habit you can’t control, like smoking cigarettes or drinking yourself into a stupor every night. To me, it suggests that in some sense, you never grew up – when you reached the age of adulthood and your childhood pet died, you simply got another one, clinging to that juvenile master-slave relationship with animals.
It’s widely acknowledged that for childless or single adults, pets are acquired as surrogate children or “living plush toys” – something to cuddle since you lack a human companion. The latter clearly shows the infantile nature of much pet ownership.
Mental health authorities commonly claim that pet ownership improves the individual’s mental health. But the anthropocentric and individualistic nature of our culture ensures that these specialists remain ignorant of the broader context, the root causes of social isolation and the ecological and sociological impacts of pet ownership. According to a recent Forbes survey, 78% of pet owners acquired their pets during the COVID pandemic.
Pet owners love to claim that they’re “animal lovers”, when all they really are is pet lovers. On today’s 12-mile hike through mostly wild, native habitat, I encountered 6 people with 7 pets, 840 lbs of humans with 1,230 lbs of pets. These people obviously consider themselves nature lovers, but by taking their pets into nature they reduce their opportunities for encountering wildlife, since their pets either scare wild animals away or actively chase them.
Geographically and ecologically, both humans and their domestic animals displace wildlife, taking resources away from wildlife, damaging and destroying native habitats and hastening the extinction of wild species. I’m sure all the trail users I encountered consider themselves conservationists or even environmentalists, but in reality, as a group, they’re increasing their consumption of natural resources by 150% through the practice of pet ownership.
Most of the world is inhabited by poor people who can’t take proper care of their pets. Dogs and cats roam semi-wild, eating garbage and human feces. But the U.S. is also failing to control its pets. According to some sources, the U.S. has about 60 million indoor cats and 70 million feral cats. Almost 80 million dogs and over 9 million equines, 300,000 of which are feral. On a societal level, pet ownership is clearly ecologically irresponsible.
The devastation of pet ownership isn’t just ecological, it’s also social. Affluent pet owners live in social bubbles where everyone has the luxury to observe the social compact. Cats don’t kill songbirds, dogs don’t bark or chase strangers. But it’s very different in working-class communities like mine. Working-class families now own pets, but can’t take responsibility for them. Cats and dogs run wild through neighborhoods, the nights are a cacophony of barks and sirens.
And it’s not completely true that affluent pet owners observe the social compact. The pet industry has trained affluent consumers to favor so-called “rescue” animals – a marketing euphemism for shelter animals, which is in turn a marketing euphemism for strays. These animals are largely untrainable, so now, their affluent owners increasingly enable their anti-social behavior.
When I encounter old friends I haven’t seen in years, I want to hug them. But if they’re a dog owner, the untrained rescue dog always precedes them – to me, it’s like they’re thrusting their animal at me. Instead of my friends reaching to hug me, the first thing I get is their dog jumping at my chest, soiling my clothes. Would you let your child kick a friend in the chest?
Monday, January 30th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Conditions hadn’t changed since last week’s stroll across a basin teeming with pets – our mountains were still blanketed with snow, our trails muddy, our creeks flooded. But I felt ready for a more challenging hike, if I could only find a lower-elevation trail that didn’t cross any major creeks. And preferably something less popular than last week’s pet parade.
I reluctantly settled for the segment of the national trail that climbs from the remote valley northeast of town toward the crest of the range just north of town. I’d hiked that segment in dense fog at the beginning of December, so it would be nice to experience it with good visibility.
Mornings were still below freezing, so I’d be spared the mud until later in the day. On the way up the valley, the landscape reminded me of possible alternatives, so I pulled over and studied the national forest map. It’s huge but doesn’t show enough detail, and I didn’t want to end up on a lengthy detour that would turn out to be a wild goose chase, so I continued to the now-familiar trailhead.
The large campground around the trailhead was blissfully abandoned – I had the day to myself, and savored the initial climb through windy volcanic badlands to the ridgetop.
The next stretch traverses the eastern rim of the long ridge, winding back and forth, in and out of shadowed slopes that held up to 6 inches of snow. The snow was trodden and pitted by a chaotic mix of old and new tracks that I eventually sorted out as a man who had been here yesterday, and a horse and dog that had been here last weekend. Even where untracked, the snow had a soft inch on top of a harder base, but the tracks made for an uneven surface which turned my gait into a sort of lurch.
Birds were active. I’d seen hawks hunting down in the big valley, and flocks of dark-eyed juncos would surround me on the ridge, throughout the day.
This hike averages about 7,200′ elevation, and I was hoping the snow wouldn’t be too deep. But three-and-a-half miles in, the trail crosses to the west side of the ridge, where the patches of snow were up to a foot deep. The man from yesterday had turned back, and I was now alone with the deep holes punched by the horse. And the snow was sometimes soft enough to sink through, so now I was lurching even more. But there were still a few dry stretches of trail, and I stopped in one to put on my gaiters.
With no fog, I could now see how the trail approaches the crest of the range, starting from 7 miles to the north and trending south to within less than 2 miles before turning east to climb around the head of an intervening canyon. From a clearing 3 miles north of the crest, I could even identify the road climbing to the fire lookout, despite my recently impaired vision.
On the second half of the hike I was walking in almost continuous snow, ranging from 6 to 16 inches deep. But this segment of trail is mostly either level or at a gentle grade, so I was making good time and could take it slow where necessary.
I was hoping to go at least 6 miles, and as before, was relieved when I finally reached the ponderosa forest above 7,400′. This rolling plateau of broad meadows and exposed bedrock continues to the edge of a little valley, and past that, begins the climb towards the head of the next canyon. I figured I’d passed the 6-mile mark and didn’t want to have to climb back out of that depression in deep snow, so I stopped and enjoyed the snowy forest for a while before turning back.
Last weekend’s horse and dog tracks continued – I assumed they’d had someone waiting to pick them up at the other end of the trail.
It was a long 6+ miles back, but at least most of it was downhill, and the snow eventually got shallower, to be replaced by mud. I’d timed it just right, completing the one-hour drive home by sunset – with the sun directly in my eyes so I had to hold one hand up to block the glare.
Monday, February 13th, 2023: Brushy, Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
There was a hike on my list that I’d been avoiding, up in the heart of the wilderness, where elevations are moderate and snow wouldn’t be as deep. It didn’t seem to cross any major creeks. But it started from a famous corral, so I assumed it would see a lot of equestrian use. The day was forecast to be warmer, so I could expect mud, churned up by the horses. And worst of all, it seemed to be in the zone of the dreaded volcanic cobbles, which make walking extra hard.
I didn’t expect to find anything spectacular along the way. And yet another disadvantage is the drive – an hour and a half on a really scary mountain road, half of which has no centerline, so people tend to drive in the middle, even around blind curves. But I got an early start, and only encountered a couple other vehicles in 45 miles.
The corral is just downstream from the famous cliff dwellings, ground zero for tourism. There was a late-model city SUV at the trailhead, and a young guy was studying the info kiosk. I wished him a good morning but he ignored me – typical city behavior. By the time I set out, he was a couple hundred yards up the trail.
The trails in the heart of the wilderness either follow the forks of the river, or climb ridges. This was a ridge trail, recently cleared, which I hoped to follow to an 8,133′ peak, eight miles away.
It was freezing when I set out. I was catching up with the young guy within the first half mile, but that’s when I stop to stretch and tighten my boots, so I didn’t actually pass him until ten minutes later. He was already descending – it looked like he’d just been trying to find a cell phone signal. This time he managed to return my greeting.
The first half of the trail was in really good shape, and dry enough to avoid mud, so I made really good time. I’d expected this to be a popular trail, and the dirt showed a mixture of boot and horseshoe prints.
Continuing up the ridge past the first fork, the trail rises from the open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland into the ponderosa pine zone, then descends 300 feet into the canyon of a creek. I’d overlooked this on the map, and was surprised to find one of the biggest creeks in the range, in full snowmelt flood. It took me fifteen minutes to find a place downstream where I could cross on a log and a series of big rocks.
Past the creek, the day’s hike began to fall apart. I’d reached the zone of volcanic cobbles – a geological discontinuity – and from here on, it was rocks and mud churned by horses’ hooves.
It was a long, steep climb up another ridge. The equestrians had almost completely chewed up the trail, but I occasionally spotted a bootprint or two the horses hadn’t stepped on. It appeared that a man and a woman, probably backpackers, had toiled up the mud of this trail within the past month.
Fortunately no patches of snow yet, and the dirt was mostly still frozen, but the hike had gotten much slower. It was warm in the sun, so I took off my sweater, but wind was rising out of the west, and banks of clouds soon drifted over, so I had to pull the sweater back on, only to overheat fifteen minutes later. Eventually the trail dropped into the canyon of yet another stream – I hadn’t anticipated this either – but this one was smaller and easier to cross.
It was sweater weather again in that narrow, shaded canyon. And on the other side, a very steep north slope, the snow began – and under it, ice from successive melting and freezing, which made the climb really hazardous. I’d been assuming I wouldn’t hit serious snow until the final ascent of the peak, but when I reached the gentle slope atop the ridge, it turned out to be just high enough to hold some big, deep patches. And the snow was melting into the trail, which had already been churned up by the equestrians, so it was now a rock-filled bog.
I had to go off trail to avoid the mud, but off the trail, I was lurching and stumbling on the volcanic cobbles, many of which were hidden under tussocks of dried grass. There was enough forest around me that I had no view out and couldn’t see the peak I was aiming for, so I had no idea how much farther it was. This was turning into a truly miserable hike, and eventually I gave up.
Surprisingly, the backpackers’ tracks continued. I didn’t envy them a bit – where they’d walked in the trail, their boots had sunk in the mud several inches. They couldn’t have been having much fun, but as I’ve remarked before, despite its exalted reputation, this wilderness can be a truly nasty place for humans, and is getting worse due to wildfires and climate change.
I still had plenty of time, so on my return, I could pay more attention to my footing on the rough, pitted, boggy ground. It’s a miracle I haven’t sprained an ankle on this kind of surface. I swore never to take this trail again, even in the dry season.
It’s ironic and maddening, because the Forest Service has accepted that equestrians are the only group able to do regular trail maintenance at this point. The horse people see it as good PR, and they’re apparently encouraging increased horse traffic, which in muddy conditions renders trails almost useless for hikers. It’s a whole new regime, and I just need to plan around it.
It was a huge relief to finally cross the first creek and reach the easy first half of the trail. And when I got within 2 miles of the trailhead, I began to see more recent footprints – several people had gone a short distance up the trail while I was struggling up that distant boggy ridge.
In the end, I’d hiked 12.6 miles and climbed 2,300′ – the most I’d managed in the past month, but way below my long-term average. And on the drive home, I encountered vehicle after vehicle speeding on the mountain road, threatening to force me off the pavement as they barreled recklessly around blind curves – including a guy in a huge pickup towing a big trailer, two feet over my side of the centerline, heading straight at me.
The heart of the wilderness is where all the tourists go, and as far as I’m concerned they can keep it.
Sunday, February 19th, 2023: Burro Mountains, Hikes, Southwest New Mexico.
I was finally out of options. We’d had more snow in the past week, and more freezing weather. Rain was forecast for this Sunday, and more snow in the coming week.
There was literally only one hike on my list that might still be relatively free of flooded creeks, deep snow, and mud. I’d left it for last because the trail meanders through rolling mid-elevation pinyon-juniper-oak woodland just south of town, crisscrossed by ranch roads and grazed by cattle.
It was warmer in the morning – in the 40s – but I layered up with all my rain gear, and a light rain began as I headed off the paved highway toward the low mountains.
This would start like one of my regular midweek hikes – a route that’s one of my secrets, known to few others. I would take an unmaintained, high-clearance dirt forest road up a plateau mostly deforested by firewood cutters, leaving my vehicle in a little surviving stand of Emory oaks. From there I would walk up the deeply eroded road to where it dead-ends at the foot of a low peak, and from there I would take a short spur trail to where a seldom-used segment of the national trail skirts the base of the peak on its way north. I intended to follow the trail north for 7 or 8 miles.
But as soon as the dirt road entered the woodland, I unexpectedly found it under 4 to 6 inches of snow. Nobody had been up here, either on foot or by vehicle. The road climbs, and the snow got deeper.
The spur trail was doable, but when I reached the national trail my boots sank into snow over a foot deep. I hadn’t brought my gaiters, but even if I had, I was fed up with hiking through snow at this point. I made it about another hundred yards, but it was still getting deeper so I gave up, after only a mile and a quarter of hiking.
Why hadn’t I anticipated this? When I got home I realized that when choosing a hike, I’d glanced at the wrong line item on my list of routes. I thought this route topped out at 6,500′, which should’ve been snow-free, but that traverse across the base of the peak was actually 7,300′, and that additional 800′ made all the difference.
The result is that I now have no options left. This might be my last hike in a while!
After all, there’s no natural law that says humans should have access to nature at all times.
Canyon of the Long Skinny Creature
Sunday, March 19th, 2023: Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Lower Box, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
After last week’s false spring, our weather got cold and wet again. I’d done a midweek hike on a muddy trail and wasn’t up for any more of that.
And after last week’s Arizona pictograph hike, I’d done some more research on the “high desert” area along the border, a large, remote region I’d previously ignored. There weren’t any trails there, but there were some buttes I could probably bushwhack, and by chance I learned about a canyon with petroglyphs. It would require an overland approach in unfamiliar terrain, and I couldn’t actually tell if the canyon itself was passable, but I’d give it a try.
I expected the petroglyph hike to be short, so afterward I hoped to drive north to the buttes and get some real mileage and elevation in.
There was frost on my windshield when I left the house – really unusual for this time of year. And our windy season starts in March – we were forecast to get gusts in the 40s.
The sky was mostly clear with high clouds. It took me an hour to reach the turnoff onto the first dirt road – as usual my topo map had it mislabeled, so I wasted 10 or 15 minutes looking for it. Once on the right road, I passed a Fish & Game truck, then found the next turn, onto a winding, high-clearance ranch road that turned out to be in terrible shape, with dozens of washouts. That road took me over a low rise, then down into the broad alluvial valley of our famous river. The road was so bad I averaged less than 15 mph.
Then I reached the final turn, onto a dirt track that hadn’t been driven in a year or more. It was even worse than the previous one – there were parts I could’ve walked faster than I drove. But I continued, through an old wire-and-branch gate that had almost dry-rotted apart, until I finally reached a dry wash where the track completely disappeared.
My topo map showed a couple of major tributaries approaching the canyon from this direction. I was hoping this dry wash was one of them, and sure enough, I immediately found the tracks of recent hikers. They’d come down the wash from much farther east – like the vast majority of urban hikers, they were probably driving a Subaru or some other low-clearance vehicle that couldn’t handle the track I drove.
I figured it would be a little over a mile to the main canyon. I was walking in deep, dry sand, which is no fun, but at this latitude and elevation, I was surrounded by familiar plants – honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and best of all, really healthy creosote bush – so I almost felt like I was back home in the Mojave. I had to keep slowing down – my normal pace doesn’t work in sand.
This tributary, cut through alluvial deposits, finally reached a bedrock layer of conglomerate where it tightened and dropped through a slot. Around a few more bends and I was at the main canyon.
The main canyon started shallow and wide, but as it twisted back and forth it soon got deeper, and I reached a broad central area featuring old cottonwoods, living and dead. Water appeared flowing on the surface, green with algae.
Past there, it began to feel more like the canyons of Utah, with tilted strata rising from underground, water running over sculpted bedrock, and finally a slot canyon, where I had to climb down several short pouroffs.
Past the slot canyon, I carefully picked my way across a long, flood-sculpted ledge and found myself at the edge of an overhang, looking down at a deep emerald pool.
The ledge ended in a sort of ramp that I shuffled down on my butt. And turning to look at the pool, I discovered the first petroglyph panel, in a niche of a boulder overhanging the water.
Walking down the canyon from the pool, I immediately saw another petroglyph panel at the base of an outcrop on my right. To my left, high above the wash, I spotted a big white petroglyph at the base of cliffs. And straight ahead was the river, muddy and racing along in flood.
I walked toward the end of the wash, but soon got bogged down in mud. So I began climbing the left slope toward the petroglyph I’d seen above. The surface was a sort of flaky, treacherous shale dotted with catclaw.
The first thing I noticed was that there were two layers of carvings, one ancient, patinated, and dim, and the other much more recent, in high-contrast white. Unfortunately I’d arrived at noon, and the sun was casting a shadow that divided the panel. So I ate lunch and waited for the shadow to move.
What I was most interested in was the left side of the main panel. There were two tall images in parallel – a sort of ladder, spine, or trunk with branches, and what looked like a long skinny lizard with the head of a bird wearing horns like a sheep. They were obviously designed together to convey a single message.
From my lofty perch, I watched hawks wheeling on thermals over the riparian corridor. This whole valley is a wildlife sanctuary and wilderness study area, and is known for its exceptional bird diversity. But the more time I spent up there, the more I noticed the lichen.
Finally I got the shadow and pictures I wanted, and made my way back down, to check out the smaller panel across the wash. It had the same two layers, likely separated by thousands of years. So-called “rock art” is mostly ignored by scientists, and relegated to amateurs, who divide it into regional and temporal styles. But indigenous people recognize it as writing, and the rock writing I’ve seen is a continuum spanning the West, sharing a common vocabulary.
A gale-force wind was blowing straight up the canyon as I started back. I had to lean into it.
The wind was a little less harsh when I turned off into the tributary wash. There, I began to pay more attention to the year’s first wildflowers.
When I finally reached the vehicle, I discovered I’d spent 3-1/2 hours on a 4-1/2 mile hike. That’s partly because I was walking in soft sand, which probably requires 50% more energy than walking on a hard surface. It’d also taken me an hour to drive 9 miles on those bad roads. So there was no time left for a hike in the buttes to the north. But I drove up there anyway, and found that my map again had the roads mislabeled, so I couldn’t find the one I needed.
I arrived home after being gone for 8 hours, most of which was driving. And as soon as I got out of the vehicle I could smell the creosote bushes, which had scraped my fenders and doors on that abandoned track. Best thing I’d smelled in months!
