Different in a Land of Different

Different in a Land of Different

Spaceport, Fly Virgin Galactic!

Over a portion of the Easter break I packed up the family, (yes including the dog), a cooler and a truckload of other necessities and hit the road for south central NM.  Few of my readers have made it to New Mexico, which means even fewer of you have seen south central NM.  However, if you ever find yourself in Albuquerque with nothing to do and a hankering for a couple hundred mile round trip there are worst places to go, like for example, Texas. 

What’s in South Central NM?  You might ask…..well not much.  A great portion of the area is consumed by white sands missile range.  In fact the base is about 3200 square miles of nothing, which the guys in green and contractors of all ilk’s, use to test munitions and other things we aren’t supposed to know about.  For comparison, if White Sands was a state it would be bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island, but smaller than Connecticut, so it is a lot of nothing.  However, tucked roughly into the center of the base, resides the White Sands National Monument, and that is definitely something to add to your bucket list.

Yep,  White Sands, and the sky is THAT blue!

We spent a few hours at White Sands, sledding down the whitest sand dunes you will encounter in this country.  The dunes are made of gypsum and are cool to the touch.  So unlike your days at the Jersey shore, you will not burn your feet on this sand.  The place is other worldly as you climb the first dune and see a sea of parallel dunes, stark white, rippled and a few stories tall, and in the far distance mountains in all directions. For those of you still in denial about climate change, this place serves a stark lesson.  It was once the site of a lake, fertile enough to sustain mammoths, their footprints preserved in the sand. 

Today there is life at White Sands but the word fertile would not be in the first thousand uttered to describe the place.  The lack of shade is fairly astounding and it feels more akin to a Star Wars set than a national park.  As we walked barefoot through the park, careful to avoid the sharp gypsum crystals that form where puddles once stood, I found myself looking down for shells to collect, only to have to be  reminded that the surf was not just over the next dune.

Iris the dog, had us all out smarted and dug down into the sand to where it’s damp and cool to lay down.  She would chase the kids and bound up and down the shimmering dune face, but always returned to her damp excavation.

The sunsets at White Sands are legendary and when the moon is full, the white sand reflects so much light, the park service offers moonlight bike tours, I have been told its stunning.  However after a few hours the kids were beat and we all had a “been there done that” feeling about the place, so no sunset or moonlight tour for us, those activities will have to remain on the bucket list.  Afterward,  we generally  agreed that if it had been one degree hotter the place would have been unbearable…. it was 61 degrees and breezy. 

Deming of Old, and not much has changed

Rock Hound State park brought us to Deming, NM.  Deming is a very small town that looks like it was cut from a 1950’s real estate catalog, pasted on the ground and allowed to age.  I recommend you check out the wikiwhatever post for it…read all the way through and you will get a good impression of the town.   

Rock Hound is unique since instead of having to smuggle the rocks you collect, as is standard in other state and federal parks in the country, you are allowed and encouraged to take a rock hammer and collect. 

The mountainside is steep and about halfway up you start finding red jasper. There are other minerals as well, so by the time you get up the mountain to the layer that contains geode like things called thunderstones (no really that’s the name, Thunderstone is not a hair band knockoff of the rolling stones) you have collected what feels like a hundred pounds of stones.  Geology aside I think the layer is popular with collectors because they have also filled their bags on the way up the hill and the spot marks the limit most folks are willing to walk up a 30 degree slope.

Rock Hound State Park

We dug a few stones out of the matrix that looked promising and smashed them open without ceremony, to find out what was inside. One had blue common opal, another, rich veins of jasper.  Buoyed by the success, I found another nodule and despite its odd shape I convinced myself it was indeed a thunderstone.  I added it to the full backpack and headed down the hill, family in tow, reminded that I was not 21 anymore with each step. 

The dog, well aware that we were slightly nuts, left her excavation, and followed us down the hill.  When given the chance she would lay down in the middle of the trail as if to remind us all of the madness to descend such a steep grade carrying rocks. 

We found a shop that was manned by an old, one eyed miner, who I’m convinced was the inspiration for every “Old Miner” in every Scooby Do cartoon. The Man explained he had health issues from silicosis, and that he now just mined and polished the stone, not cut them.  He took us through his shop which was completely off the grid.  Powered by solar cells and a fleet of car batteries. Just par for the course in Southern NM.

Eventually we found a rock shop with a saw, however the proprietor  told me not to waste money cutting open the stone I had lugged.  After carrying the stone for a mile down the hill, 6 bucks seemed like a bargain to see what was inside it.  The man disappeared to cut the rock and came back 10 minutes later telling me the saw was making weird noises, which was a good sign.  The cut rock showed opal and jasper throughout and the proprietor showed me the vein would glow under a black light.  The shop owners seemed very surprised when I told them where I found the rock….as if to indicate that I gave away a secret.

The view on the way home.

As we headed out of Deming, on the 5 hour trip home, it occurred to me that the family and I traveled for two days and almost 700 miles and never left NM.  We moved through high desert and several immigration control points, but never left the state or the country (we were within 30 miles of Mexico at the closest.)  For folks like us who don’t spend time in church and who don’t have family within several thousand miles, I feel the trip was an excellent opportunity to reflect. For some the drastic scenery and mind numbing miles are a chore but I find it cathartic and the same time exhilarating to explore and see the diversity of geography our state and by extension our country, has to offer.  Getting out an experiencing it is not always easy, but is always worth it.