Monday, January 11, 2010 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM
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"What" Will You Drink Next Year ???, Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM, January 10, 2010
I'm out of here today - off to find some Mobil 1 for an oil change and someone to do the job. Then I'll probably head over to Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM for the night, with the goal of finding myself up at the private Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM for the January 14th and 15th NM employee furlough when the State Parks are closed.
On roosters
Roosters have been crowing here in Columbus for hours now (I got up about 3:30 and it's now sunrise) and it is a comforting greeting to the new day. It's a sound that takes me back to my childhood in Red Rock when chickens were an integral part of the community, like they still are here. I miss that. Red Rock needs its chickens back.
Night camp
Site 2 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to Leasburg Dam State Park website
- Locate Leasburg Dam State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.