5/8/2014 – I spent two uneventful days in Ruidoso. I stayed out of the casinos and if they still have horse races, it was either off season or they only race on weekends-I don’t know because I couldn’t find a schedule. I finally slept on my second night there and caught up with the blog, but had a lot of problems posting almost thirty pictures of Carlsbad Caverns-hey, I took over 200 and most of them came out OK.
I finally came up with a plan for the next few days so I headed west to Tularosa then north to the Three Rivers area. The area has two campgrounds-one a Bureau of Land Management site and the other, closer to the mountains, a Forest Service site. I drove to both and checked them out. The FS site is just about to the base of Sierra Blanca which, at over 11,000 feet, is the highest point in New Mexico. But the BLM site had a better view, was cheaper (they give a camping discount for my parks pass, FS does not), and had a flush toilet. It also had a collection of hundreds of ancient petroglyphs left by pre-Puebloan Native Americans. These sites are amazing. Petroglyphs are usually on a rock with a certain type of finish, which is easily marked, but doesn’t wear down. They can have geometric, animal, or human forms and appear random. One thing that strikes me -the people who left them must have thought the place was special. This one is a group of small hills with the special boulders on or near the tops. I knew there was “rock art” here, but I wasn’t prepared for how much. The short trail-about a half mile is blanketed. Across the road, a Mogollan village had been found and there were interpretive signs and reconstructions of the different types of structures found there. Mogollan culture was well after the petroglyph artists and before or contemporary to the Anasazi. One of the structures uncovered and now restored to its foundations is a later house (Mogollans primarily lived in pit houses). I just finished a book on the Anasazi and Chacoans in particular. The structure’s story reminded me of the return to ancestral lands after the Chaco Anasazi culture collapsed, which the book discussed.
Another interesting stop in the area is the chapel of Santa Nino de Atocha. The sign says 1911 and the Diocese of Las Cruces website identifies it as a mission church. The story of Atocha is fascinating. In the 13th Century, the Muslim rulers of Atocha Spain tried to starve their Christian prisoners by decreeing that only their children under 12 could bring food. The women of Atocha went to pray for help at a statue of the Virgin Mary (with Jesus represented as a child). Reports soon surfaced of an unknown child bringing food to the prisoners who had no small children. He carried a basket and was “dressed as a pilgrim”. The ladies returned to the statue of Mary and the child Jesus to give thanks for her intercession and noticed a strange thing. The shoes on the child statue were dirty or worn. Out of devotion, they replaced them but returned only to find the shoes dirty again. Hence the Santo Nino-the Holy Child-of Atocha, who is depicted with a basket and dressed for travel. The chapel looks like a pilgrimage site-full of devotional items and depictions. What a beautiful discovery!
I sat around the campground/picnic area-5 tent sites and a handful of tables-until the last day trip visitors left. It was another windy afternoon, so if I was staying, I would wait until the last minute to pitch my tent. I thought it too late to move on, so I paid up my 3.50 and ate dinner. As I started raising the tent, I went back to the car for my other shoes, and there went my empty tent, end over end, into the mesquite. The poles were fine and hopefully I have no punctures from the sharp branches. Still, this is a great site-scenic and culturally significant. Tomorrow I’m headed through Alamogordo, planning to stop at a pistachio place and a winery, then on to another campground. I have the list of state parks in the area-I’m headed west/southwest, but I have a new resource. The volunteer camp host-the only other person here tonight-gave me a brochure on public lands in the state-attractions and campgrounds. I hope to check some of them out, but there is a lot to see and do in New Mexico and my time here is not unlimited.
