Continental Divide Trail -- Silver City, New Mexico

We were standing at the southeast corner of Western New Mexico University in Silver City, on Earth Day, when the first go cart screamed over the hill above of us.  One breathless team of pushers in purple jerseys fell to the side as another jumped into the race, grabbing hold of the steel roll bars and running along side the crazy contraption until its downhill speed outdistanced them.  Then leaping over the hill was another green team cart, and a yellow behind that, both in hot pursuit of the lead team.  Careening around the corner right in front of us, all three go carts were met by their next team of pushers who began the long uphill on College Ave.  Five teams passed us on a race of four laps around the campus. 

People began to migrate up the race course and we followed, not knowing what we were a part of.  Several blocks up the north side of the campus we came upon the “mud hole.”  On the down hill stretch of a dirt section of road, an earth mover had scooped out a thirty foot long trench which had been filled with water and it was lined with people waiting for the next circuit of the racers.  Push teams stood in the mud and people just milled about on the track, not seeming to care how fast these wild mettle cars were going. 

A shout went up in the crowd, “Here they come!” and folks finally began to clear the course, but none too soon, as the purple car skidded around the dirt track corner.  People leapt out of its way seconds before it hit the mud with a great whoosh and a ten foot wall of dirty water completely covered the little vehicle.  Stepping aside only long enough not to be killed, the purple pushers grabbed anything they could and forced the car through the trough and out the other side, just as the green car came up from behind and hit the ditch and their team went into action.  Word was circulating that some young woman had been run over, but there was no hesitation in the race. 

On the third circuit, the yellow team hit the mud just as the purple team crashed into their rear, yellow pushers jumping out of the way before being crushed between the two cars.  Then both teams waded and shoved their racers through the water and sped of on the final lap. 

By the time it was over, I had no idea which team had won, and none in the crowd seemed to care either.  I was amazed no one had been killed, but I was even more surprised that this college and the town of Silver City, seemed eons away from the fear of injury and lawsuits that cripple our ability to have fun as a community today.  Western New Mexico University has been running “the Great Race” since 1967, and it’s still a draw.  There remains an old timey sense of innocence on this campus, and it was the closest I’ve ever come in America to the crazy danger of the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  It was a bit of trail magic timing that had begun the day before as we walked into Silver City, approximately two hundred miles up from the Mexican Border where we had started our hike.  Not only had we decided to take a zero day here -- no mileage day -- on Earth Day, but we had stumbled onto one of the most outrageous college events of the year. 

Nancy and I are hiking the Continental Divide Trail.  From the Mexican Border, we had hiked for six days cross country following rock cairns, metal CDT signs and our GPS units.  We had loved the days of walking on open range, where we’d seen pronghorn antelope, herds of horses and lots of little desert lizards and horned toads.  The beauty of the arid vastness was surprising.  We’d been asked if we were going to road walk from the border.  This can be faster, but we were both glad we followed the cross country route over those gorgeous, desolate plains.

A day south of Lordsburg NM, a sad little town of mostly closed up shops, another CDT hiker, Sandman had caught up with us.  He’s from NY City now, and had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2010, the year I completed it.  He had been in front of me all the way and I’d seen his log posts many times, but we had never met.  We spent most of the day exchanging stories from that year, but from different vantages.  He knew details I didn’t, and I knew some he hadn’t heard.  It was fun, and a measure of the smallness of this long distance hiking fraternity.  We’d hiked only days from each other for months, but never met.  Here, two years later, our trails finally crossed.  They didn’t cross for long however, he’s young and he sped by us that evening, and after a brief visit the next morning in Lordsburg, headed out already a day ahead of us.

A day out of Lordsburg we came upon real trail in the Burrow Mountains.  It was beautiful, properly signed and graded and easier than the cross country we had become accustomed to.  We summited the mountains at nearly eight thousand feet in a tall pine forest so incongruous to the cactus and yucca below. 

Within a quarter of a mile of our camp in the Burrows, however, we had run out of trail and spent the day on a twenty mile road walk.  Road walks are not fun, and much of this one had been past the Tyrone copper mine, miles and miles of open pit devastation.  What large scale mining does to the land is a great advertisement for recycling everything that can be recycled.  We walked past the subdivision of Tyrone, which had been the company town years ago, when a car honked at us and we wondered what we were doing wrong, but the driver yelled out the window, “Nancy!”       

It was Wendy Shaul, an acquaintance of Nancy’s from Sacramento who had moved back to her home town of Silver City just a year and a half ago.  She knew we would be coming through at some point, but not when, and we knew she was here, but not where.  The timing was perfect.  We were able to give her our packs and “slack pack” into town without the weight.  Wendy became our trail angel in town with a family history that was intimately related to the place.

Much of the magic of hiking a long trail is the experience of the small towns and little bits of Americana spread out like jewels on the thread of the walk.  Some are sad, tarnished places that may never have seen a better day, and others gleam with the light of vibrant life.  Wendy became a light for us in Silver City. 

Wendy is an artist who’s taught in the elementary schools since coming home to Silver City.  She’s also insatiably curious, with an intellect that never tires of new learning and experience.  She’s taking a class in geology and her home was covered in all the rocks and minerals she needed to identify for her class project.  Some people have potted plants outside, Wendy has potted heads.  A coyote was slowly exfoliating in one, a coatimundi in another, and a little junco turning to bone in a third.  She loves the skulls and the bones. 

She’s also a lieutenant in the local volunteer fire department and an active member of Search and Rescue.  She was one of he first responders to the Gila Hot Springs when the great long distance runner, Micah True, AKA Caballo Blanco, didn’t return from a twelve mile run a few weeks ago.  He was found dead off trail with his feet in a stream.  He’s the main character in Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, the incredible book about running and its centrality to our evolution as a species.  Micah True is the person who opened to the world, the Copper Canyons of Mexico and their elusive Tarahumara inhabitants, a culture of ultra marathon runners.   I completely changed my way of walking and running, and the shoes I wear after reading that book.  World famous runners had converged on the area to help in the search and his death is a great loss to the running world. 

Wendy had just returned from a follow up briefing after the SAR operation.  No determination had yet been made as to the cause of death, but she noted that his body had been brought out on a mule, led by a white horse, Caballo Blanco.
 
Wendy’s family history goes a long way back in Silver City.  They had been Eastern European Jewish emigrants in the middle of the nineteenth century, who had moved to New Mexico and gone into the mercantile end of the areas development.  They owned stores and in the last century, several of the town’s theaters.  Her grandfather had been mayor of Silver City and at one point traded groceries to Butch Cassidy, for a gun.  Wendy’s grandmother is buried only a short distance away from Billy the Kids mother’s grave.  Billy had lived in a little cabin just off the main drag for several years before going off to fame and misfortune.  As we explored the old City, every historic picture we came across seemed in some way related to Wendy’s family.  That’s roots. 

Wendy’s brother Ward also lives just out of town in the wonderful old Western hamlet of Pinos Altos on the road to the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  At dinner we were regaled with family stories and from Ward’s own stage days.   He’s quite a singer and had worked with a touring company of the Santa Fe Opera years ago, and most recently had been cajoled into playing Daddy Warbucks in the local production of Annie.  He apologized over and over for talking too much, but we just wanted to hear more.

It was prom night and several parties of teenagers all dressed in bright white and jeweled cowboy attire were having dinner too.  They sported the largest white Stetson’s I’d ever seen, and the whole display was a world away from prom night in Martinez.

Silver City reminded me of a cross between Sebastopol and one of the old Motherlode mining towns in the Sierra foot hills.  It’s got an openly gay community, lots of active artists, an old hip contingent and is full of art galleries but it doesn’t feel touristy.  Partly it’s a college town but mostly it seems to be a town that appreciates art.  It’s the most muraled city I’ve ever been in, and many of the wonderful old Western homes and mansions were painted up beautifully, at times with incredible color and whimsey. 

After watching the Great Race, Nancy and I had visited the College museum to see its famous Mimbres pottery, one of the largest extent collections in the world.  The distinctive works, primarily in finely executed black and white, were the product of the Mimbres branch of the Mogollon (pronounced, Mogiown) culture that flourished a thousand years ago in the Mogollon Mountains near here. 

The high point of the day came when Wendy brought us to Penny Park, a city park created by children saving and donating their pennies.  Last year vandals had burned the play structures, but the local arts council and the schools had begun to rebuild the park.  The children in all the elementary schools had been taught how to make copies of their own hands in clay.  They had been decorated in a hundred different patterns and motifs, the only limit being the child’s imagination.  After being glazed and fired, we mortared them to a cinder block wall in triangles of hands.  I don’t know what the final wall will look like, but it was beautiful just as we left it that day.  By volunteering we helped raise money for the school arts program, and we had a ball, and ended up on the Silver City, Sun - News https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/?ui=2&ik=9845ae...
as out of town volunteers.

The tour of the town’s murals that Wendy gave us after that was stunning.  If you ever get to Silver City, walk or drive up and down all the old streets.  The homes are impressive and public art is just a part of the fabric of the place.  Wendy has worked on a number of the murals with children as the artists.  On one very large mural with an ocean theme, she noted that although the beach was nowhere near Silver City, all the details on the whale, the palm tree and the yellow sun were intricate patterns taken from the design motifs of the Mimbres pottery we’d seen earlier in the day.  It looked like a scene out of the Little Mermaid, but with all the delicate beauty and intricacy of the patterns created by its original inhabitants.  Suddenly it wasn’t just a Disney wall.

At dinner in a little Mexican place on Bullard Street, an elderly gentleman came up to our table because he knew Ward and Wendy.  He was the retired State Senator of thirty years.  He was funny and interested in the crazy walk Nancy and I were embarked upon, and gracious to a fault.  Several minutes later Ward struck up a conversation with another person nearby who shoed horses for a living.  The incongruity of the social status of these two people seated near us simply wasn’t an issue in the little restaurant.  I’m sure as in any small town there are some rigid delineations, but we didn’t feel them that night. 

After our Earth Day, zero day, our walk out of town left us a little sad at leaving.  Some towns you just can’t wait to leave, the wild being so much better.  In Silver City we had touched a bit of America worth knowing, a place with a heart still pumping full and vibrant, a small town alive.

By that evening we were nineteen miles into the desert fastness of the Gila National Forest, camped on a ledge of rock overlooking a sea of tall pines.  Hoodoos rose above the trees like silent watchers, and the sense of human presence was everywhere.  We are a part of this wilderness as are the antelope and cactus.  Wild desert onions and the sweet juiciness of agave stalk graced our dehydrated dinners and brought us even closer to the past of the place. 

Geronimo and the Apache had been a more recent part of that history.  But the fine line of the Mimbres pottery, the exquisitely incised patterns, were everywhere to be seen, in the needles of the cactus or the looping curve of the patch of onions we’d just harvested.  All was an expression of the beauty of place, and our place in that beauty.   Crickets lulled us to sleep.


"The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."
John Muir