Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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White Sands from the Second Bench, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
Walking from the Chihuahuan Desert into a grassland island
As I remember it, the second bench on the trail is in the second of the three distinct climates one walks through while ascending the trail from the trailhead at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park. First is the Chihuahuan Desert, then a grassland in the area of the second bench, and finally a woodland as one climbs farther up and out onto the mountain plateau above the canyon.
It's hard for me to judge distances out here but I'm going to guess this bench to be maybe 20 - 50 acres with Dog Canyon dropping off to the north and west and a steep mountain ridge rising to the south and east. The bench has a comforting, protected, feeling about it with your back to the wall as you gaze out over the Tularosa Basin and the White Sands dunes. What a great spot for an isolated mountain retreat.
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
Emptiness
Emptiness shouldn't be thought of as a negative. A lot of people misconstrue that as meaning the opposite of something is nothing. But this is something slightly different. I don't want to get into comparative religious things because that's a complicated topic. But if we were to think about it, the problem of life and death has to do with what comes in between, and what comes in between is an awful lot of suffering. We're not just talking about the pain of suffering, we're talking about suffering. Our common everyday parlance it's called stress. That's a kind of suffering and we die from this. From the standpoint of Zen Buddhism this life isn't some sort of stage mock-up for something else that comes after this. This is what we have. We're right here and we're being in this present moment. What you want to think about when you think about emptiness is a way in which to stay present. Just as, in a way, in a very strange kind of concept, there really is no such thing as time. There's no dress rehersal for anything.
The Artful Mind, Reverend Sohaku Flagg, Rinzai Buddhist priest, in an interview with Nanci Race, Jan/Feb 2003