Monday, February 11, 2008 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
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Line cabin, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
The line cabin is built against a rock
What a clever idea. And what a great rock for the purpose. See how economically the builders of this little cabin set it right up against the flat side of that big rock? Most likely the work of building the cabin was done entirely by hand and those guys must have jumped at the chance to carry 25% fewer stones over here and fit them into place.
That rock probably has a moderating influence on the daily temperature extremes down here in this defile too. I don't know if that's helpful in the extreme summer heat but it should help keep the cabin warm during those cold winter nights after the sun goes down even though the sun doesn't reach this rock until late in the day during the winter months. If it reaches the rock at all in mid winter - it was mid day when I took this picture and as you can see the sun still hasn't quite reached the rock and I didn't stick around to see if the sun touched it later in the day.
Working on website
Today I started tweaking this website a bit to see if I can archive these Travels pages in a way that will make them easier to navigate. The Yesterday and Tomorrow links at the bottom of the pages are fine for linear reading but just don't cut it for finding older stuff. It wouldn't hurt if I managed to make some improvements to the whole site for that matter but I don't know if I can keep my attention trained on the project long enough to make a difference. We'll see.
Night camp
Site 29 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to the Pancho Villa State Park website
- Locate Pancho Villa State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Over Fifty
Some of this has been painful for me, but it's all been wildly instructive. And it convinced me that nearly every person over fifty should try to find a time to sit down and engage in the same exercise, even if you never intend to publish anything. You need to think about what really meant something to you. Who did you really love. Who really made you what you are. What the seminal events did. And also it's an incredible discipline. Because I found it shocking to me what I remember and what I don't. It's shocking to me what I can remember factually and how hard it is for me to be absolutely sure about how I felt at the time. You know, how did I feel when I was 16? I don't really know.
Bill Clinton, on writing his memoir, in an interview with James Fallows, the Atlantic Monthly