Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu NM

Crosshatch v2, Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu NM, December 22, 2009

"Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something." - Georgia O'Keeffe

It snowed quietly here last night and all day today, about 4 inches. That's the most snow I've seen in 3 years, quite beautiful. Tomorrow Kate and I hope to get out for a drive around the Ranch to see how this gorgeous scenery looks under a blanket of snow. Maybe we can get some more interesting pictures.

I was going to leave Christmas day to begin my trek to Henderson NV but I've decided to stay the weekend in light of all the breakdowns I've suffered with this old rig - especially on holiday weekends! Breakdowns are no fun anytime but getting help on a holiday can be a real trial. Take last New Years eve for instance.

Staying the weekend has its own challenges. The current forecast is for temps of 5 below zero tomorrow night and Christmas night. Yikes! Anything below 20 degrees starts getting uncomfortable in this poorly insulated rig. There is serious downdrafts along the single pane windows and the floor is poorly insulated and cold. It's a good thing we like an occasional adventure.

Night camp

Ghost Ranch Campground, Abiquiu NM

This is a basic, small campground with full hookups.
Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are not available here.
Locate Ghost Ranch on my Night Camps map
Check the weather here

Wind on the Gangplank

There was almost no soil in that part of the range - just twelve miles' breadth of rough pink rock. "As you go from Chicago west, soil diminishes in thickness and fertility, and when you get to the gangplank and up here on top of the Laramie Range there is virtually none," Love said. "It's had ten million years to develop, and there's none. Why? Wind - that's why. The wind blows away everything smaller than gravel."

Standing in that wind was like standing in river rapids. It was a wind embellished with gusts, but, over all, it was primordially steady: a consistent southwest wind, which had been blowing that way not just through human history but in every age since the creation of the mountains - a record written clearly in wind - scored rock. Trees were widely scattered up there and, where they existed, appeared to be rooted in the rock itself. Their crowns looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out and were streaming off the trunks downwind. "Wind erosion has tremendous significance in this part of the Rocky Mountain region," Love said, "Even down in Laramie, the trees are tilted. Old-timers used to say that a Wyoming wind gauge was an anvil on a length of chain. When the land was surveyed, the surveyors couldn't keep their tripods steady. They had to work by night or near sunrise. People went insane because of the wind." His mother, in her 1905 journal, said that Old Hanley, passing by the Twin Creek school, would disrupt lessons by making some excuse to step inside and light his pipe. She also described a man who was evidently losing to the wind his struggle to build a cabin:

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