Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Dreaming of the Pecos Headwaters at Horsehead Crossing
June 22, 2005

Have you heard the song of the Pecos River?

Here is how to do it – On a hot summer afternoon go to a place like the crossing of the Pecos west of Mentone on Sh 302 where the likelihood of being disturbed is nil. In the rocky soil west of the crossing you might find the bright red fruit of the horsecrippler cactus, as a recent Midland Reporter Telegram subscriber recently did on her ranch in Loving County. I love such calls of readers and hear their reports and observations.

Find the scant shade of a salt cedar and sit down. Sit there until the sweat drips. Sit there until you can’t take it any longer. Then, get a ice-cold bottle of water from your cooler and pour it over your head, and stuff some ice down your shirt. Then get in your vehicle with the air-conditioner running full-blast and dream of summertime at the headwaters of the Pecos in northern New Mexico, east of Sante Fe.

At that moment you will be enjoying what it feels like at 11,800 feet in elevation. Close your eyes and imagine the following;

The temperature is 38 degrees and the wind is blowing 20 miles an hour. A mountain thunderstorm is fast approaching. A gray jay is at your feet, checking for crumbs you might have dropped from lunch. Old growth Engelmann spruce surrounds you, gnarly wind battered trees only 20 feet tall. You are fuzzy headed from the altitude and the fact that there is 35% percent less oxygen.

Nearby is a fellfield, sharp jagged rocks that shatter in winter’s bitter cold after tumbling down the peak above you. Pikas whistle at the threatening storm. You see the cute rat sized rodents scampering back to their dens. Dark-eyed juncos, small black birds with white on the edge of their tails, skitter by, headed for thick krumholz – spruces and firs that have to hug the ground to stay alive.

A small pond is below the fellfield. Beyond it is the terminal moraine from the glacier that once was here. Immature tiger salamanders with feathery gills bristling out of blackish-brown skin slowly swarm in a ball at the edge of the pond. There are no fish in the pond, for it freezes solid in the winter. Fairy shrimp, twice the size of desert fairy shrimp swim upside down, their legs flickering like a speed bicyclist. Stick-case caddisfly tote their houses along the bottom of the shallows. Monster-sized scud, pale commas of goo, crawl out of their way.

Scattered among the rocks are perennial wildflowers. All of them are mat-forming hemispherical mounds that have taken 40 years to reach their tea-cup saucer size. Some are silver with hair to reflect the intense light and increased ultraviolet light at high elevations. Other species have thick succulent leaves like desert plants, but in their cellular fluids is a compound that serves as anti-freeze.

Flowers are everywhere. The snow pack of the winter has only just melted – so recently that in places the soil is mushy and squishy – you are on alpine tundra that is identical to that north of the Arctic Circle. Thimbleberry and currant bushes are covered with blooms. Cinquefoil and wild strawberry grow in the duff of the evergreens.

Elk tracks are obvious in the muddy ground. The whistle of a cow elk blasts – an eerie sound in the silence of the landscape. No insects make noise – no cicadas, no grasshoppers, no crickets, not even bees. It is too windy for flies and hummingbirds. Some of the flowers have tubular blossoms, and if it was not so windy, the saw-whine of the broad-tailed hummingbird wings would be audible. Flies pollinate most of the flowers. It is too high for bees.

In the old growth forest deadfall abounds. If a person attempts to walk anywhere but where humans or elk have beaten out paths, 50 percent of the ground will be covered by dead trees slowly moldering. It takes a century or more for a tree to rot in the high country. In places the deadfall criss-crosses itself, piling five feet high. As the storm’s thunder becomes painful, a grouse explodes out of the forest, wings whirring, as it joins the juncos in the krumholz. A ptarmigan clucks frantically, and what had appeared to be rocks become fuzzy baby ptarmigan running to their mother.

The storm rolls down the mountain, and instead of rain, you are surrounded by fog. The fog is frozen – tiny pellets of ice sting your cheeks. Visibility lessens to the second tree from you. The fog swallows sound, too. Even a shout sounds like a whisper.

Now that you have imagined what it is like at the headwaters of the Pecos, get back out of your car. Push through the blistering heat that blasts your skin. Walk to the Pecos River, kneel down, and put your hand into the tepid water. That water you are touching comes from snow. It comes from mountain thunderstorms.

It is holy.

Water is an incredible blessing, an incredible gift. Look out over the salt cedar and pickleweed along the river. Look out over the creosote bush flats wavering in the heat waves. The heat waves melt the world at a hundred yards. We live in an arid land. “Water is precious – it gives us life,” are the words to the song of the Pecos River.