Thursday, March 12, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Big cat, City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM, February 19, 2009
Time to hit the road, with a stop in Deming for a quick tour of the 44th annual Rockhound Roundup.
To quote an article in the Deming Headlight:
Rockhound Roundup kicks off today
By Kevin Buey/Headlight Staff
Posted: 03/12/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
Rockhounders were arranging their booths and display areas Wednesday at the Southwestern New Mexico State Fairgrounds.
They expect a crowd of people today through Sunday for the 44th annual Rockhound Roundup.
A short line was at a booth in front of Building 1, Wednesday, as folks registered for field trips that are part of the roundup.
Richard Jones, from Lajoya, Texas, is here with his wife, Donna. They are first-time visitors to the roundup. "Love the area," he said of Deming. "We're thinking of moving here.
"We bought a claim the other side of Hachita. I didn't realize there was this event. I'm interested in learning. I'll be new at rockhounding."
The first field trips are at 8:30 a.m., today, to Big Diggins, with John Ewert leading people looking for good Agate samples, and Joe Morone talking a group to Hatch to find Rhyolite and Fossils. Other field trips are Friday and Saturday, to Big Diggins, to Kilborne Hole, east of Columbus off Highway 9, and Black Dam, to the southwest in the Coronado National Forest. The registration line will be longer today.
Night camp
Site 5 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Find other references to Rockhound on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Rockhound State Park website
- Get a Google map of this area
- 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.