Holt
Monday, June 29th, 2020: Animals, Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Southwest New Mexico.
It’s been going on since early springtime, and I can’t keep quiet about it anymore.
There are more butterflies this year than ever before! I have no idea why. Are their predators in trouble? I don’t even know who their predators are.
First the small ones, yellow and white, along the wilderness trails. Then the bigger ones, in my yard at home. By now they’re darting and sailing back and forth all the time – I often mistake them for birds.
Landscape
I returned to my favorite local trail, the one with over 4,000′ of elevation gain that takes me to a peak with a view of the interior of the mountains. It’s more of a struggle each time, because more trees have fallen or been blown down across the trail.
Birds
Hectic time of year for birds, too! Turkey vultures and hawks circle overhead as mother quail shepherd their tiny young across the road. As I traverse stark burned slopes on the peak, the boomerang shapes of white-throated swifts rocket past my shoulder. And in the forest from canyon bottom to ridgetop, constant calls and song from a diverse community. Birds are less timid, often allowing me to walk right past them.
Flowers
In the lead-up to our monsoon, as the heat rises, the air dries out, and the creek dwindles, the first wave of flowers reaches its peak.
Butterflies
On the way up the mountain, I just enjoyed the butterflies. But on the way back, in the canyon bottom, I suddenly reached a large clump of Monarda where butterflies were converging from all directions, and I stopped in their midst to photograph them as they ignored me and went about their business.
Monday, July 20th, 2020: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Our drought, and our record heat wave, ended Friday with the first of our delayed monsoon thunderstorms. So I headed out to the high wilderness Sunday morning looking forward to a cool day and possible rain.
What I found, working my way up the creekside jungle in the canyon, was an explosion of red raspberries, and humidity so high my clothes were literally drenched with sweat before I’d reached the halfway point.
As I climbed the switchbacks toward the crest, thunder rumbled from within a dark mass of clouds to the southeast. The illegal cattle I’d surprised in the canyon a month ago had continued to follow the trail upwards, leaving their pungent cowpies on the trail and attracting flies that swarmed my dripping face.
A cold wind chilled me as I traversed to the final saddle. I could see curtains of rain behind me, out west over the plain. I’d gotten a late start and would stop at the little hill topping the eastern spur of the peak. The cows had been there before me.
My return trip down the canyon was slowed by foraging on raspberries. Bears had been up and down this trail as recently as this morning, eating voraciously and pooping copiously. It was shadier and cooler than earlier and my clothes had partly dried out, when it started to rain, pretty heavily, so I pulled my poncho out of the pack. After that, the problem was pushing my way through the thorny jungle without ripping the thin poncho to shreds.
The rain ended before I climbed out of the canyon, but on the drive home, I was rewarded by several rainbows.
Monday, August 17th, 2020: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Southwest New Mexico, Stories, Trouble, Wildfire.
First Sunday
My house fire occurred on a Monday morning. My neighbors were wonderful as usual, but the aftermath was an ongoing series of crises that fell on my shoulders alone. By Sunday I was a wreck.
I headed for the trail in the high mountains to the northwest, the trail where I can get 4,000′ of elevation gain and an expansive view of the tallest peaks. We were still in a drought and heat wave at home, but I was hoping for rain or at least cloud cover up in the mountains.
It’s an hour’s drive from my temporary accommodations to the trailhead. Suffering from PTSD, my heart fell when I rounded a bend, got a view of the canyons and peaks I’d be climbing, and saw smoke from a wildfire back in the wilderness near where I was headed. My first thought was that the trail would be closed by firefighting equipment.
I turned off and drove up the dirt road into the foothills. I passed a truck and encountered an older couple walking beside the road. They said they lived down in the valley and I asked them about the fire. They said the Forest Service was aware of it but wasn’t doing anything. That was both good and bad news. I could get to the trail but didn’t know if I could hike it safely.
The couple dismissed my concerns. “If you see smoke ahead, just turn around and hike out!” said the woman. This was the only trail this side of town that would kick my ass, which in my damaged state I mistakenly thought I needed, so I didn’t want to give it up. What pathetic animals we humans are!
The sun blazed down in the canyon, and the humidity turned out to be as bad as I’d ever experienced. My clothes were all drenched with sweat at the halfway point, so I stopped for lunch and hung my shirt and bandanna headband over branches, hoping they’d dry a little.
On the climb, a thunderhead finally began to develop in the east, moving over the crest. It chilled the alpine air but failed to drop any rain. From the little knob on the shoulder of the peak, I could finally see the fire, a few miles due east. It was one drainage away near the head of the biggest canyon in this part of the mountains, and its smoke was beginning to pour north over the ridge into a smaller side canyon.
I took a picture of myself up there, as usual, but I look too miserable to include it in this Dispatch.
On the way back to town I saw a serious storm in the east, and it turned out we’d finally gotten a little rain back home.
Monday, October 5th, 2020: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
Thickets & Thorns
On the following Sunday, I set out for my favorite high-elevation hike, an hour’s drive west of town. My foot and knee felt fine at that point, and I was even more excited than usual about hitting the trail.
I was a little surprised to find the trailhead occupied, with a family all decked out in identical camouflage outfits milling around their SUV. As I got out, I yelled, “You guys going hunting?”
The father came over, wearing a midsize pack with a rifle pointing out of the top. He looked to be in his early 40’s, tall and strikingly handsome, and when he spoke, he immediately reminded me of the charismatic, good-looking Jewish intellectuals from the East Coast that had so intimidated me during my university years at the University of Chicago and Stanford. But he said they were from Cliff, the rural community that’s ground zero for the Cowboys for Trump movement!
He was super friendly, saying his son had a bear tag and they were headed for the “top” to glass for bear. “Holt Mountain?” I asked.
“Oh, no, we’re not going very far, just to where we can get a good view.”
“The Johnson Cabin trail?”
“I don’t know, where are you headed?”
“Holt Mountain, that’s why I asked.”
“No, no, we won’t be anywhere near you.”
I was left with lots of questions, but had no business prying. His kids looked to be no older than 10 – do they really issue bear tags to kids that young? And what was this suave, urbane guy doing in Cliff, and hunting predators, a practice I normally associate with arrogant assholes?
I always come prepared to hit the trail immediately after arriving, but as a family it was taking them forever to get ready, so I left them there and headed out.
Already, during the first half mile, everything felt very different. It was a cool fall day with clear skies, so that was nice, but my body felt better than ever. It felt like I’d developed hiking super powers. This is a long, hard trail with steep grades beginning about halfway, but I powered up every one of them without needing to rest. What had happened? I’d been hiking less during the past two months than at any time in the past two years, but here I was in better shape than ever.
Not needing to stop to catch my breath, I reached the little clearing at the bottom of the switchbacks almost an hour earlier than usual. I wasn’t conscious of hiking faster than usual, but obviously I was.
Then, on the long, steep traverse that is always the hardest part, I just walked steadily up it for the first time, whereas in the past, I’d always had to stop 3 or 4 times to catch my breath.
I reached the crest at 9,500′ an hour and a half ahead of time. During the past week, a friend from Santa Fe had said that his family was planning a hike to see aspens in their fall colors, and as I rounded a shoulder of this peak and saw the saddle up ahead, I realized that since I hike in aspens almost every week, their fall color isn’t all I get to see. Most busy city people only venture into nature to witness popular spectacles they discover through news media, like “superblooms” and “supermoons,” whereas I get to discover dozens of equally interesting and beautiful, but lesser known, seasonal phenomena all throughout the year.
The little grove of aspens in the saddle was blazing red and gold, but they were all small trees because they were part of early succession after the massive 2012 wildfire in these mountains. From up there, I could see bands of color striating distant peaks – all of them small trees in dense fire-recovery stands. Nothing like the towering, mature groves we used to admire in the High Sierra of California. In fact, since I moved to New Mexico and began hiking wildfire scars, I’ve come to see aspens not as beautiful members of mature forests, but as scrubby thickets colonizing burn areas. On these slopes, they alternated with the deeper red of maples as well as rust-colored oaks and ferns. The brown of the ferns actually covers the broadest expanse of these fire scars, and is attractive in its own right.
But it wasn’t just trees. From the beginning of my hike, deep in the canyon bottom, I’d been surrounded by fall color: flaming sumacs, golden oaks, burgundy poison ivy, rust-colored ferns, and a myriad of shrubs and tiny ground cover plants that created a mosaic of color, making even the predominant green seem more vibrant.
Since I’d reached the crest so early, and still felt so good, I hiked down the other side, planning to go much farther than usual. This trail already offers the most elevation gain of any, so I was really stoked. It actually continues all the way to the crest trail of the central range, for a total of 19 miles one-way – the rest of the trail is only used by backpackers. I was curious to see how far I would get, especially since the rest of the trail is choked with fallen logs and thorn scrub, including the nasty New Mexico locust.
It got harder and harder the farther I went, and only my new hiking super powers kept me going. The trail actually got more interesting, too, with more exposed rock and new views, but eventually I realized I’d better turn back if I wanted to get home before dark. Taking off my pack to log my position via GPS, I noticed the bandana I’d tied on to dry had been dragged off somewhere by thorns. It’s a nice one printed with the constellations so I hated to lose it, but on my return, I found it on the trail, back near the crest saddle.
White-tailed deer were everywhere, and red-tailed hawks soared through the tall firs and wheeled around summits. The hunting dad had mentioned a fire over in the Blue Range primitive area, to the northwest, and after returning to my vehicle and driving down out of the foothills, I could see the long plume and then a billowing cloud rising above the tallest peak of the range, dozens of miles away. When will this fire season ever end?
Monday, November 2nd, 2020: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
Chopping Locust
I was due to return to the trail that takes me deeper and deeper into our legendary wilderness, but just before I left home, I remembered the vicious thorns – mainly the New Mexico locust that was filling in the burn scar in the farther reaches of the crest of the range. I decided to stop by my burned house and pick up my Dad’s machete.
As far as I could tell, he’d never used it. I believe he bought it mail order, from one of his dozens of catalogs, after he moved from the Oregon coast to his hometown in southeast Ohio and became an invalid. I have no idea why he thought he needed a machete when he couldn’t even walk without a shopping cart to hold onto – my best guess is that since Fox News and Rush Limbaugh had convinced him that mobs of young black men were planning a home invasion, he wanted to cover all his bases. In case he ran out of ammo for his many guns, the machete might be his last resort.
After inheriting it, I’d used it for years to trim my privet hedge, until I developed rotator cuff tears in both shoulders and had to get an electric hedge trimmer. I’d kept it sharp, and cutting those damn locusts could be both fun and rewarding. I’d just have to make sure not to chop myself in the process – a machete is a wicked tool.
Once I’d hiked down into the canyon, I discovered that autumn was still going strong in the mountains. That’s the thing about mountains – the topography results in a range of elevations and habitats that are timed to go off in sequence across a period of many weeks, from low canyon bottoms to high peaks and ridges. With the plants themselves on different schedules, our fall color can extend from September to December.
The last time I’d been here, it was the sumac, the oaks, the poison ivy, the aspens, and various high-elevation shrubs. The aspens had mostly dropped their leaves by now, but the maples were just peaking. The weather was mostly clear and calm, one of those chilly fall days when it’s hot in the sun and cold in the shade, but the continuous climb on treacherous footing had me sweating all day long.
We’d had 3-4 inches of snow in town the past Tuesday, and a hike to 9,000′ on Thursday had me trudging through patches up to 6″ deep. So here, where the extensive mountain mass tended to attract more precip, I was expecting even more snow cover. But on the crest at 9,500′, there were only a few scattered patches in shaded spots behind fallen logs, and they would melt soon. Miles beyond, I could see a few actual snow fields on the north slopes of distant peaks, but they were all above 10,000′.
On the back side of the crest saddle, where the trail entered the thicket of aspen and locust saplings, I pulled the machete out of my pack and began my rogue trail work in earnest. There were a lot of thorns and it was a tough job. I was determined to get just as far as I’d hiked on my last visit, climbing over dozens of logs, straining my shoulder, and ending up with a bloody hand. The extra time meant I’d have to drive home in the dark – so be it, I’d be grateful the next time, and would be able to hike faster and farther without all those locusts to slow me down.
As I returned down the canyon in early evening, the maple habitat in the lower stretch was even more glorious than it’d been in the morning. Every stop delayed my drive home, but as usual, I couldn’t help stopping repeatedly to take it in.
