We're off tomorrow to Bluff, Utah, for the annual Bluff Balloon Festival. This will be our fourth year there and we're really looking forward to it. Will probably be posting a few pictures from there after we get back ... it promises to be clear, so maybe the Sunday flight will be out at Valley of the Gods!
In the meantime, we spent New Year's afternoon going where we hadn't gone before ... out to the "ghost town" of Mogollon, about 70 miles west of here. It was a good scouting trip ...there's lots to return to see and photograph.
On the way out, we saw a small herd of javelinas beside the highway. This one was grazing right beside the road. It looked up and, between the time I started to press the shutter button and the time the shutter actually clicked, s/he wheeled on its hind feet and started to scram. Dang, they're fast!
Anyway the town of Mogollon, which once numbered more than 1,500 souls, sits down in an east-west canyon, where the sun doesn't shine much in winter. 'Twas as cold as the picture indicates. A few people do live there, some in houses, some in converted vehicles, and there are a few seasonal businesses.
We did get up the winding, muddy road to the cemetery above the town, where the sun was still shining. Like the one above Kingston, it seems to ramble through the trees, without a clearly followed plan of organization. Many stories to wonder about, like this man who died at 20. Or Gordon I. Stahl, who was a little older when he died (24), and was buried with this cryptic, evocative legend:
"GORDON I. STAHL
1940 - HOLY WEEK - 1964
ARTIST - MUSICIAN - MOUNTAIN CLIMBER
BORN OUT OF TIME - DEEPLY RELIGIOUS
HE SOUGHT IN VAIN
TO BRING THE BEAUTY
HE EXPERIENCED TO OTHERS"
We'll definitely be back!
The scenes on the way back to U.S. 180 were equally beautiful in the evening sunset.
While our friends were here, we took them out to see Fort Bayard and also went through the military cemetery. Always something new there to see and wonder about. Sgt. Bowman was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on mutinous scouts during the Army's battles with the Apaches.
We also enjoyed the one-man show, "Tuck," as Randy Carr played the part of Dan Tucker, deputy sheriff here from 1877 to 1888. It was at the Seedboat Gallery theater, which is likely to be the site of lots more performances as the owners develop it.
We've signed up for our WILL classes for this semester ... the Western Institute of Lifelong Learning at WNMU is a wonderful way to expand our mental horizons! As is the brown-bag lunch series sponsored on second Mondays at the Silver City Museum. In the one shown, Professor Magdaleno Manzanares of WNMU gave an informative talk on how New Mexico, 100 years old this year, is so different from Arizona and Texas in terms of Latino participation in politics.
So, life is good in Silver City! We need moisture ... there perennial mantra of the Southwest ... but it can hold off till we get back from SE Utah! tv
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