[revised]
Moreno Valley elk herd in the great beyond
It warmed up this afternoon, so we took a spontaneous three hour trip up to Red River, over Bobcat Pass, down the Moreno Valley to Angel Fire, and then back over the mountain to the south side of Taos in a great big circle. it was a stupendously beautiful day, and when my wife said “I want to see some ELK!” I took it a sign. She’s almost never wrong on this, but sometimes I take us where the critters aren’t. Not this time, though.
We actually had dinner in Red River on the way through. It’s a strange little ski village with a schizophrenic air and one long wide street, populated (loosely speaking) exclusively by Texans. There’s a biker bar, real estate offices, the kinds of eating places your kids want to stop at when you’re on vacation, and a couple of RV parks. The Wild West schtick fights a little with the Alpine Village thing — Yosemite Sam meets Heidi? — but nothing could be weirder than Texans coming to New Mexico to get away from Mexicans, so to speak. I’m a native Texan, so I can say this. (And if you don’t think a motel named “El Western Lodge” is a cultural weapon, you ain’t been listening.) We tried to find something edible to take with us at “Der Markt” but ended up going Texas Red’s Steakhouse, a decent place to get a charbroiled burger and iced tea with no tea in it, where we honestly had a wonderful time. This is a no-brainer if you’ve been around, because my fellow countrymen definitely know how to burn them some beef. Boy, was it not Taos, though. Change the license plates, hide the ski lift, and you’d have western Kansas on a stick. But the place was clean and friendly, and there were even Texans there.
At around 6:30 p.m. we left Red River and headed up to the pass (9,820 ft.). On the other side, we saw elk immediately, but just a few. A little farther down the road, where the canyon opens into the Moreno Valley, there were elk all over the place, like these.
These are not small animals
In this same spot, we saw the most astonishing mountain bluebirds. So incredibly blue. You don’t see many things this undisputably stunning, most days. Add those to the sight of at least 150 elk running across the hill, and you know why I am here. This is the highest order of existence for me, to see these things and breathe them in. There’s something there I need to connect with to be fully human or at least wider awake.
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