Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

A few years ago, President Obama created the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument to protect the historic, scenic, archaeological, paleontological, and geological treasures of the Organ Mountains, Potrillo Mountains, Doña Ana Mountains, Robledo Mountains, and Sierra de las Uvas.  The Potrillo Mountains unit contains volcanic cinder cones, lava flows, and craters.  The creation of the monument was the result of many years of effort by a broad-based coalition of people and is certainly one of the finest achievements of the Obama Administration.  Overall, the four sections that make up the monument encompass a total of 496,330 acres.  Adjoining it is Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, which contains footprints of numerous amphibians, reptiles, and insects, as wells as plants and petrified wood dating back 280 million years to the early Permian period.

My wife, Libby, and I recently visited Aguirre Springs Recreational Area, which is located in the Organ Mountains unit of the monument. 

Eastern face of the Organ Mountains

Tularosa Basin from the Organ Mountains

Sugarloaf Peak

Pine Tree Trail

Rabbit Ears

All Creation is Holy

The sloka from the Isha Upanishad:

        īśāvāsyamidaṃ sarvaṃ yatkiñca jagatyāṃ jagat |

       tena tyaktena bhuñjīthā mā gṛdhaḥ kasyasviddhanam ||

  can loosely be translated as:

      God is present in everything; therefore, everything is enjoyed through renunciation.

 This is very much the way of St. Francis, the truth that following the path of renouncing possessions allows us to belong to God alone; to have only one treasure.  And since all things are of God, this means that we can experience creation as "brother" and "sister," not as "mine" or "yours," because all people and things become what they really are: our fellow children of God, filled with God's spirit, instead of an illusory bit of personal property. Who can actually possess the wind?   Does a title confer real ownership over the abiding desert?  Only through love does the world become real to us.  We don’t need to "own" a friend--or a stream, or the sun, or the mountains, or the trees of the forest--to truly enjoy them, to experience their sacredness. They are naturally ours, not by right of possession, but through the experience of divine kinship.

I Saw That It Was Holy

I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

                                                                                     --Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk), Black Elk Speaks

West Texas

I was out in West Texas this weekend with one of my children.  It was hot and dry, but the Chihuahuan Desert was filled with sturdy and tenacious life.

Hudspeth, Culberson, and Davis Counties were scenic with mountains as we headed east on Interstate 10.  (Once we entered the Permian Basin, though, the land became endlessly flat, and dotted with oil and gas wells.)

Below is a photo I took of rocky hills in Hudspeth County that look to me like they are made up of some kind of intrusive igneous rock.  

They were on the other side of the highway from Sierra Blanca, a conical 6,891-foot peak that is something of a landmark and gives a nearby community its name.

In the distance were the Apache Mountains, one of three places where the Capitan Reef is exposed. The Capitan Reef was an enormous 400-mile reef that surrounded a sea called the Delaware Sea in the Permian Period, approximately 250 million years ago. The reef was buried under millions of years of sediment until mountain ranges were uplifted (primarily during the Laramide orogeny), exposing parts of the limestone "fossil reef" left by reef-building creatures like sponges, algae, coral, and other lime-secreting marine life (the other exposed parts of the Capitan Reef are found in the Guadalupe and Glass Mountains).

Below is a picture of Gomez Peak (6,320 ft) under gathering clouds.  It is located at the northern end of the Davis Mountains.

The clouds promise rain, which usually arrives in late summer (it poured in El Paso just after we returned home).  The desert blooms, and the colors of the rock are joined by the brightness of wildflowers.

O Cavafy, O Alexandria

As I walked the streets today surrounded by warm evening light, I thought of Constantine Petrou Cavafy walking the colorful, exotic streets of Alexandria.  I saw him cross squares and navigate narrow passageways in the warm, sultry air; saw him stop for a bit to drink a Turkish coffee in a café or to watch the sunset over the shimmering Mediterranean.  He would take a moment to jot down some lines on human folly and nobility, on the sacred or the profane; but always with a tone of glowing, unimpeachable serenity.  Serenity, even in the face of the possibility that one’s life’s work might come to nothing, as in “Απολείπειν ο θεός Αντώνιον”:

                        την τύχη σου που ενδίδει πια, τα έργα σου

                        που απέτυχαν, τα σχέδια της ζωής σου

                        που βγήκαν όλα πλάνες, μη ανωφέλετα θρηνήσεις.

    Cavafy was a great poet who knew that he was a great poet.  And what higher satisfaction could there be than that?

Afternoon on the Porch

Today I was sitting on the front porch trying to edit this book that I’m working on.  I kept seeing a male black swallowtail sailing back and forth over the lantanas and rue.  I believe he was “protecting his territory,” because every time a giant swallowtail would enter his airspace, he would chase it away.  He kept it up for hours, and I finally snapped a picture of him as he took a short rest.

     There were almost no butterflies this spring.  The spring was long, but it was also cool.  And butterflies love the heat.  Now that it is hot, there are butterflies everywhere, especially giant swallowtails attracted by the orange trees.  I saw some giant swallowtail caterpillars on an orange branch the other day.  There are also gulf fritillaries, variegated fritillaries, black swallowtails and the occasional pipevine swallowtail, sleepy oranges and other oranges and yellows, cabbage moths, various blues and greys, and the occasional mourning cloak (their larvae like to make chrysalises on the apple trees).

     

     The male black swallowtail ended up distracting me, as I watched him soar about and chase the giant swallowtails.  There was also a very tame hummingbird who kept flying around the porch visiting trumpet vine flowers.  The top of his head was covered with pollen.  And great rain clouds appeared in the distance, but we didn’t get any rain.

New Story

Waterfill and Frazier was one of the whiskies that was distilled in the Valle de Juarez during prohibition

This year, I’ve been working on two novels, and consequently, I haven’t sent out too many stories.  But here’s one that was just published:

http://www.heartandmindzine.com/short-story---entries/a-priest-a-horse-and-a-mayordomo

I’m very pleased with it.