A Shrine to Gypsum:
Carlsbad Caverns NP
Randomness and seeping water have edged the sculptor's knife. Gypsum rock, the same rock dust made into plaster and sheetrock, has created the sculptor's blank form deep down in the Guadalupe Mountain spine. Ageless droplets splash into small mineral laden pools, drips feather along growing Stalactites and Draperies to form curls and waves, and bearded locks drape from black holes in rock ceilings. "Toothed" caves smile through gentle lighting to accentuate shadow box stages of slowly moving structures.
The self-guided walk along two and a half miles of dimly lit cavern paths winds a pilgrimage through a temple in constant progress. Camera flashes intermittently bounce off of rock faces, and only the odd word echoes throughout the cavern. This is a silent journey, an awe filled wonder at the possibility of aged sculpture still being sculpted. This is an expedition into an ancient watery art form constantly baptizing itself in the dark.
An initial dark shape emerges to hang upside down under a rock overhang. This is not one of the swallows we've been watching swoop in and out of the cavern. The Ranger asks us to be quiet and not fidget. No photos or flashes. The show begins and dark flitting shapes circle in the vortex of the cave opening before spinning out into groups of about 50 or so bats and the fly off into the dusky distance. Cool! |
The paved road into the Monument leaves behind the Chihuahuan Desert that I have been traveling through since Texas and transitions me through an Interdunal environment filled with weedy Blazing Stars, Little Striped Whiptails, Soaptree Yuccas, and Rabbitbrush. The pavement feathers itself into gypsum sand packed down by Monument visitors who come to picnic, dune sled, and walk around the stark white dunes that comprise 275 square miles below the San Andres Mountains in the Tularosa Basin.
Slideshow:
I attach "baskets" onto my hiking poles to grab the sand, and quickly remove my boots in favor of morning-cool sand particles enveloping my bare feet with every step. Packing several bottles of water and a sun hat, I'm ready for desert like conditions and look ahead at the "trail" markers rising tall from the dunes. Small brush, flowers and grasses grab firm down though the sand to sip whatever moisture avails itself to roots. But mostly, dune mounds seem to bubble up intermittently from the plateau. Eons gone by, the ancient Permian Sea finally retreated leaving deep layers of gypsum, and melting glaciers dissolved the mineral and returned it to the basin. Wind and water separated the water from gypsum and formed selenite crystals, and over time, kept breaking the crystals down into smaller and smaller particles. Winds blew the particles around to create these dunes. Moisture underlying the dunes holds this type of dunefield together to prevent the dunes from blowing away.
Even though a "Dune Wonder", modern reality sets in. The Monument is closed during military testing at nearby White Sands Missile Range. The closures average twice a week for up to two hours. I hit it right, no testing happens during my time in the Monument.
Partway between White Sands and Albuquerque, I stop to camp in the San Lorenzo Canyon Recreation Site outside of Sirocco along the I 25 highway. Traveling creatively holds layers of budget resources including an online site for free campsites. This is how I find San Lorenzo Valley and Canyon. Camping in the Recreation Site is legal if not camping near any water. Water is scarce to begin with, but down towards the back of the Canyon, water drips through rock formations and flows into a small stream along the sandy dirt road. Wildlife depends on this water and signs ask those recreating to give them room.
I wasn't sure how many people would be visiting the Canyon today, but, to my surprise, the hoodoo rock forms have invited a group of painters. I drive through the Canyon to see about a dozen easels spread out over a half mile of roadway, painters brushing forms onto canvas. Just before the Canyon's end, I chance upon a small, flat Grove of Cottonwood trees and "shade". I set up my beach chair in the shade of the grove trees and allow myself an afternoon of writing. I will also camp here tonight before heading north up to Santa Fe.
Slickensides: Rock layers tilt in various directions because of the movement that occurs along several faults.
I leave the remnants of the starry quiet of my deep sleep tucked into the canyon desert landscape. Iron dust rolls off my tires along this undulating dirt road as I drive straight into the new sun peeking over the hills. What will it see here this morning? The Canyon hills slowly start to shake off their night shadows to warm their hands in the sun's morning warmth and settle into their new day.
For me, I have arrived now. Or maybe returned to that place that has always lingered in me —that place between humility and stubbornness. To ask ever so nicely for one thing or another, and when offered, still hold them at bay. Long straight highway lanes allow for scattered musings and hold me in meditation. Transitional forces erode me, sculpt me, and re-create me. Yes, I want to explore the country—beauty in Natural Resources. Yes, I want to connect with friends no longer in New England. Yes, I want to find expansion by intersecting my path with others new to me. But, also, the exploration rises up from my own sculpted caverns, and the challenge is to flow with the snake-paths that wind their way into new landscapes. To let go of life agenda to more closely "feel" my way into the next phase's layers of complexity. My Capricornian grounding wants the answers, and yet, the quick answers will not serve me. This I know, so I rein back the voices that rush me.
The sun rises higher in the sky as I head north again on the I 25 towards Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Native American Flute music by Carlos Nakai lullabies my meditative state from my CD player. I don't see many Ravens these days (yet), but feel their presence in the background of my humility's darker places. Places that open me—this is the expansion I invite.
In the Rinconada Canyon of Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque, strewn lava rocks and boulders fall over themselves, cascade into the basin. Over 24,000 petroglyph images have been carved into the lava stones, some recognizable as animals, spirals, and people. Archeologists believe that most of these images were carved between 400 and 700 years ago by the area's Native Puebloans, and some perhaps as long ago as 2,000 to 3,000 years. In the 1600's, Hispanic heirs carved Christian crosses and livestock brands into the rocks.
The Ranger at the Visitor Center hands me the Rinconada Canyon trail map and mentions obvious images along the path.
"This one," she says as she points to a dancing figure, "is contested. See what you think. Is it a Kokopelli figure playing a flute? Or is it an alien? We all have our own opinion."
I like the alien theory. They probably had/have their own brand of music, so why not? Singing and dancing are universal in my opinion.
Santa Fe Forms
Along my road are certain markers: places, people, dancing, experiences. My Mandala of current on-the-road-life. And so it is that I stop in Santa Fe to visit my dear long term friend B. who moved here from the Bay Area in California last spring. Our connection cracks open the fissures that allow light into the chasms of darkness. This is the same darkness that swirls in my belly. The birthing canal of creativity in its purest form. The chemistry lab of alchemy, the alchemy that mixes in the light and dark, the old and new, laughter and tears, planets and stars. We sit in the flickering light of battery operated candlelight to stir the evening starlight into the elixir of transitional shifts, aged wisdom and understated humility. Comrades piecing together life.
Downtown Santa Fe, gift-wrapped in adobe, offers me a historical overview of the life and art of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of my favorite painters. Even though other museums exist here in Santa Fe, this is the one that calls to me, and once downtown, I make my way to the O'Keeffe shrine.
1974 (Texas):
"I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me- so natural to my way of being and thinking...I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."
I slowly walk through the nine galleries in the O'Keeffe Museum, and follow her experimental works from early representational images through her fascination with the New Mexico landscape, flowers and bones, and New York cityscapes. Photos of these paintings and drawings in books present a link between emotion and landscape, but to stand a foot away, to see brush stroke, color blends and pencil sketching marks, pulls up that tingling from the belly, the creative muse. Art in its purest form allows that tingling to rebel against the comfortable plateaus, to shoo away the critic's scoff, and stand in its fresh nakedness like a Revolutionary's waving flag.
Just down from the Santa Fe Plaza, the San Miguel Chapel sits sheepishly among a plethora of adobe plastered structures. Built along the early Old Santa Fe Trail, oral chapel history offers the construction date somewhere around 1610, even though the church has been rebuilt and restored more than once over the last 400 years. Those here in Santa Fe pride the age of the Chapel as the oldest Church in the United States.
For $1, I can enter and view the chapel from the inside:
Milonga Madness
My Google search for Santa Fe Tango leads me to the sixth annual Albuquerque Tango Festival over Halloween weekend. For followers? Sold out! But upon more research, I find that the Milonga social dances are open to pay-at-the-door attendance. And so, I drive the hour south back to Albuquerque for a late afternoon Alternative Milonga (non-traditional music), then a dinner break, and an all night Traditional Argentine music Milonga from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. Hah! No way I'll still be on my feet in my heels at 5 a.m. But, for my $40 total for both Milongas, I hope to get my money's worth. Festival video interviews advertise this weekend as a "friendly" event, and without connections during the workshops, I need leaders to get around and ask lots of women to dance.
"A lot of these folks come every year to this festival," the woman next to me says. "It's like a reunion."
Hmmm. I can already see that making eye contact for dance connections will be hard. Gazes flow over my head or around my body towards returning familiar faces, and I stay present and willing. Within the hours of the two Milongas, I get a few partners who can lead well. The rest are struggling through vague cues that keep me wondering what they are trying to communicate to me non-verbally. My sensual need to move my body with long legged sweeps and wraps bursts like a pricked balloon as I am forced to accept small shuffling steps without any real person-to-person connection. Are these guys trying to work out workshop tidbits? New on the floor? Have they not found their style against the backdrop of Bandoneon melodies? Hugo Diaz's harmonica flourishes drag my gaze across the sweeping expanse of the ballroom for anyone possibly looking in my direction. No contact. I sit back down, close my eyes, and dance the harmonica driven Tango of my dreams on my internal dance floor. At least I have that. By 3 a.m. I've had enough: A nap in the truck in the hotel parking lot before I drive back up to Santa Fe to reconfigure life back on the road again, and re-pack the Tango heels until the next Argentinian opportunity arises.