BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
Camped at BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM, March 24, 2011
El Malpais National Conservation Area
El Malpais National Conservation Area and the adjoining El Malpais National Monument are located a few miles south of Grants, New Mexico.
Here's an excerpt from the BLM website description of the El Malpais National Conservation Area
The El Malpais National Conservation Area was established in 1987 and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The adjoining El Malpais National Monument was also established at the same time and is managed by the National Park Service. The 263,000 acre NCA includes two wilderness areas — West Malpais and Cebolla — covering almost 100,000 acres.
El Malpais translates to "the badlands" in Spanish and is pronounced Mal-(rhymes with wall)-pie-ees. El Malpais NCA was established to protect nationally significant geological, archaeological, ecological, cultural, scenic, scientific, and wilderness resources surrounding the Grants Lava Flows.
In addition to the two wilderness areas, the NCA includes dramatic sandstone cliffs, canyons, La Ventana Natural Arch, the Chain of Craters Back Country Byway and the Narrows Picnic Area. There are many opportunities for photography, hiking, camping and wildlife viewing within this unique NCA.
For more than 10,000 years people have interacted with the El Malpais landscape. Historic and prehistoric sites provide connections to past times. More than mere artifacts, these cultural resources are kept alive by the spiritual and physical presence of contemporary Indian groups, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna and Zuni, and the Ramah Navajo. These tribes continue their ancestral uses of El Malpais including gathering plant materials, paying respect, and renewing ties.
BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
- This is a new, small, quiet BLM campground with shelters and fire rings at each site and vault toilets - no water, power, or dump station available.
- Good Verizon cell phone service
- Good Verizon EVDO service
- Locate this campground on my Night Camps Map
- Go to BLM El Malpais National Conservation Area website
- Get a BLM map
- Check the weather here
Nights I've camped here
Writing From the Inside Out
A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.