2000-12-01 - 22:04 MST

December 1, 2000

Caverns

The towns and cities of my childhood are not as they were, out away from town the miles have shrunk and everything seems to be commercialized and towns and hamlets so close together, there is a sameness about all you see, dress, McDonalds, Burger Kings being look alikes every where. Seems that we navigate from clone to clone.

When I was around fifteen years old Mother and Dad had vacation time. Not a usual thing as it was seldom they got time off together.

They had decided on a trip for us to Carlsbad Caverns in the southern part of New Mexico. The excitement of going to new places, never before seen by me kept me on the edge of fitful dithering, I know that Mom packed and also prepared food for the first day, there is no memory of that for me. I was eyeballs, ears and nose, quivering like a puppy eager to explore new country.

We started south on the same road that we took to Grandma's, but at Walsenburg we kept going south toward Trinidad instead of turning west to go over La Veta pass. These forays into new country, stays at Grandma's as well as my previous reading about the Southwest of early days made me an easy victim of love of the Enchanted Land of New Mexico, a place where sometimes there was nothing but miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, balm to my heart.

There were a lot of wide open spaces around town when I was a kid, now I feel cramped and uncomfortable in Denver, the city of my birth and raising. It felt like a big town to me when a child, with enough of every kind of fun and entertainment, dining places, parks and near the countryside. It grew and grew, little towns began to run in together, the Valley Highway was in the birthing stage when we left town for Florida. Ten years went by before our return, we came into town at night and every so often lights showed up where no lights had been before. Town had grown outward to the south, highway had changed a bit and we left old U.S. 85 & 87 and came into Denver a new fangled way into the eastern part of town. I was amazed when seeing things in the daylight and finding out that wherever I headed it was impossible to reach where I wanted to go from where I started out by the old tried and true routes I had known for years, the Valley Highway cut me off and I had to learn new ways to cross town.

I guess it is hard to try to explain to a person from the eastern United States just how much the vistas of nothing but nature as the main display of the splendor of the earth are loved by us. Nobody I guess from the east can understand the pleasure of riding in an arid part of the country among oceans of aromatic sage brush smelling it while passing through. Distant mountains on the horizon and ever glorious clouds and a blue sky piled high with fluffy clouds slowly drifting along. An occasional jackrabbit bopping across the prairie, startled by who knows what.

So along to the Caverns. Dad had figured the distance he could drive in a day and where we would spend the night. I think this is where my distaste for entering an unfamiliar town after dark and scrabbling and smelling out a place to stay after all the good and easy places were filled up for the night and then going to eat before bed.

But traveling along the road as the sun begins to go down, the feeling of being alone in the vast reaches of sage brush and jack rabbits and seeing the bluish color as night fell and then watching the road and the roadside as it rolls along under the car. once in a while a cars headlights would show a lightening up ahead before the car would crest a little hill and then the full blast of other strangers in the land alive and on that road.

I had learned from Grandpa that in the daylight one would wave at the oncoming car as it neared. There weren't that many people around there, and a friendly wave would keep a man happily going on to destination.

Finally after a nights sleep we reached the desired spot to go into the caverns one morning and listened to the Park Ranger's little talk before following him down into the strange wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites, man it was pure fantasy land where one would expect elves to be moving around behind the scenes doing their jobs of cavern maintainance. We reached a spot where the rangers had us be seated and instructed us to keep our places and not to attempt to move around. Then the lights went out, I felt the darkness like a slap in the face -- pure, black coalsack darkness. Somewhere in the distance some rangers sang Rock Of Ages, as they were finishing the hymn the lights were turned back on, those in the distance first. There was a dining spot down there and an elevator to take the tired and sick to the surface.

The rest of the tour was as good as the first part, I trod with a boggled mind drinking in all I could witness of the strangeness of creation around me.

When we finished our tour, we waited around to see the bats come out of the cave for their nightly flight, a few showed up, and then a swirling, spiraling unbelieveably huge mass of them, ascending to a fairly good height and splitting off in different directions at the top of the tower of bats. The rangers had told us that the nearest open water available to the bats was 150 miles away, so they had a 300 mile trip just for a drink. I think that they fed on insects as they flew but just living was hard work for them.

Reluctantly we left the parking area and went into town to spend the night. The next morning we headed off across the gray green undulating sage prairie to El Paso del Norte, Texas and thence across the Rio Grande River into Old Mexico, into the city of Juarez, the ground didn't change color like it did on the paper maps but everything else sure did. The attire was different, also the food, the buildings everything was strange and exciting. I managed to spend the last of the few dollars I had with me on trinkets from the wagons pulled up alongside the street. We again stayed in El Paso for the night, leaving the next morning for home I can't remember where we stayed the night, some cottage camp or another along the way and the next night we were home.

I think that trying to explain to the average easterner, who has been born and raised in the huge city that is called the East Coast my love and the fascination of the Southwest is very similar to trying to tell an inexperienced some-one the thrill of riding your own motorcycle, of being one with the machine, with that gasoline heart beating between your legs and turning by just a lean in the desired direction. They politely pay attention, but their eyes glaze with boredom as do the city folk when hearing about the wonders of the west. Which by the way is gradually being eaten by asphalt parking lots in shopping malls, the towns are going to the country now. The Malls are the biggies now covering acres and acres of ground, holding the wonders and appurtenances of civilization, today these are the Caverns . . . . .

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