Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
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Tularosa Basin and White Sands from the line cabin, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
The view down canyon from the Dog Canyon line cabin
What a neat spot the builders of this little stone cabin chose; a spot perfectly situated to offer its residents a nice view from their front yard down through Dog Canyon to the white sands of the Tularosa Basin below. The trail coming up Dog Canyon drops down off the second bench just to the left of that big rock you see up there on the left, crosses the crick with its supply of fresh water and comes into this little copse from the left.
Sorry about the lousy picture. The lighting from the mid day sun wasn't kind to this neophyte photographer and his total reliance on the camera to take care of these little lighting details. I've got a bit to learn about this photography business.
Night camp
Site 29 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to the Pancho Villa State Park website
- Locate Pancho Villa State Park on my Night Camps 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.