Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
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
Writing From the Inside Out
A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.