Monday, December 18th, 2023
Monday, January 9th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
Severe back pain had forced me to skip last Sunday’s hike, so I was eager to make up for it. But we’d also had more snow, and I knew the high elevations would have from one to two feet. In addition, warming temperatures would be adding a lot of snowmelt to the creeks, making crossings difficult or impossible.
I decided to return to my old favorite on the west side, the hike that crosses a canyon and a plateau before dropping into the second, bigger canyon. It tops out at about 7,200′, so any snow that hadn’t already melted should be manageable.
I knew the long ranch road up the mesa would be slow, with deep ruts, mud, and puddles in low spots. When it’s dry and graded you can get up to 50mph, but in winter or the monsoon it can be undriveable without 4WD. As I headed up in early morning the mud was mostly frozen, but it was the roughest and slowest I’d ever seen.
Still, the snow-covered crest of the range, ahead, drew me forward.
Approaching the trailhead, I spotted something red through the branches of a juniper, and a pickup truck appeared, with a tall guy loading some gear in the back. I got out and wished him a good morning while shouldering my pack. It was warm in the sun but I knew the canyon bottom would be shaded and below freezing, so I was wearing thermal bottoms and kept my storm shell on.
According to the trail log no one had been here for more than two weeks. Most visitors only venture a little over a mile to the first creek crossing. A few try the canyon trail beyond that, and even fewer continue up the switchbacks like I do.
On the way down into the first canyon I could hear the creek roaring, far below, but the sound of water is exaggerated in canyons, so I didn’t worry until I got a glimpse down into a bend, and involuntarily exclaimed. It looked flooded.
I always stop a half mile in to stretch, using that first half mile as a warmup. That’s where the other hiker caught up with me. He was in his early 20s and loaded for backpacking. I asked and he said he was planning to be out 3 or 4 nights, and as I guessed, he was headed for the big creek, the third canyon along this trail. We chatted a bit but he was anxious to move on.
Shortly after that, I got overheated and had to pack up my jacket.
When I reached the crossing, it was higher than I’d ever seen it – at least a foot deep, too high for my boots. But a trail crew had built a dam upstream, with flat rocks the ice-cold water was rushing over – a sort of submerged walkway for hikers. Without that, I would’ve had to give up on this hike.
When researching my waterproof boots and gaiters, I’d read a review by a hunting guide who said they’d kept his feet dry after months of running through creeks. I couldn’t run across this creek – it was at least 12 feet wide and the bottom was lined with big loose rocks. But I’d find out how good my gear was at keeping my feet dry across that dam.
The rock dam was loose and precarious, but steadying myself with a couple of sticks from along the bank, I made it across. The current had driven the water inside the gaiters and about 5 inches up my boots – another couple inches and they would’ve been swamped. But my feet remained dry inside.
It was really cold in that dark canyon bottom, but I knew climbing the switchbacks would warm me up and dry out my boots.
Past the crossing there’s a branch trail that goes up the canyon, requiring many more creek crossings. Continuing on the main trail I followed the young backpacker’s tracks onto the switchbacks, noticing another large footprint that was over a week old. The climb to the plateau is in two main parts – the switchbacks out of the first canyon that gain about a thousand feet, then beyond the ridgetop, the very steep, rocky section that climbs the remaining 400′ to the little peak at the western edge of the plateau. That’s where I found the first snow, and the backpacker’s tracks disappeared.
What the hell? I backtracked and tried to find where he’d turned off, but the ground was too rocky to hold sign. So I continued onto untracked snow, and wondered what he was up to. There’s really no place to go from that peak, other than on the trail. It’s atop a band of rimrock, the uppermost of several layers that continue all the way down to the third canyon. If he was trying a shortcut to the third canyon, he’d have to circumvent cliffs a hundred feet tall, ending up stuck in a maze of box canyons and brush all day, and be lucky to even reach the creek by nightfall, with the trail another mile or two upstream past several more flooded crossings.
Crossing the plateau in the sun, I had to stop yet again to take off my thermal bottoms, and eventually my sweater. I saw the two-week-old footprint there in thawing patches of dirt, but by the time I’d crossed the valley at the east end of the plateau and climbed to the saddle above the second canyon, his footprints had disappeared. I was the first hiker in a long time to enter that second canyon, and as expected, the initial descent held the deepest snow I would find all day, so I had to put my gaiters back on. This was turning into a day with a lot of stops!
Despite the initial snow, the steep descent went quickly. I kept my gaiters on because I was hoping to use them to cross the next creek. But I should’ve known better.
The second creek drains a much bigger watershed, and was running at twice the volume of the first creek. I scouted upstream, where it gets rockier, but couldn’t find anyplace to cross without swamping at least one boot in ice-cold water.
Still, it was great to see and hear so much snowmelt barreling down! I climbed back up the bank and continued on the canyon trail, hoping to find a way across at the next crossing, a half mile upstream. But of course that was just as flooded.
Despite being stopped by the second creek, I was feeling pretty good. It was a beautiful day. I’d had to stop so many times, I wasn’t even trying to push myself – I was just enjoying my remote, wild surroundings. I wasn’t even daunted by the long, difficult climb back out of the canyon – I would just take it slow.
And a few hundred feet above the floodplain, I was relieved to meet the backpacker on his way down. “Where the hell did you go?” I exclaimed.
He laughed, looking a little embarrassed. “I just stopped on that little peak, to hang out for a while.” I cautioned him about the flooded creek, but he said he had sandals and didn’t mind getting wet. Again, he seemed anxious to keep going.
I continued to wonder why he would start a backpack by stopping for three hours, only two miles in. But when I reached that peak myself, and my phone suddenly registered a voicemail, I realized that he’d probably stopped because that was the only place in the area where he had a signal. He was probably doing business on his phone, or catching up with his girlfriend.
His nonchalance about crossing ice-cold creeks up to his knees was what really made me think. I realized that with my Reynaud’s syndrome I’ve become paranoid about getting my fingers and toes wet in cold weather. But my problem with creek crossings goes back farther, because with my chronic foot inflammation, I can no longer go barefoot, and need to use custom orthotics at all times. And sandals and water shoes are not made to accomodate orthotics.
I thought back to the primitive skills course I’d taken in my late 30s. We students all wore serious hiking boots on that 2-week backpack covering about 120 miles, but the three young instructors all wore sandals the whole time, while walking farther and carrying much more weight than we did. Ben, the youngest, wore flat leather “Jesus sandals” with no arch support, and I tried to emulate him afterward. That may have been what injured my foot to begin with and set off this condition.
Cody, another intern on that course, went on to become a prominent aboriginal skills instructor, and became famous for trekking all over northern Arizona, all year ’round, in a t-shirt, shorts, and bare feet. You people whose feet remain strong, and who can endure river crossings in snowmelt, don’t know how lucky you are!
That young backpacker became the hero of my day, setting out in January, embracing multiple crossings of the third snowmelt creek, which would be four times as big as the first. I wished I could do that, and gave serious thought to the waterproof, insulated socks that are now available. Surely my foot could tolerate short episodes in sandals with good arch support. Sure, it would mean a lot slower hikes, with all the changes of footwear and drying out of gear, but I might get over my fear of cold water.
My back pain had been on the edge of triggering all day – I’d had to maintain perfect posture, squatting instead of bending at the waist, being scrupulously mindful of the angle of my lower spine. And when I reached that little peak and began descending from the plateau, I developed a sharp pain in my right knee. It was the same knee I’d had trouble with a couple months ago, but this was different pain, probably sciatica from my back episode. I strapped on my knee brace, but that barely helped so I took a pain pill.
I could handle gentle slopes, but at every steep section I cried out involuntarily. I had to go really slow and keep my leg as stiff as possible. I was not looking forward to the creek crossing, but needed to get there before dark, and the sun was definitely setting.
Finally I reached the frigid canyon bottom and the creek crossing, which was even more flooded from the day’s snowmelt. To prepare for the possibility of slipping and falling in the water, I packed my warmest clothes and camera in a plastic bag inside my pack. I pulled on my lined Goretex ski gloves and gripped two stout sticks, and crossed the flooded rock dam with no problems.
But my problems weren’t over. Starting up the rocky trail, I simultaneously developed cramps in my left foot, right quad, and left hamstring, and it was all I could do to keep from falling over. After the cramps subsided a little, I dug a packet of electrolyte supplement out of my pack and mixed it with the last of my drinking water.
My knees were really tired at this point and I couldn’t keep the sharp pain from being triggered, even on this ascent, so from time to time I cried out involuntarily – it was like someone was pounding a nail into my knee. What a mess!
But the pain meds were doing their job – the pain had moved into my backbrain, and my forebrain believed it had been a wonderful hike. It was dark by the time I reached the vehicle, and I had to drive slow all the way down the chewed up mud of the ranch road.
I stopped at one point to retrieve a spare water bottle, and when I got out of the vehicle both legs cramped up again. What a day! After waiting another five or ten minutes for the cramps to subside, I finished off my water, resumed driving, got up to 40 mph, and then suddenly there were two huge cows right in front of me in the road. I slammed on the brakes, went into a skid, and they finally reacted, heaving awkwardly out of the way at the last minute in typical cow fashion.
Sound of first creek from about 700′ above:
Monday, January 16th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
2023 was not starting well for me, with severe back pain leading to continuous headache, so that I’d had to skip some of my regular hikes. But meds had made this Saturday fairly pleasant, and by Sunday morning both back pain and headache were manageable. I hadn’t expected to be ready for a hike, but my body was desperate for exercise.
The weather forecast was confusing. A National Weather Service warning for the entire region predicted dangerous winds up to 70 mph, with fallen trees and property damage. And here I was with my neighbor’s 80 foot tall elm overhanging my house. But that forecast was for the whole of our topographically complex region, and local forecasts only predicted gusts up to 40 mph, peaking in late afternoon. Plus rain beginning before noon and turning to snow in the evening.
Somewhat befuddled by the lingering effects of pain and meds, I procrastinated for a while, eventually settling on a short hike near town. It was one of the steepest, and would take me onto the crest at 9,000 feet, where I should have expected at least foot-deep snow. But most other hikes would involve mud, which I figured would be even worse.
How long would I be gone? Would I return to find my house destroyed by a fallen tree? I moved the vulnerable stuff to the opposite end, just in case, and hit the road.
It was already snowing lightly. In my reduced mental state, I’d forgotten that temperatures in the narrow, dark canyon around the trailhead were always much lower than in town, despite being only a few hundred feet higher. There was snow and ice on the mountain road and deep snow even on the south slopes above. I made a snap decision to take the ridge trail instead of the peak trail, since the peak trail is one of my regular midweek hikes. In my confused state, I was forgetting that the ridge trail traverses a steep north slope that holds some of the deepest snow in our region until spring.
So it was another gaiter day. I encountered up to 6 inches on the lower part of the climb, but that was doable. A big man had been up the trail before me, and subsequent melting and freezing had left a crust and solidified his tracks, followed by a couple more inches of powder, so it was the worst possible surface to walk on. He’d also had an older crust to walk on, so some of his tracks were near the surface, while others were deep holes where he’d sunk in. And the new powder made it impossible for me to anticipate whether my next step would land on hard crust or sink into a deep hole. I literally lurched and stumbled up the mountain and across the north slope, where the snow was now up to 14 inches deep.
I tried to go slow to minimize the impact on my headache, but I could feel it coming gradually back. It was still pretty minimal compared to other sensations, like cold face, fingers, and toes, so I kept going, determined to go at least as far as the previous hiker.
The day’s storm hadn’t actually made it here yet, but the wind was rising and the dark storm clouds were racing out of the west and over my head. What the hell was I doing up here?
This is a trail that used to be one of my favorites, but became totally overgrown and virtually impassable after a 2021 wildfire that burned around the entire ridge. I used to take it to the stock pond at the end of the ridge, a little over 6 miles one-way, with about 2,500′ of accumulated elevation gain. I didn’t expect to get nearly that far today, and the way things were going, I would be lucky to get to the first milestone, a rocky shoulder about 2-1/2 miles in.
But I did reach the shoulder, after 2-1/2 hours of slogging and stumbling through deep snow. The previous hiker’s tracks continued past that point, but I’d lost my competitive drive. And as I turned back, the storm hit the north side of the ridge, and on my return, I faced gale force wind driving snow in my face. The snow turned into a blizzard by the time I began my final descent. And something weird started happening to my boots.
There were patches with little or no snow on the descent, and whenever I walked over one of them, a ball of snow and pine needles developed under the arch of each boot. I stopped to knock them off on rocks, but as soon as I resumed walking, the snowball returned. I eventually found it was easier to keep walking (awkwardly) on the snowballs, because they would fall off by themselves when I hit the next patch of deep snow.
These snowballs got worse the farther down I got, because the snow gradually became thinner and I had to cross longer stretches of bare ground. I had to grab a stick before getting in the vehicle, so I could poke off the final snowballs before swinging my feet inside. That’s when I discovered a kernel of solid ice balled up on the synthetic cords that secure the gaiters to my boots.
I hit heavy rain as I approached town, but the tree and my house were still standing. And we never actually got high winds in town – the most we got was a gentle breeze. Fortunately my headache was manageable, and I took another muscle relaxer along with the maximum dose of acetaminophen to help me sleep.
Online forums showed that the gaiter snowball is a familiar phenomenon. I’d worn these gaiters in snow over a dozen times so far and had never encountered it – apparently conditions have to be just right, with light snow over wet, unfrozen ground. Others have succeeded in preventing the snowball by coating their straps with oil or wax.
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?
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023: Arts, Music & Dance.
Paying It Forward
Most music lovers owe their families or friends a debt of gratitude for the gift of music – not just for introductions to songs or artists, but for the mind-expanding opening of doors onto new genres, and sometimes even unfamiliar cultures.
For musicians, discovering new music has even deeper significance, because it can inspire and even influence our own work.
I’ve been especially blessed because I grew up in a culture which treated music as an indispensable way of life. Even before I formed indelible memories I was immersed in music, and for as long as I can remember I was singing and playing music with my family.
The 1960s music revolution unfolded in the outside world as I progressed from junior high through high school in our small farm town. Until the end of the decade, we only had AM radio, so cutting-edge music could only be found on LP record albums and 45 rpm singles at distant big-city record stores. They couldn’t reach us until someone’s parents drove them there and back, and were either played for groups of us in listening parties or briefly loaned out by the lucky few.
Beginning in the 1970s, my friends and I made and shared cassette copies of our own music and LP records, and that continued over the next three decades, ending in the new millenium when we could burn music CDs on our computers. Schooled in the DIY culture that followed punk rock, we appreciated these cassettes more than the later CDs because cassettes were a little more tangible – they wore our friends’ handwriting and sometimes handmade art, and they had their own dedicated mobile device, the boom box, which had speakers so a room, car, sidewalk, or beach full of friends could all listen.
At this point, the only way I can repay this debt is by paying it forward. Here are just a few of the cultures, genres, and artists gifted to me by family and friends. In most cases I’ve avoided posting live videos of the artists performing, because they’re not available, because the sound quality is poor, or because I want to save them for a later topic.
Delpha & Stella
Maternal grandmother Stella and paternal grandmother Delpha represented my rural Scottish cultural ancestry. Delpha and Stella sang me to sleep with Scottish lullabies, and throughout my early childhood, we met with their large extended families at the Williamson and Carson homeplaces out in the country, for reunions and Sunday sings, all of which featured Appalachian mountain hymns and songs, many of Scottish origin.
Thus it was like coming home when I discovered the Stanley Brothers of Virginia in the mid-1970s. They sang just like my Williamson uncles, with much the same repertoire. “Angel Band” was a song rendered sweetly by Uncle Wib, and “Amazing Grace” was one Stella sang to inspire neighbors in the nursing home before she died.
That old Appalachian music is the first and one of the most important influences on my own work.
After his brother Carter’s death in 1966, Ralph Stanley regularly included a song on each of his albums performed in the ancient style of lined-out hymnody, which was brought to North America by exiles like my Wiliamson, Carson, and Carmichael ancestors in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Joan & Vern
My parents met during the post-war jazz revolution – the birth of bebop – and they were both aspiring musicians, Joan training as a concert pianist and Vern studying violin but jamming on jazz percussion and vocals. I heard so much jazz growing up in the 1950s that it simply became my natural environment, and I didn’t even learn all the names of artists or songs until, in some cases, decades later.
But at the same time, Mom and Dad also loaded our huge hifi sound system with world music and classical music. After they divorced and my brother and I moved to our mom’s hometown, she regularly took us to jazz, classical, and world music concerts in the big city. And after I grew up and left home, my parents avidly followed my music and kept listening and exploring new genres and artists. My dad was listening to Nirvana in his 80s!
I never tried to play jazz, but jazz styles and ideas crept in unconsciously, and I can recognize them occasionally in my work. And today 1950s jazz is one of my favorite listening genres.
My dad was a great whistler and scat artist, and he often whistled “Scotland the Brave”. He gave me one of my first LP record albums, a recording of the Black Watch pipe band. Scottish bagpipe melodies have also occasionally found their way into my work.
Miriam Makeba is the first African artist I ever heard – again, on my parents’ record player.
In parallel with the British Invasion that sparked the 1960s youth music revolution, there was a much quieter invasion from a Portuguese colony – the collaboration between American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian popular music. Despite the stiff competition, Stan’s Brazilian albums stayed in rotation at our house. This was the first international “fusion” music I ever heard, and I followed in Stan’s footsteps two decades later, as I tried to integrate African styles with my Appalachian heritage.
My mom tried to teach me some Bach on her piano, and one of her favorite artists of the 60s, the Swingle Singers, made a career out of jazzing up Bach in a capella. I was obsessed with European classical music in college, and every now and then a classical theme will still pop up in my work.
Mom took me to meet her linguistics professor at Indiana University, who sang old folk and blues songs with his wife, and they introduced me to the Pentangle, a lesser-known but unique British jazz-folk fusion group I still listen to often.
James
I’ve eulogized James elsewhere in Dispatches – one of my principal elders and mentors, leader of a group house in Menlo Park that I shared for little over a year, in 1978-79. But what a productive year! I drew, I painted, I taught myself bluegrass banjo and flatpicked guitar, I wrote stories and songs. And James, an amateur musicologist and passionate social critic, introduced me to the transgressive sounds of the Velvets, the Modern Lovers, and punk rock, all of which became the main inspiration for my work in the next year – not to mention the inspiration for most rock music throughout the following decades.
Mark
Mark is one of my two best friends from high school. We were introduced by my mom because we both wanted to form a band, and we did, and wrote songs together then, sang and played together throughout the 1970s, wrote and recorded together again in 1980, and recorded sporadically throughout the 80s and 90s as a guerrilla music and art duo, the Didactyl Brothers. We’ve always inspired each other in our shared habit of making music, art, and literature with equal passion.
Mark has written and performed both rock and country songs, and we share the love of old-time Appalachian music. But shortly after James introduced me to punk in Menlo Park, Mark was discovering post-punk down south at CalArts. The transition from one to the other was like the blink of an eye, and when I started Terra Incognita in San Francisco in 1981, we were operating in the very loosely-defined post-punk realm. Mark and I listened to Public Image and Joy Division constantly, but you will hear very little of their direct influence in any of my work. I agreed with them that our society and its culture were failing, but instead of wallowing in the failure, I wanted to start exploring the alternatives.
Jon
Jon was a founding member of Terra Incognita, a vocalist and percussionist, and one of our leading lights. Culturally voracious, he introduced me to West African music and led or co-produced TI’s ventures into performance art, multi-media cabarets, community-building, and art/science conferences. He arranged the party at our loft which brought together legends of African music for the first time, and triggered my obsession with Nigerian Yoruba music that remains one of my primary influences.
The first African cassette Jon gave me was of the Ramblers Dance Band from Ghana, but I found their highlife style too sweet, so Jon recommended Fela Kuti of Nigeria. I found this album at the legendary Down Home Music in the East Bay, and “Water No Get Enemy” remains my favorite of Fela’s. It may have been an inspiration for the sax I picked up a few months later.
At the same time, Jon gave me a book that heavily referenced the father of juju music, I. K. Dairo. I didn’t actually hear juju until almost two years later on King Sunny Ade’s first international release, but when I did, the genre became my main obsession. I finally saw Dairo in Berkeley in the 90s, shortly before he died.
Jon is also an Asian scholar, and gave me a cassette of this Indonesian gamelan album in the mid-80s. It became a favorite for late-night art sessions at the loft.
Scott
Scott joined Terra Incognita as a bandmate and one of the first loftmates in 1981, playing drums and sometimes experimenting brilliantly on other peoples’ instruments that he was completely unfamiliar with. I’d moved on from Joy Division by then, but Scott showed me that the re-formed New Order had potential – after all, they released what may be the greatest rock song of all time, Joy Division’s “Ceremony”, that summer. Years later, after I’d recovered from my African fixation, I finally embraced New Order’s decades-long repertoire, and it made me want to resume writing rock songs.
Katie
Katie was my life partner, songwriting partner, and bandmate for four years, helping me resurrect Terra Incognita and turn it into a successful performing band. A developing singer and bassist, she was a very sophisticated listener, introducing me to everything from Nina Simone and Kitty Wells to The Raincoats and early REM. But it turned out to be her cassette copies of the Meat Puppets and Holger Czukay, which we listened to over and over, year after year, in the car on road trips, and in the loft during art sessions, that became pillars of my library and inspirations for my later work.
Katie also turned me on to grunge in the early 90s. It inspired a few songs as I revisited rock in my new band Wickiup, and became a staple on mountain-bike rides, but didn’t survive the millenium.
This slow-burning track by dubmeister Czukay includes one of my favorite guitar solos of all time.
Sebastian
The Portuguese artist Sebastian Mendes was only a friend for a short time in the mid-80s, but he had a profound and lasting impact when he gave us a cassette copy of two albums by this English chamber ensemble, because he thought they sounded like our early recordings. It may seem like a stretch, but we did use some of the same instruments – ours were electrified but retained the crispness of their acoustic kin. The Penguins’ composer, Simon Jeffes, was also adventurous and had a sense of humor that TI lacked, and they remain my all-time favorite instrumental group.
Josiah
Josiah was a member of The Invertebrates, an underground San Francisco band that started roughly the same time as Terra Incognita, and in the same place – Club Foot. But we didn’t meet until 1985, when Mark, fiddle player in the reborn Terra Incognita, met Josiah, and our two bands began sharing gigs.
Josiah’s best friend from college, another artist, became one of my best friends, and Josiah became part of our extended family of artists and musicians that persists to this day. He was also writing for a music magazine and passing me cassette compilations from time to time – he made sure that reggae and dub became pillars of my library.
One cassette Josiah gave me in the 90s contained a one-off album by alcoholic Texan Jon Wayne that became my ultimate icon of music that’s so bad it’s brilliant.
Mike
In early 1988, having spent a year recording an album and unsuccessfully trying to pitch it to independent record labels, Katie and I decided we needed new talent and a bigger sound. I put up ads for backing musicians with a “spiritual” dimension, and Mike showed up raring to be our drummer and percussionist. He’d studied under jazz-funk adventurer Ronald Shannon Jackson at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and Woodstock’s Creative Music Studio and he’d briefly worked in New Orleans. But most important to me, he played talking drum and had worked in Ken Okulolo’s band, a Nigerian who played bass on King Sunny Ade’s early international tours.
Mike became one of my best friends while stage-managing our performances and introducing me to an amazing variety of music from around the world, both live and recorded.
Sun Ra is Mike’s guru of spiritual music, but with my grounding in Scottish pipe bands and old-time hymns, Albert Ayler’s spellbinding fusion of jazz, gospel, and military bugle calls struck a deeper chord.
Early on, Mike gave me a tape of pygmy music that I’ve never been able to source anywhere else, calling it the “ultimate music of the world”. I studied it seriously and, bewildered, attempted to reproduce it, and in the process discovered how it was made – spontaneously by everyone in a multigenerational community of hunter-gatherers, based on what they’d learned from animals and their ancestors and added to with their collective creativity.
But even before studying it I agreed with Mike. Pygmy music really is the ultimate music, making modern jazz, and centuries of European classical music, sound like the bumbling of ignorant toddlers. I could never hope to do anything this sophisticated.
Millie
Millie and I became partners two years after the 1989 earthquake that destroyed the Terra Incognita loft and ended the Terra Incognita band. I had realized my dream of establishing a spiritual home in the desert and mastering aboriginal survival skills, and we began exploring remote parts of the Southwest together. She was a talented singer and dancer and wanted to start a band, but mixing music and romance had ended badly for me, so I continued to work alone and she taught herself guitar and started a rock band with a girlfriend.
But like Katie, she was a sophisticated listener, and got me hooked for life on the unique Scottish band Cocteau Twins, which I had ignored in the 80s, along with so much of the developing post-punk scene, as I became obsessed with African music.
A musical friend in the late 80s, saxophonist Benjamin Bossi, had tried to get me interested in Hugo Largo, a newly formed East Coast band that used nearly the same instrumentation as Terra Incognita – electric guitar, bass, and cello. But as usual, I blew him off, and didn’t even give them a listen until 1991, when Millie gave me a cassette of their second album. The lyrics remain some of my favorites 30 years later.
Serge
Shortly after our debut in 1985, the reborn Terra Incognita was recruited for a multi-media extravaganza celebrating the legacy of Julian Beck and the Living Theater. Algerian-born Serge El Beze had been a member and was one of the organizers, so I got to know him first as an experimental theater person. We did more shows together, and I saw him perform music with free jazz pioneer Don Cherry, but with the rise of North African DJs and the international dance scene at the start of the 90s, Serge reinvented himself as Cheb i Sabbah, international music DJ.
From year to year, he migrated between residencies in San Francisco clubs, producing magical nights that were a healthy alternative to the bone-thumping, mind-numbing house music scene. Almost every time I went, I discovered new artists, rushing back to the booth to ask him who it was. I developed a bad habit of dragging new dates to his shows, partly because it was the best dance scene in town, but also partly to impress them with my worldliness. Serge was always friendly and generous in his courtly, gentlemanly, professional manner.
Gnawa music became one of only two genres of African music that I regularly listen to in the desert – the other being Nigerian Yoruba apala, which I discovered on my own.
The kora music of Mali became a staple of “world music” in the 90s, but Kasse Mady earned a permanent place in my library for his loyalty to rural traditions. Like Ralph Stanley, he’s a singer who will send chills up your spine. This piece is more urbanized, but it’s the first track I ever heard from him, the one that sent me back to Serge’s DJ booth to find out who in the world it was.
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.
