There’s only one thing wrong with my adventure: Time (read: money) is such a limiting factor. I want to go everywhere, and I want to stay longer in every place. In a perfect world, my journey would be open-ended as was that of its namesake; it took Odysseus more than ten years to get back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. But my world isn’t perfect, so this week, realizing how short time was, I reluctantly canceled my plans to visit a friend in Tucson and limited my stay in Santa Fe—one of my three favorite U.S. cities—to a 24-hour period. I know you’re having trouble feeling my pain, but you get the point. view photo

 :: The Snake In the Garden ::

This trip is billed as an odyssey for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I would inevitably encounter a few monsters. But I never expected to meet a gorgon in a state park in northern New Mexico, one of my very favorite parts of the country.

After too many nights in hotels—even the truly fine ones I splurged on in Santa Fe and Taos—I was in the mood for the great outdoors. And with the rain (which keeps following me; I’m thinking of charging drought-stricken areas to pass through) and the change in altitude, the air was cool and fresh. So when I pulled into Heron Lake State Park south of Chama, I was already disposed to stay, despite the threatening skies. As usual, I stopped at the entrance board to read the park rules and notices (such as no campfires and no charcoal use), but didn’t register. So many campgrounds are now oriented around RVs that it’s sometimes difficult to find sites suitable for a tent, and I needed to take a look around and see what was available.

I crawled through the first loop, noting a few possibilities, then proceeded to the other. But the first was clearly better suited to my wants and needs, so I headed back to it. Halfway around, I stopped and got out to decide among three or four options. The smell was heavenly: a rich, resinous melange of juniper, piñon, and sagebrush. view photo

 :: Meeting the Monster ::

I wandered back and forth between a couple of sites and was just about to haul out the tent when a 60-ish woman approached and coldly asked what I was doing. Thinking she was playing stern, I smiled and answered that site selection is a strategic process and I was giving it due attention. Her sour visage didn’t change, though, and she immediately challenged me on whether I had registered, told me that I could be fined for being there without the permit, and intimated that I might be there for sinister purposes. Taken aback, I replied that I intended to register once I found a site and I had never ripped off a park and had no intention of doing so now. She then said that she had been watching me and my behavior looked highly suspicious; I might very well be there to steal from the campers.

Up to this point I had endured the harangue with considerable politeness and patience, but this was too much. I frostily told her that I hadn’t driven all the way from DC to steal from campers in northern New Mexico, and I turned and walked back to Uli—no amount of love or money could have induced me to stay in that campground that night. She continued bitching at me as I walked away and got into the car. view photo

 :: What’s a Girl To Do? ::

So with a bad taste in my mouth I cruised up the road to Chama, where I proceeded to wash it away with a good New Mexican dinner (the sopapillas were outstanding). Situated just east of the Continental Divide and south of Colorado, Chama is a small mountain town mostly strung out along route 84. The fishing is excellent thereabouts, so the town has become increasingly touristy over the years; I always enjoy seeing it again but usually pass through.

Darkness had fallen and I had given up on camping, so I headed for the Best Western in Dulce (pronounced Dull-see). The hotel is owned and operated by the Jicarilla Apaches, who do a fine job—I remembered it as a good place to stay in the north. I only regretted missing the daylight views from route 64, for the arid high country between Chama and Dulce is especially lovely. Four signs I spotted in that short stretch attest to the complicated land-use mix thereabouts: The usual gold-and-black signs warned of possible crossings by deer, elk, cattle, and tractors. view photo

 :: It’s Still a Man’s World ::

I checked in around 10:30 PM and asked how late the bar was open, since it seemed like a good night for a drink. But as I headed up the stairs behind a guy who kept looking back and lingered at his door, I decided that the bar wasn’t a good idea, after all. I remembered that I had tried it the last time I was there and had been stared at incessantly. (The hotel gets much of its summer business from construction and fire crews, so men were the rule and I was the exception.) Even as I moved my car to the door nearest my room and got out my overnight necessities, a crew tidying their truck followed my every move. Mind you, I have never felt threatened or disrespected there, and I’m sure the attention is due to sheer curiosity as much as anything else; but it gets tiresome, regardless. Families aside, the road—especially the blue highway—is still largely a man’s world. (In a handwritten sign on the door, the housekeeping staff begged patrons to clean off their boots before entering.)

While checking out the next morning, I mentioned the imbalance to the two Apache women holding down the fort. “Well, there isn’t a ‘Men Only’ sign,” laughed the one, “but yes, there are a lot of them.” Wearing a big grin, she went on to tell me that a woman looking for a wealthy man might want to turn up during the first week in December, when hunters pony up $10,000 to bag a mule deer. (The Jicarilla reservation, in which Dulce is located, is considered one of the last great unspoiled hunting grounds in the American West.) The three of us enjoyed a hearty laugh—it was definitely a joke—at the thought of women hunting men hunting deer . view photo

 

 :: High and Dry ::

Just west of town I stopped at Dulce Lake to take some photos, since the once-healthy body of water was now reduced to a house-sized puddle. The spillway loomed awkwardly over dry ground, and the puddle wasn’t even visible from much of the dirt road winding up the butte behind the basin. The overflow pipes installed under the road at regular intervals looked comical sticking out into thin air, and signs demanding fishing permits only mocked frustrated fishermen. It would take much more to restore Dulce Lake than the rain shower that pelted me as I headed into the marooned western slice of the Carson National Forest.

Beyond the Carson, the land began changing from forest to desert; but it was a gradual transition, and the Sims Mesa Campground at Navajo Lake still felt like the mountains. I found a lovely site with a flat, sandy shelf shaded by junipers. To get to it, I crossed a short, sloping stretch of undulating stone; next to a small piñon there were some shallow natural steps onto the sand. It felt like my own private space, complete with a naturally landscaped entryway. Sims Mesa was also where I found vindication of a sad sort: Another camper told me that his son had arrived in the area before they had, so he stopped for the night at Heron Lake. The father reported that his son had said the campground host was the rudest woman he had ever met. view photo

 :: Aztec Ruins and Sociopolitics ::

From Navajo Lake I made a day trip to Aztec Ruins National Monument and Farmington (a roundtrip of about 140 miles). The ruins haven’t changed much lately, but some of the interpretive displays have: A number of cases held small notices in lieu of the artifacts that had once graced them. Headlined “Changing Awareness—Changing Exhibit,” the notices said that, “[The National Park Service] learned that exhibiting those burial items was highly insensitive. The Hopis were deeply disturbed about their separation from the person accompanying them, as well as their display.” When I asked NPS employee Janice Murphy Ellison about this, she said that the artifacts had been returned to the pueblo people with the human remains.

This led to a wide-ranging, very interesting conversation about a broad range of cultural and archaeological dilemmas puzzling staff at cultural sites in the Southwest. Public use of the reconstructed kiva at Aztec Ruins—everything from Boy Scout gatherings to pueblo ceremonies to weddings—is allowed on a case-by-case basis, but Janice isn’t allowed to do interpretive slide shows in the kiva because that could be considered sacrilegious. view photo

 :: To Dig, Or Not To Dig? ::

And of course there are public abuses associated with access and use: “At Bandelier [National Monument], New Agers would go out [to the Stone Lions] and leave feathers and crystals and all sorts of stuff and that wasn’t good, that was offensive,” she said. “[At] Chaco Canyon they had to close—I think it was Rinconada—one of the great kivas because people were leaving so much stuff behind [that] the Navajo employees didn’t want to go in there anymore—human remains, cremations, so forth. So it does become a problem but in different ways.” Because Janice is only a seasonal employee, she tries not to get involved in the policy questions; but because she’s thoughtful and dedicated, she can’t help but think about them. “There should be guidelines that each one of us follows at national parks and sites,” she said, “[but now] it’s ‘Call us and let’s see if we approve this use or not’ and ‘Do you want to pay for us to be here after hours?’”

We talked, too, about the larger, overarching questions: To dig, or not to dig? To preserve, or to allow everything to deteriorate in peace? Even many Native Americans seemed to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the pueblo people—commonly agreed to be kin to the ruins’ builders—claim the right to use the ruins for religious and other purposes, which wouldn’t even have been an issue if they hadn’t been excavated in the first place. But on the other hand, Janice said, “I’ve asked some of [them] how they feel . . . about the backfilling [reburial of rooms for preservative purposes] . . . and a lot of them are happy about that. I think they view that as ‘The place is going back to nature’ and that’s what they would like to see.” view photo

 :: Slaying the Monster ::

We even got around to the gorgon. “My husband has campground hosts that work for him [at a national park],” she said, “and [from] the stories he has told me, it almost seems like people become very territorial . . . . [One] was described as a pit viper.” We agreed that that kind of behavior is antithetical to the mission of public parks, and she didn’t mince words: “There’s no reason why that woman should still be there—I don’t care if she was having a bad day, either.”

You know I’d never let a monster win: I’m still enchanted by the Land of Enchantment! Stay tuned for next week’s installment. . . .
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