We went on a long drive this afternoon, ostensibly to look for migrating elk. The real reason was cabin fever and my wife’s birthday week.
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. We scored high-grade caffeine on the way out of town and headed for the edge of the state. We’d read in the paper that there had been elk-caused traffic jams on the main highway, and that the police had cornered an injured female elk just across from the main post office downtown. You’d think there would be elk all over the place, but this is the West. You could drop a million wildebeasts in a clump in northern Taos county and they’d just be another little cloud of dust from 30 miles away.
Bottom line is, we didn’t see any. But the road north past where we used to live into the lower reaches of the San Luis Valley was nearly empty and pretty damn spectacular. You cross a high ridge along the way that affords a brief view of the rift valley of the Rio Grande with several prominent extinct volcanoes, and the horizon has to be at least 70-80 miles away. Probably more. Volcanoes are everywhere. Here’s one of them from 20 miles north of the point just mentioned.:
San Antonio Mountain, 10,909 ft.
Check out this FotoFeed for a nice wide shot of San Antonio Mountain at 25 miles. It’s not only a gorgeous old volcano, but also the highest freestanding mountain in the United States. The Rio Grande is somewhere out there in the distance at the bottom of a 600-ft. gorge. That’s a rift valley, remember. The tectonic plates are still pulling apart. That’s where the volcanos come from. They’re all quiet now, but it must have been hell around here at one time.
Below is a dramatic view of Ute Mountain, another peak off to the west. The direction is important. I don’t have a truly representative shot from this trip — this will give you the idea — but to the right, where you can’t see, is a huge wall of mountains right up close to the road. Those would be the northern Sangre de Cristo range, and most of it is national forest and wilderness areas. The mountainsides are covered with evergreens up to the timberline (lots of snow up there still), and much of the land sloping gradually from the base of the mountains is covered with grass. There are great stands of tall cottonwoods along the natural streams that come down from the canyons, and also along the acequias. In the fall these turn bright yellow, and you can easily spot where water might be flowing from miles away. To the east, it’s almost what counts for “lush” around here, in other words, whereas out to the west, there’s mostly only sagebrush.
Ute Mountain and New Mexico sky
An irony of the topography and geology is that snowmelt off the mountains creates one helluva water table out there in the sagebrush vasties: in a wide flat plain where you could lose those million wildebeasts, there’s plenty of water about 25 feet down. In fact, I once met a fellow who claimed he’d hit water at 12 feet with a hand-dug well! Now, that’s homesteading. You get your water like that, and you relish every drop. You also can’t really live out there, though. Oh, I mean you CAN, but most people shouldn’t. You’ll either become enlightened or go insane.
(And what’s the ratio of natural saints to lunatics where you live?)
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Fabulous pictures! Thanks for posting them. I miss those mountains.
John