Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
Snow at dawn, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 1, 2009
Yesterday I got nicely settled in here at Brantley Lake State Park, hooked up to electricity for the first time since I left NM last spring and what do I awaken to? Snow. More snow than I've seen in years. Well, a couple of years anyway. Pretty isn't it? I guess I'd better give the guys at Forrest TIre a break and delay our planned session with my right front tire a day or two.
The power just went out (9:30ish).
Experience with this old rig has taught me to be wary of getting caught with my infrastructure out of tune. Running short of drinking water or waste storage can turn an inconvenient breakdown into a big deal and I try to be ready to ride out a break down without having to abandon ship and move to a motel. So yesterday before I came out to the park I grocery shopped, then dumped my waste tanks on the way in and took on a fresh water supply soon after setting up. Too bad I didn't bother filling up on propane and gasoline. After all I have hookups and electric heat - I don't need no steenkin' generator or propane heat.....
[updated 10:30ish] The electricity is on.
In the it's-a-small-world department
Dr. Roberto Fierro was abducted last week. How do I know this? I was out for an early morning walk about the park and met up with a few fellow park residents to chew over the weather a bit. Brigid mentioned she had read or seen on the news (I forget which) that her dentist was kidnapped out of his office in Palomas, Mexico last week. That got the attention of the park host. Four strangers meet and two use the same dentist. Small world.
Night camp
Site 37 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
- Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies with many drop-outs.
- See a list of the nights I've camped at Brantley Lake State Park
- Locate Brantley Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Go to Brantley Lake State Park website
- Locate services on my Resources map
- Check the weather here
Listening
As the poet Gary Snyder said so well, "Beyond all this studying and managing and calculating, there's another level to nature. You can go about learning the names of things and doing inventories of trees, bushes, and flowers. But nature often just flits by and is not easily seen in a hard, clear light. Our actual experience of many birds and wildlife is chancy and quick. Wildlife is known as a call, a cough in the dark, a shadow in the shrubs. You can watch a cougar on a wildlife video for hours, but the real cougar shows herself only once or twice in a lifetime. One must be tuned to hints and nuances." After more than thirty years of living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and spending a great deal of that time out-of-doors, Snyder has seen the mountain lion on just a few occasions. One of these sightings was most unusual. Gary had been visiting a neighbor and was walking down from the nearby ridge to his home when he observed a cougar sitting near one of the windows of the house. The animal appeared to be listening intently as one of Snyder's stepdaughters practiced the piano.