Thursday, March 12, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Big cat, City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM, February 19, 2009
Time to hit the road, with a stop in Deming for a quick tour of the 44th annual Rockhound Roundup.
To quote an article in the Deming Headlight:
Rockhound Roundup kicks off today
By Kevin Buey/Headlight Staff
Posted: 03/12/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
Rockhounders were arranging their booths and display areas Wednesday at the Southwestern New Mexico State Fairgrounds.
They expect a crowd of people today through Sunday for the 44th annual Rockhound Roundup.
A short line was at a booth in front of Building 1, Wednesday, as folks registered for field trips that are part of the roundup.
Richard Jones, from Lajoya, Texas, is here with his wife, Donna. They are first-time visitors to the roundup. "Love the area," he said of Deming. "We're thinking of moving here.
"We bought a claim the other side of Hachita. I didn't realize there was this event. I'm interested in learning. I'll be new at rockhounding."
The first field trips are at 8:30 a.m., today, to Big Diggins, with John Ewert leading people looking for good Agate samples, and Joe Morone talking a group to Hatch to find Rhyolite and Fossils. Other field trips are Friday and Saturday, to Big Diggins, to Kilborne Hole, east of Columbus off Highway 9, and Black Dam, to the southwest in the Coronado National Forest. The registration line will be longer today.
Night camp
Site 5 - 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
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.