The great outdoors

Places of small wonders

FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS, I have planted, weeded, harvested, tilled, walked over and occasionally crawled around the small patch of land that is my farm, in the Embudo Valley of Northern New Mexico. The Río Embudo lies across the lane, 20 yards from my southern fence line. Piñon-juniper foothills of the Sangre de Cristo range rise just to the north of the house, above the acequia, the irrigation ditch. The Sangres lie 10 miles to the east. To the west a basalt-encrusted ridge looms above the Río Grande. This is my personal great outdoors.

The farm keeps me home most good-weather days, but occasionally I get away to the greater outdoors. The Embudo Valley is centrally placed for exploring the wonders of Northern New Mexico. I have a couple of favorite spots. Summers, when a free day or afternoon opens up, I drive up the Taos highway, NM 68, to the Pilar turnoff into the Río Grande del Norte National Monument and continue several miles up the gorge to a day-use turnout. There I park the van, pull out a camp chair and sit by the river. Now and then I wade in to cool off.

This is a calm section of the río. Occasionally rafters and kayakers paddle by. There is almost always a strong breeze blowing upriver. I keep a pair of field glasses at the ready, to check out birds across the shallow, 100-foot width of the river, to scan the dark basalt boulders for petroglyphs and to see if there is any life high up at a small cave or hole splashed white by bird excrement — the nesting site of an owl or hawk or eagle. I also pay attention to the lesser creatures: ants foraging on the sandy bank, the water spiders, occasional fish fry and the feathery water plants wafting below the surface of the water.

I bring along a thermos of coffee and my notebook — for ideas for essays, fiction. Also my journal, which I will now and then pick up to jot down thoughts about the weather, the look and feel of the gorge this particular day, about the week, the month, the year, the future, my life, my likely fate. This place, and others like it, helps me slow down, reflect, observe, sometimes plan and sometimes decide on something one way or another. Times like this I am reminded of my place — my miniscule place — in nature. I’m not a kayaker, I’m not a climber, I rarely hike, hardly ever run. I don’t ski or snowboard, hang-glide, dirt bike, can barely swim. I leave these more energetic and sometimes dangerous sports to my son, Atom, and his active cohort. I just like to sit, observe, think, occasionally scribble — in the great outdoors.

Another favorite place is the primitive area of Heron Lake State Park, north of Abiquiú, north of El Vado Lake, just before Chama, on a side road, NM 95. Neither are lakes; both are reservoirs. And Heron Lake, which is filled with water from the San Juan diversion, has nothing to do with herons, having been named after the engineer who designed the reservoir, Kenneth A. Heron. Unlike El Vado, it’s a “quiet” lake: motorized watercraft are prohibited. About a third of the lakeshore before and after the concrete dam is devoted to organized campsites and boat ramps. The entrance to the primitive area is about a mile past the lake off NM 95. There are no facilities, and it is unwise to negotiate the rutted tracks during or after a significant rain. It is open only from May 20 to Sept. 20.

The primitive area sprawls over a series of wooded inlets. During recent dry years, to get into the water for a swim you had to negotiate a wide band of mud, except where there were outcroppings of rocks. I like to go to a

point with a good view across the water and the distant cliffs above the Río Bravo. Given the distance from home, nearly 100 miles, I like to have at least two nights and a full day camping there, time enough to experience, to feel, the slow arc of the day moving into light and toward noon and then back into darkness, clouds coming and going, shadows shortening and then lengthening. The most dramatic event is likely to be a few deer emerging at dusk from the forest across one of the inlets from my peninsular position.

In summer there are countless hiking trails up into the national forest areas of the Sangre de Cristo range, and I enjoy tales of those who have reached Truchas Peak and La Jicarita, and the small lakes on the way, up from Santa Barbara Canyon, above Peñasco, or Wheeler Peak and the lakes above Taos. My favorite spot is a few miles up La Junta Canyon (the turnoff is just east of Sipapu Ski Area), where I can park my camp chair within site of the stream on a sloping grassy meadow. I go to seek coolness in the summer, to satisfy a need to be in or close to a forest or to be bathed in the warmth of the orange-and-yellow aspen leaves turning in October. There is some traffic along the road, pickups and four-wheelers, but not enough to be much of a distraction, and there is an abundance of spring-fed side canyons adjoining in which to escape.

What I seek in these places, places of the small wonders, is a degree of solitude. But yes, I have been to the places of the large wonders, the places that attract crowds of the curious and the studious. El Norte offers no lack of these. The complex geology of the area contributes to its interest. Besides the grand rift of the Río Grande Gorge, which extends north from Velarde into southern Colorado, there is the Valles Caldera near Los Alamos, a huge crater of a long extinct volcano, now a national preserve. The ancient upheavals that gave us these dramatic features are not entirely finished, as hinted in the outdoor hot springs that dot the area: throughout the Jemez range, at Ojo Caliente and in the Taos area.

For the archaeologically minded, for those who love to wander through the ruins of ancient cultures under our clear skies, there is Chaco Canyon, the cliff dwellings of Bandelier National Monument and Puye Cliffs just south of Española. Or you can time-travel, literally, back into the early industrial days of the nation by taking the Cumbres and Toltec narrow-gauge steam trains over the Cumbres Pass, from Chama to Antonito, Colorado.

The great outdoors of Northern New Mexico offers something for everyone. But for some, for those who come from landscapes more confined by buildings and forests and hills, with vistas, if any, of only a few miles, it may at times trigger a sense of agoraphobia. Such visitors may long for small, enclosed spaces or for the fall of night.

But with the fall of night, after a clear day, the entire universe opens up: the planets, the stars, the Milky Way, the galaxies, the Great Beyond — an astounding new sight for those who have always lived in the night glare of big cities.

Stanley Crawford’s most recent book is “The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires.” Others titles include the classic nonfiction work “Mayorodomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico,” “A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm” and “The River in Winter,” plus fictional works such as “Village.”