Following the trail of one very tough old man through New Mexico’s back country
In my previous post my reference to “bone dry” New Mexico was so offhand as to make me pause and think again. New Mexico and the whole Southwest have been so dry for so long as to be a new normal. Every year is the worst fire season, every month the hottest since (fill in the date), every decade the driest.
But just how dry is it? Drought.gov gives what appears to be an accurate picture. The map above appears to support the claim that we’re well into the worst drought in more than a millenium.
As of this weekend, the Bear Trap Fire was judged 98 percent contained after burning over 38,000 acres, according to the Forest Service. There are still much worse fires burning in New Mexico, including a 287,000 acre blaze in the nearby Black Range and the catastrophic Hermit’s Peak fire in the Sangre de Cristos. But the Bear Trap fire was painfully personal for me because that canyon in the San Mateos has been one of my favorite campsites for better than 30 years. The above picture was taken four or five years ago. Sad to think what it looks like today.
I’ve recommended Today in History before and doubtless will again. Today’s story has nothing to do with the American frontier or the Apache Wars but is well worth reading tonight.
A “Lost in the Woods” story with a happy ending, thanks to the U.S. Air Force. No photo credit or byline on the dramatic picture and story in the Mojave News, although both deserved one. What’s really impressive is the amount of government resources from county sheriff, NPS and Air Force put at the disposal of some young woman with an injured ankle. I’m amazed at the tech advances of recent years and the accompanying cultural changes. Back when I was in my 20s, if one of us had injured an ankle while hiking with three buddies it would never have occurred to us to call for government assistance and wait for rescue. The casualty would have been expected to cowboy up and make it back to the trailhead with the help of his friends.
I try not to let my posts on this site drift too far from original subject, but occasionally I come across something on the web that I can’t resist sharing. This story is one of those.
Joseph Bottum says it better than I could. (The pic in previous post, by the way, was of Keiss Castle in Scotland.)
As the Boomers stumble off into the sunset we see more and more familiar names in the obits that bring a pang of regret. P.J. O’Rourke was one of the greats of 20th Century journalism, and his voice will be sorely missed. Looking over my bookshelf I see that I have only Give War a Chance remaining. The rest I passed on to friends and relatives in the hope that O’Rourke’s wicked wit would entice them into reassessing their own views on the state of the world. He was the late century match for H.L.Mencken.
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This is the day the LORD hath made; let us rejoice and be glad. — Psalm 118
My Nana story in the December issue of Wild West is illustrated with a great map by Joan Pennington. I have posted another one of Joan’s maps here on Tracking Nana. I originally commissioned this map to accompany a new, hardcover edition of my book, but I’m not at all sure I’ll ever get around to doing the work necessary to revise, annotate and index a new edition.
My Nana’s Raid story is in the December issue of Wild West magazine now in the mail and on newsstands. It’s always hard for me to look at something I’ve written on a printed page and I suspect this may be the last time I see my byline in a real magazine. But having said that, I’m pretty pleased with the result. Plus, Wild West came up with some great photographs to illustrate, as well as an interesting piece by Lynda Sanchez on Rattlesnake Power in Apache culture.
Tracking Nana 