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Stories from Occupied New Mexico

Joined
Jun 7, 2006
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Location
Exit. Stage West.
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A wave of cool breeze sweeps over me
pushing the heavy warmth away
and carrying the sensuous smell
of damp desert earth
tinged with tangy creosote bush.
Small droplets of cold water
make tiny little skin muscles
wake the wispy hairs that
stand like porcupines on my arms.
Open your nostrils and breathe it in.
Drink the odors of the desert under rain
listen to thunder music caress your ears.
This is when the desert smells like rain.
Embrace it.
This is when it all comes to life.​

Shortly after arriving into Fort Davis, in the Big Bend area of Texas, we experienced one of several monsoon rains during late September and throughout October. The polar opposite of the year before, the rains have rejuvenated the parched northern Chihuahuan desert, desert floor and island mountains. Grasses wave, flowers play, and trees burst with green magnificence.

During the eight days based in Fort Davis, rain and winds, thunder and lightening pelted the area for more than 24 hours. Reported rainfall varied from over four inches around FD and near Alpine, to 0.5" closer to the Rio Grande. People were doing happy dances and hugging their water tanks (including us). Roads were washed out, rocks and sand were plowed from some sections of road. But no one minds.

Twice more, we had monsoon storms pelt the area, this time concentrated along the river. But the lightening shows were unequaled in most of the local's memories. River water rose from 5-9 feet in a few hours. Sections of road recently opened from the last rain were again closed in the park.

But that's okay. Because water is life.

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Retirement Ride with No Particular Place to Go.

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After spending nearly a month in New Mexico (stories on that later) and Fort Davis, we parked and set up the Coyote Turtle at the RV park in Study Butte. Roads to El Punto were bad from the last rain storm: sections washed out, dried mud ruts at least 6" deep and 8" high. No way the truck was safely going to haul our current 'home', a 30' travel trailer (by the name of Coyote Turtle: a brown turtle hauling a coyote ;) into El Punto Coyote, our spot on the desert 10 miles off pavement.

So here we are temporarily. In between dealing with an inefficient, incompetent, and.......... [deleted] personnel at Texas Retirement System offices (they sent my retirement packet to the wrong address twice, then sent an incomplete packet -missing documents- finally to the right address; after UTSWMC lost my last paycheck and sent my vacation pay to the wrong address), I did a Retirement Ride on the DR350 into the National Park.

Because Old Maverick Rd and access to Santa Helena Canyon were closed, I dawdled around elsewhere. With no particular place to go.

I even had a water crossing.... (behind the green mesquite foliage sticking out over the road). Got my butt wet and water in my boots, but it was refreshing.

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Lot of water in the river. A beige silty color instead of north Texas reddish-brown.

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This seems to be a place I come to almost every ride in the park: the Castalon store. A quiet place for a cold iced tea and freezer ice cream. They know me already.

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Then explored around the Castalon area, which I haven't taken the time to do before. The store and outbuildings, including the Ranger's office, were built as a military camp. And never used. Only after Cartledge and Perry bought the compound was it utilized. The original Castalon was down below, where the restored Alvino adobe house stands. Although, it was built by a very smart and enterprising Mexican named Hernandez, who built and opened at least four stores in the Big Bend area (in Shafter, Santa Elena, Castalon, and Terlingua Abaja). Back then, people used building efficiently: house, store, chapel, social gatherings, funerals, post office, even railroad stations.

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The restoration of the adobe was well done, utilizing natural earthen components and recycled metal parts, such as the gutters and roof. Although the first roof was probably dirt and/or thatch. The adobe blocks and plaster are clay, sand and chopped straw. Manure was also used earlier to help bind the earthen components. Some of the vigas look old, but they may also be recycled from another building. The stem wall is motored rock upon which the adobe blocks are laid to help reduce erosion of both plaster and blocks from weather.

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It was a leisurely ride. No need to hurry. I can go back again the next day, too!
 
Occupied New Mexico

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A dirt, sandy and rocky road of 52 miles, running on top of a high plateau, through arroyos and canyons, from Belen to Magdelena, NM. It, too, is part of the northern Chihuahuan desert.​

You may wonder about the title 'Occupied New Mexico,' if I am posting about Big Bend, Texas. Simple: The more I experience New Mexico, the more I realize how similar many parts of Big Bend are to New Mexico. Big Bend is more like New Mexico than the rest of Texas: in terrain, people and communities, biodiversity, and even buildings. If you know the past rich history of southwest Texas and New Mexico, even the present is parallel.

A well known expert in adobe construction, an adobero, that lives in New Mexico, once referred to SW TX, as 'Occupied New Mexico.' He's right, and he doesn't realize what he started, for I refer to Big Bend as the same: Occupied New Mexico. Partly because most other people don't have a clue what I am talking about. Partly because I tend to buck convention with place names, and use a name that reflects past history as well as current perspectives. I don't owe blind allegiance to any place on a map; places own me and I give them names that mean something to me.

I'll refer to this off and on both in this thread and the one on New Mexico.

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A twisty, hair-pinned road from Kingston to Silver City, NM, over and through the Gila Mountains and National Forest. This road beats Tail of the Dragon handle bars down.​
 
Like the desert rain, the return of your reports and great photography is refreshing :thumb:
 
La Coyota

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms,” -poet Muriel Rukeyser

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“Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life.” - from 'The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild' by Craig Childs

History, stories, coyotes....... they share a common thread. The wily canine that appears in many movies, cartoons, songs and books is one of the most adaptive and intelligent species on the North American continent. Their key to adaptation is careful observation, mimicry, and experimentation. It is no wonder that the coyote is the most popular animal persona used in storytelling and mythology.

Humans are creatures of stories. Stories teach, convey value, and define us. They are tools that help us understand the world around us, who we are, and what we do. History is storytelling to describe events and actions, interlaced with our interpretations of the past so that it relates with the present and future. History, and storytelling, tell us about ourselves - who we are and how we got here. And where we might be going.

So it was no wonder that a mostly forgotten place called 'La Coyota' tickled my curiosity.

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For decades the general policy of the National Park Service was to eradicate evidence of human habitation on land acquired by the agency. They forced native Americans off their homelands or prohibited them from hunting on their traditional hunting grounds. Park staff bulldozed buildings that were homes to settlers that subsisted on the land before they became 'parks'. The root of this was (and still is) a misunderstanding of the relationship between humans and nature that reflects cultural confusion about wilderness.

Wilderness is defined as land that "has not been significantly modified by human activity". Some people take that to extremes to mean no human presence or human footprint. Ever. Which was the basis the American Wilderness Act of 1964, which defines wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Yet, since at least the mid-1900's, very few acres (if any) on the North American continent have not been set upon by human feet. And no acre left has not been affected by human activities.

Since incorporating the 801,000 acres of the rugged northern Chihuahuan desert in the 1940's, the federal agency in charge of the national park system followed general policy in trying to obliterate the evidence of habitation by hundreds of people that called the area their home. Most visitors erroneously think that the land of the national park is a true 'wilderness', except for the few roadside displays that provide abbreviated stories about tiny homesteads that once occupied the same ground. These are like little specks of atoms that one is told exist, but people don't see them so the reality of this 'truth' is fleeting and easily forgotten. Just like historical accounts of lives and events long before them.

Sometime between mid-1885 and mid-1885, Severiano and Rita Chevarria moved from Fort Stockton with their four children to a mesa on the banks of the Alamo Creek and the great Rio Grande. At the base of the mesa, the Chevarrias built a modest home. Here they raised sixteen children. It is said that the name La Coyota was bestowed by the sighting of female coyote on the homesite.

Ruperto, the Chevarria's first-born, built a home on top of the mesa after his first house was washed away by a flood. He recruited a number of immigrants to settle there in 1908 and Ruperto became a leader of the settlement. Jose Garcia built his home on top of the mesa near Ruperto, but other members of the community built their homes on the north and eastern slopes of the mesa. Because of close proximity to the creek and the river, they raised corn, beans, wheat, squash, tomatoes and melon by sub-irrigation practices.

As ranching and mining operations cropped up around the southern portion of the Big Bend, some of the men worked as cowboys or in the nearby mines. Around 1903, Cipriano Hernandez built and opened the first store on Blue Creek about a mile or so north of Alamo Creek and named the immediate area Santa Helena. Hernandez farmed the floodplain growing cereal grains and corn, as well as fresh vegetable which he sold to mining camps, and La Coyota residents bought and traded goods and food.

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Hernandez built an adobe home further north in 1903, just below where the future military camp would be built. (that adobe home is now called the Alvino adobe). In 1914, he sold the lower farm and store to Clyde Butrill, and ultimately it became the holdings of the La Harmonia Company, the brainchild of Wayne Cartledge and mining tycoon, Howard Perry. The store was renamed the La Hamonia store, opening in 1919. And that area became known as Castelon. Now it is known as 'Old Castelon', after the La Harmonia moved into the building that was built as barracks for the US Cavalry.

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On my second day of my Retirement Ride, Ed and I set a goal to find and explore the past of La Coyota. After parking the bikes, we ascended a mesa that we had found location tips as the area of the former community. On top was little evidence of what was once either stone or adobe homes. One part of the mesa had obviously been completely and mechanically leveled. On an adjoining part of the mesa we found a barely visible stone foundation and shards of porcelain plates and glass bottles. This was clearly once a homesite. (see photo above)

Turning our attention to the eastern and northern slopes of the mesa, we found well hidden by tall mesquite remnants of small stone homes. The climb down the slope of loose rock was an invitation to succumb to gravity with unfortunate results. But the careful descent was rewarding. Some of the rock walls of home below were still intact, most of them crumbling with large cactus hanging down from the wall tops like a hanging garden.

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One small home was built literally carved out of a tiny upcrop of red and brown angled rock. The back of the home was the bare intact rock. The remnants of a front door lead out to a small circular area built of the same stone as a retaining wall and long-gone steps leading down to what was once a cleared floodplain area.

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Around the base of the mesa is the remains of a large homesite built of both rock and adobe. Given the size of the remains, I wonder if this was the original Chevarria home.

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We continued exploring, trying to imagine daily life here. Knowing that Rita Chevarria lived here in La Coyota for 53 years before moving back to Fort Stockton in 1938, one has to imagine what life was like here raising 16 children. We can only wonder. And compare it to the lives we live now. They contrast our imaginings with what we see in front of us, for these ruins are very well hidden. Only one who knows what they are looking for would find these ruins and the stories they whisper.

I could almost hear the laughter, the laments, clinking of hoes, brays of donkeys, clangs of stone and slapping of adobe construction. And the wails of the coyotes in the distance.

"Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.... "
-Simon Schama
 
Re: Occupied New Mexico

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A twisty, hair-pinned road from Kingston to Silver City, NM, over and through the Gila Mountains and National Forest. This road beats Tail of the Dragon handle bars down.​

NM 152 :trust: :clap:
 
El Punto Coyote: Return

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My first month and 1/2 of retirement hasn't been without stress. First missing paychecks and spending hours on the phone, fax and email with payroll and bank people trying to straighten that out (and practicing holding my temper). Then the retirement fiasco. Then learning that my Dad, 2,000 miles way, was recently diagnosed with cancer.

I have had to stay near modern telecommunication services for phone calls back and forth, etc. And my pre-paid phone gets about half the cell coverage of regular plans (no service at all here around Terlingua). In the tiny community of Hillsboro, NM, all we had was occasional Internet access at the library, when someone volunteered to be there. At least here in Study Butte, we have wifi access and Ed's phone works in town.

Normally I enjoy long reprieves from modern conveniences. But for most of the last six weeks, 'convenience' hasn't been the appropriate word. Instead, they have been matters of necessity.

We spent one weekend at El Punto, leaving all the frustrations and worries behind for a brief amount of time. It took a day, but all the built-up stresses melted away, leaving me fully relaxed for the first time in weeks. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted and set aside to shoulder again after regaining strength. And the first night there we were welcomed back home with a raging firestorm of a sunset.

Armed with enthusiasm and new-found knowledge about earthen plasters, we experimented with mixing our first plaster from materials entirely from El Punto. Ed had some of the clay and sand mix already in a bucket. We spent some time shredding dried lechiguilla stems into fibers to substitute for chopped straw that is usually used in plasters and cob. And mixed it up in a small bucket with water to a consistency that looked good enough to apply to some of the adobes on the ramada.

A few conditions were not optimal for this experiment, but we tried it anyway. The mixed cob was a bit too wet and the sun shining directly on the adobe blocks, making the temperature warmer than optimal. We applied it onto the surface and worked it in well with a wooden trowel that Ed had made from scrap wood.

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We expected the plaster to crack because of the water content and the high temps in the direct sun. Ed expected it to peel right off or fall off. Hours later showed that it did crack, but apparently only on the surface. It was hard and very strongly adhered to the adobes, which pleased us. It would not peel or chip off. And, for a first rough coat of plaster, it wasn't too bad!

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The next morning we were all up before dawn to see the sunrise shrouded in heavy laden clouds. Because sunrises from El Punto are almost always magnificent, we are usually up before dawn and I'm out with the camera even before coffee is brewed.

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I watched with excitement as a wall of low heavy clouds literally crawl over and caress the Christmas and Chisos Mountains as the rising sun tried to shine through. Although I've seen many a splendid sunrise from here, never have I seen one this dramatic.

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At one point when the sun shone through a hole in the thick clouds, the badlands below us in Black Creek Draw shined like golden pyramids, and Hen Egg Mnt. hid in a large pillow of clouds to the north.

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I pulled the agave juveniles out that had made a long round-trip journey from Cedar Springs ranch several years ago, carried in the truck bed all throughout New Mexico, and finally arrived to their final home place on El Punto. Until they are planted in special spots in the ground, when the days settle out of the 90 degree heat, they are resting in the shade of the ramada.

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We walked around quite abit discussing plans and making observations that I finally have time for. We decided where the guest house will be. It will be our first construction project (after the barn and the ramada are finished): adobe walls, cob and lime plasters, adobe floor, and flagstone patio. With its own water tank (EVERY roof surface here has a water catchment tank). Modest in size, but functional and comfortable.

The view from the future back patio of the guest house. And a little rainbow cactus buddy saluting 'Hello'.

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It was good to be home again. And refreshed, I was.
 
Plastered!

For those wondering what 'cob' and 'plasters' are, here is a photo of my test panel during the workshop in Kingston, NM.

The dark material is cob, made from Kingston clay, sand, chopped straw and water.
The white is lime plaster (lime slurry, clay, sand and water), then lime wash (lime slurry and water), with painted fresco (a special wheat glue, lime water and dyes).

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Humans are creatures of stories. Stories teach, convey value, and define us. They are tools that help us understand the world around us, who we are, and what we do. History is storytelling to describe events and actions, interlaced with our interpretations of the past so that it relates with the present and future. History, and storytelling, tell us about ourselves - who we are and how we got here. And where we might be going.

:tab So totally true. When the quality of our stories is poor, it impoverishes us as well.
 
Counting cacti

What does one do when retired in Occupied New Mexico?

Hike and walk in the arroyos.

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Read.

Watch the sun rise.

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Practice with new camera.

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Go for meandering rides.

Drink iced tea.

Watch sun sets.

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Visit with ghosts at odd hours of the day.

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Relax with friends around the campfire.

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Play with the dogs.

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Photograph and ID plants of the Chihuahuan desert.

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Sit outside with cuppa joe in the cool mornings and relax in your pajamas.

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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
I love the quote, and agree wholeheartedly. :clap:
 
Thoroughly enjoying this & trying to get up to speed. You retired to the Big Bend area and are building/restoring an adobe home?

Enquiring minds & all that...
 
Thoroughly enjoying this & trying to get up to speed. You retired to the Big Bend area and are building/restoring an adobe home?
Yessiree!! Building an adobe. Visited an older gentleman north near Alpine yesterday who is also building an adobe home. Walls are up, some Mexicans helping to put roof on. It took him 5 years to make 7,000 adobe blocks :eek2: The Mexicans made 3K blocks in three weeks.

Love your lizard photo! Been trying to capture photos of lizards meself and archiving in a photo gallery. They are not easy to photograph!

Latest is a juvenile Chihuahuan Greater Earless lizard in Blue Creek, BBNP. He was patient until I got too close (only had a <55mm lens on). He blended in so well with the black volcanic rock. I still hear the voice in the movie 'Rango':
"Blend in!!! Blend in!!!"
I love lizards. :)


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As a new editor of the Terlingua Moon, the local newsletter, I published my first issue today (not my website). I have to leave to deliver copies on the DR350 soon. Trusty DR now is newspaper carrier!. ;)
 
Sounds awesome - what area are you in (since many of us are familiar with the locale)?
Temporarily, we are set up in the travel trailer in Study Butte RV park. Have several things that need to happen before we can move it to our place 10 miles north of the Ghost Town and through the desert roads. Plus, I need to be accessible by cell phone (which is only in in town) due to a distant family medical issue. I may have to fly back to NY on short notice in the near future. :(

Our friends Bob and Gloria from Illinois pulled in day before last. They are set up here also, but for 6 months. Look forward to hikes and bike rides with them. I'm hoping to see Roger return before too long!
 
:tab I had a fun ride with Bob last March in the ranch. I think he knows every road, path and creek in the area. He always new exactly where we were, explained where every road we could see went, and he did not use a GPS. He racked up some serious miles on his little Kawasaki last winter!!
 
Thanks for sharing, Elzi!

I always prefer that quote to be attributed to Lazarus, not Bob... :D
 
If Bob and Gloria have arrived to the area, then winter can't be too far behind! Yes, I believe Bob does know every road out there. Of course you guys have become pretty familar with the area also. Look forward to getting out there again for my Big Bend "fix" and seeing you guys.

Don
 
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