This is looking back toward Springer, NM on the way to Abbot, where I turned south for Mills Canyon. (Anyone seriously interested in these pictures should frequent FotoFeed — I’d say click back to June 13th, then move up.) I mentioned in the previous post that it would take two and a half to three hours to get to Mills Canyon. Well, it’s almost three just to get to this spot. And for the record, that 10 mile stretch of dirt road that leads down into the canyon takes another hour.
Those are buffalo grazing on the right…
No place I’ve ever been is so consistently beautiful, comfortable, and uncrowded. Just getting to what you see here was breathtaking — I came through the mountains in the background above — and the air has to be experienced to be believed. On my entire trip out there and back, about 150 miles each way, I was almost always alone on the highway, with empty road ahead and behind. (There were trout fishermen along the Cimarron, but that’s to be expected.) This is me being me. There’s nothing I’d rather do than explore a new wild place, especially if getting there is as exciting as this trip was.
For one thing, I almost hit an antelope. You can’t let your gaze favor one side of the road in antelope or deer country, or else for sure the animal is going to cross from the other. I had to slam on the brakes, but least I got a good close look. And there were others, maybe half a dozen, that ran across that stretch of dirt road (arrow #1) shown in the previous post. And then the road went down. Whoever said you could take a Greyhound bus down there must have meant the way they do in Mexico, end-over-end.
Just leave it in first …
This picture doesn’t begin to do justice to what quickly becomes one dangerous, steep two mile stretch. The road itself is smooth enough, but hairpin switchbacks through fender-smashing rock walls and a freaking sheer drop-off most of the way down meant that I couldn’t stop for all the photos I wanted. This road is so twisty in places, I couldn’t see it from behind my heaving fenders. Very disconcerting. You could probably take a passenger car on this road if you were crazy and wanted to get stranded. Me, I said a little prayer every single time I switched off the engine to park for a photo shoot.
But before I started down, I’d stopped to look at a really scary chasm just before where the above picture was taken. The reason you don’t see a shot of it is that I was standing on a rock, next to a tall Ponderosa pine on the edge of the precipice, watching a raven banking in a tight circle in the stiff wind just above me. I was looking very carefully, making sure of the identification, because the bird had just made a noise I’ve never heard a raven make before: it whistled at me with a sound very much like the shriek of a hawk, ony more full-bodied, longer, and strangely piercing. It didn’t make sense. Why would a raven, of all things, be whistling at me? I heard the sound again. Just then the raven dived in my direction, descending to land in the pine tree, I assumed, except it kept on coming. It was diving straight at me, and I saw the raven’s face. I’m not kidding. I saw the face, front-on, but I didn’t see it with my eyes, I saw it with my mind: instantaneously filling my whole field of vision was the close-up face of the raven, with gleaming black beak and big red eyes. I ducked, obviously, heard the raven whistle again, and decided I wasn’t supposed to take a picture. Feel free to read anything you want into this — I certainly have. It was as if the raven (?) projected an image of its warning face directly into my brain… And those red eyes!
Yes, of course I went skinny-dipping
This is the Canadian River at the bottom of the canyon at a point a short walk from where I spent the night. I want everyone to know that on the entire 10-mile drive in, I never saw another soul, nor was there anyone else visiting the little state park. No one came by during the night or in the morning, and I didn’t see anyone driving out. My cell phone didn’t work down in the canyon. I was completely alone, as we understand the words, and it felt very special.
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Nice pics. You’re grabbing those awesome sky & clouds without a UV filter? That’s some exceptionally clear air. Where’s the brown haze I’m used to seeing close to the horizion? You lucky bastard.
There (usually) is no haze, brown or otherwise. Sometimes dust, sometimes smoke, but usually not. The sky really looks like that. No filter! The blue goes all the way down to the horizon. It’s the blue that goes all the way down. Just breathing is exciting.