I'm still here in Columbus New Mexico. It is strange that upon first sight some things that do not at all appeal to us, but become strongly alluring once we get used to them – such is this town, such is this park – not that I would settle down here, but four nights might not seem too lo
ng. Here I have an isolated campsite in the middle of a well-maintained desert garden. Here Iam in the middle of a national historic site (Camp Furlong – from which Gen. Pershing launched his punitive expedition against Villa – a sort of practice run for the run up to the AEF to France later that year which he was to command). Two blocks away in the village library I have access to the Internet – so I can send this.
In order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of the original relationship with the whole – Umberto Eco
From my campsite at Rockhound State Park I spot a silvery object over the Fl
orida (pronounced Flo-rita) mountains. It hovers there. It has not moved all day. I conclude that it is a balloon. But why in the middle of the desert. I ask the ranger the next morning. Oh, he says, the border patrol uses that. Rock hounds like bird watchers are strange people. People with an advocation that consumes all their passions are strange. But birders like to flock together while rock hounds tend to be loaners – they don’t acknowledge your presence – you go about your chores twenty feet from each other and pretend that the other does not exist. The guy on the other side of me is neither a birder nor a rock hound and yet he too is strange:
He’s going through a divorce
He’s having a tough time
He rode his bike out into
The desert
He talk’s to himself and
Attempts to sing
“This may be the last time
How right you are!”
He stays in his tent all day
He sleeps a lot
He’s having a rough time
And those balloons, they are officially known as the tethered Aerostat Radar Systems. Eleven are employed along the border from Puerto Rico to Yuma Arizona trolling for drug trafficing aircraft – each site maned by 30 man team. Unoffically they are known as ‘Fat Alberts’.
“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less that half-real: nonexistent – Edward Abbey
At Oliver Lee State Park I hiked up Dog Canyon were the US Calvary pursued
Apaches. I made it to the Line Cabin – three miles (six round trip) and fifteen hundred feet of elevation gain – my personal best (not bad I tell myself for an old man with arthritic knees) and the soreness doesn’t hit me until the middle of the night – I am getting fit, I tell myself. Soon I shall be up to two thousand feet and ten miles, maybe! From the Sacramento Mountains rising three thousand feet above the Tularosa Basin and over there is the famous White Sands glistening in the sun. Later when I walk among those dunes, the glare will almost blind me as if I were a
mong drifts of snow and tears stream down my cheeks as I squint to see were I am going (no danger of stepping on a rattlesnake – they only come out at night when their prey is also active – the only thing alive are the blackling beetles [stinkbugs] – who leave that strange trail that looks like sewing machine stitchery – everything that has been about since the last gust of wind leaves a trail – I leave a trail)
Finely the weather is here
In which I could go
For a cold beer
When the flies become a nuisance
As one waits out the heat
Yearning for a cool night
And the White Sands lie in the midst of the Missile Range where the US space program began with the firing of captured German V-2s. I stop at Missile Park. To the north
is Trinity Site [first Nuclear denotation] but its closed to the public except for the first Saturdays in April and in October. I haven’t read or heard or seen the news for two months now. Anything might have happened, but I doubt it. We no longer worry since the demise of the Soviet Union about sudden nuclear holocaust – now we worry about the economy and about the environment and about crime [and don't forget terrorism] – much more frightful concerns – we are doomed to always be worrying. Anyway I am told that Easter has come and gone and that the deadline for filing tax forms is past. And I head towards another campsite. I purchased a state park camping pass good for a year from date of purchase (that is a date that has some meaning to me) and after fifteen nights of camping it will have paid for itself, so the last two nights my campsites have been free. "What me worry!" [Alfred E Newman]
Coherence… it appears is an optimum: the greatest possible number of contradictions resolved by the simplest means – Michel Foucault
I like dusk the
Best – a summation
Without any conclusion
Everyday so far
Has had its cessation
Something at least appears
To be constant
Now the night sounds
Command
And sight ceases its
Control
Perhaps what fascinates me in being a writer is that it necessitates communion with all and sundry – Henry Miller
ng. Here I have an isolated campsite in the middle of a well-maintained desert garden. Here Iam in the middle of a national historic site (Camp Furlong – from which Gen. Pershing launched his punitive expedition against Villa – a sort of practice run for the run up to the AEF to France later that year which he was to command). Two blocks away in the village library I have access to the Internet – so I can send this.In order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of the original relationship with the whole – Umberto Eco
From my campsite at Rockhound State Park I spot a silvery object over the Fl
orida (pronounced Flo-rita) mountains. It hovers there. It has not moved all day. I conclude that it is a balloon. But why in the middle of the desert. I ask the ranger the next morning. Oh, he says, the border patrol uses that. Rock hounds like bird watchers are strange people. People with an advocation that consumes all their passions are strange. But birders like to flock together while rock hounds tend to be loaners – they don’t acknowledge your presence – you go about your chores twenty feet from each other and pretend that the other does not exist. The guy on the other side of me is neither a birder nor a rock hound and yet he too is strange:He’s going through a divorce
He’s having a tough time
He rode his bike out into
The desert
He talk’s to himself and
Attempts to sing
“This may be the last time
How right you are!”
He stays in his tent all day
He sleeps a lot
He’s having a rough time
And those balloons, they are officially known as the tethered Aerostat Radar Systems. Eleven are employed along the border from Puerto Rico to Yuma Arizona trolling for drug trafficing aircraft – each site maned by 30 man team. Unoffically they are known as ‘Fat Alberts’.
“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less that half-real: nonexistent – Edward Abbey
At Oliver Lee State Park I hiked up Dog Canyon were the US Calvary pursued
Apaches. I made it to the Line Cabin – three miles (six round trip) and fifteen hundred feet of elevation gain – my personal best (not bad I tell myself for an old man with arthritic knees) and the soreness doesn’t hit me until the middle of the night – I am getting fit, I tell myself. Soon I shall be up to two thousand feet and ten miles, maybe! From the Sacramento Mountains rising three thousand feet above the Tularosa Basin and over there is the famous White Sands glistening in the sun. Later when I walk among those dunes, the glare will almost blind me as if I were a
mong drifts of snow and tears stream down my cheeks as I squint to see were I am going (no danger of stepping on a rattlesnake – they only come out at night when their prey is also active – the only thing alive are the blackling beetles [stinkbugs] – who leave that strange trail that looks like sewing machine stitchery – everything that has been about since the last gust of wind leaves a trail – I leave a trail)Finely the weather is here
In which I could go
For a cold beer
When the flies become a nuisance
As one waits out the heat
Yearning for a cool night
And the White Sands lie in the midst of the Missile Range where the US space program began with the firing of captured German V-2s. I stop at Missile Park. To the north
is Trinity Site [first Nuclear denotation] but its closed to the public except for the first Saturdays in April and in October. I haven’t read or heard or seen the news for two months now. Anything might have happened, but I doubt it. We no longer worry since the demise of the Soviet Union about sudden nuclear holocaust – now we worry about the economy and about the environment and about crime [and don't forget terrorism] – much more frightful concerns – we are doomed to always be worrying. Anyway I am told that Easter has come and gone and that the deadline for filing tax forms is past. And I head towards another campsite. I purchased a state park camping pass good for a year from date of purchase (that is a date that has some meaning to me) and after fifteen nights of camping it will have paid for itself, so the last two nights my campsites have been free. "What me worry!" [Alfred E Newman]Coherence… it appears is an optimum: the greatest possible number of contradictions resolved by the simplest means – Michel Foucault
I like dusk the
Best – a summation
Without any conclusion
Everyday so far
Has had its cessation
Something at least appears
To be constant
Now the night sounds
Command
And sight ceases its
Control
Perhaps what fascinates me in being a writer is that it necessitates communion with all and sundry – Henry Miller
Today marks two months on the road.
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