Friday, February 13, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Snow on the Florida Mountains, Rockhound State Park, Deming NM, February 12, 2009
Those are the Florida Mountains, home of the 15 Persian Ibex given to us about 1970 by the Shah of Iran. They are right at home there in an environment that closely resembles their home in Iran and have done well, so well there is now a hunting season for them.
To quote a New Mexico Wildlife publication
Creature of Controversy: The Persian Ibex, Spring Canyon, Watchable Wildlife Site 76
Creature of Controversy
The Persian Ibex
Spring Canyon, Watchable Wildlife Site 76
Strangers in a strange land. Foreigners from the other side of the world. Both statements aptly describe the Persian ibex, a wild goat brought to New Mexico from Iran three decades ago.
In 1970, the Department of Game and Fish released 15 Persian ibex in the Florida Range near Deming as a welcomed wildlife guest and big game species. Today, the guest is firmly ensconced in its new home. But is it still welcomed? Ask 10 different people, and you'll get 10 different answers. Some affirm the Persian ibex as an attractive species, innocently and successfully occupying an unfilled niche. Others protest that it's an ugly, noxious interloper, competing against native species, no longer welcome here. Under certain circumstances, both statements may be true. Meanwhile, this tenacious, adaptable creature is here to stay -- for now -- in the Florida Range.
Spring Canyon
Human access to the rugged Floridas is difficult. The mountains rise abruptly 2,800 vertical feet -- forbidding islands above a sea of sand and mesquite. Primarily Precambrian rock, the Floridas are ten miles long by five miles wide. From a distance, the peaks seem barren; up close, they're anything but. As you approach, you'll begin to see splashes of green against the brown: Upper Sonoran vegetation including sotol (desert spoon), yucca, prickly pear and barrel cactus, ocotillo, creosote bush, juniper, scrub oak, and hackberry.
Visitors can best glimpse the beauty of this area from 80-acre Spring Canyon Picnic Area, a part of Rock Hound State Park, 12 miles southeast of Deming. Scattered about on the slopes are semiprecious gem stones, for which Rock Hound State Park was named and established. To access a mountain hiking trail, head for the last picnic table on your right as you face the entrance.
Watching for Ibex
As a wildlife watcher, will you be able to spot one of the 350 Persian ibex living in this area? Hard to say. A Persian ibex can jump several times it own height, walk across sheer cliffs, and spot movement from a half mile away. Still, ibex are occasionally glimpsed by visitors. Stealth, camouflage, and patience are the watch-words for spotting a Persian ibex.
Night camp
Site 27 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Find other references to Rockhound on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Rockhound State Park website
- Get a Google map of this area
- Check the weather here
A Siberian dog signal-howl
A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy balls upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy bass of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends. Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.