Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - Clovis NM

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, Three Rivers NM, April 28, 2009

How to share my pictures

I'm beginning work on a way to share the many pictures I've taken here at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site and others I took at Valley of Fires. It may take a while to get my act together (what else is new?) but there is much to share.

Resting on the way to Clovis

On my way over to Clovis on US 70 a few miles east of Portales I stopped at a rest area for lunch and a break and realized there was a museum sharing the parking lot. How unusual to find a museum at a rest area. What's that all about? Well I'm sure you are all familiar with the Clovis archaeological site. Turns out it is right in this neighborhood in Blackwater Draw. Here we have the Blackwater Draw Museum run by Eastern New Mexico University.

Blackwater Draw Museum

The Blackwater Draw Museum displays artifacts and exhibits associated with the Locality No. 1 site. Over 13,000 years of site usage are described, from mammoth hunting to modern culture.

There is also a self guided tour of Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1

Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1

Blackwater Locality No. 1 is a National Historic Landmark that is one of the most important archaeological sites in the New World. This unique site documents and interprets the earliest Paleoindian cultures in North America. It is a research entity and used as a reference point for Paleoindian Studies in North America and the Southern High Plains. Blackwater Locality No. 1 is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This time of year it is only open on weekends - darn.

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clovis NM

Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #821, 3728 N Prince Street, Clovis, NM 88101 - (575) 769-2261

Good level parking
Verizon cell phone service- Extended Network reception ok
Verizon EVDO Broadband service - Seldom exceeds dialup speeds on Extended Network
Find other Wal-Marts in the 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.

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