Leasburg State Park in New Mexico
Jason and Nancy
This posting is an odd collection of things. Oddly, most of the photos are mine as Jason shoots less in urban environments. This corner where Mexico, Texas and New Mexico meet is a feeling merged into its own country. We have chosen not to cross into Mexico on this trip, but crossed the NM/TX border twice on a drive from Las Cruces into El Paso. Jason lived in El Paso for a year about 30 years ago and that also flavored this part of our trip.
This posting also has more writing, mixing touristy things and and thoughts on rivers and water.
First from Mesilla, NM. A small old town right on the Rio Grande.
We camped in Dona Ana County of which Pat Garret was once the sheriff.
We saw a beautiful old church locked up tight. I went into the church gift shop (everything has a gift shop!) and asked if there was a way to see the church. "Yes, I'll take you there" said Father Richard, and he walked with us to open the sanctuary.
Walking on a Sunday morning in downtown El Paso
A huge, open, crowded Mexican market with storefronts spilling fully onto the sidewalks. I am careful about not photographing people, but did check out the merchandise.
Sadness about the river, sadness about the border problems.
After driving through miles of dry pecan orchards, this is my very first image sighting of the great river. Rio Grande.
At Leasburg SP there is miniature wet land where springs feed into the river
bed. There are some turtles, a few sick looking fish (carp and bass), and birds. In fact bird life is quite
spectacular because of that water.
Up river we drove to two reservoirs, each with a state park campground
above and below the dams. I always like
the riverside.
Elephant Butte Reservoir holds agricultural and domestic supply for Las Cruces and probably El Paso. Hard to say where the water goes because the courtroom battles over water are legion and continuous. It looks like every drop is sucked out before Mexico has any chance at its allotment.
The Village Cafe in Hatch, NM, we liked a lot. Entirely Mexican folks cooking Mexican food mostly for folks of Mexican heritage. Hatch was agrarian and is a center of production of peppers, onions, tomatoes.
Also in Hatch, a small retail store appended to a large wholesale operaiton of all things chili pepper.
My imaginary Rio Grande River was a beautiful magical river that marked the
border--an idea I have had in mind from childhood. I was prepared for the
illegal activity at the border. Our traverse of southern AZ, NM and
now into Texas is marked with intense law enforcement visibility and presence.
I was not prepared at all for there to be no river, no water.
Again for the
photos we didn’t take. Jason drove me
thru El Paso downtown on the Rio Grande.
There was no place to stop for photos.
The fence is right there--on the US side concrete, Boarder Patrol and interstate highways. At one point I could look
across that to Mexico--a park. children riding bikes,
people strolling along what used to be a river.
My understanding
of these issues is hardly surface deep.
Still in all, initial impressions should not be completely lost in policy decisions.
The water is held by New Mexico in Elephant Butte Reservoir about 100 miles
north of El Paso and diverted to agriculture and municipal supply. Eighty-one percent of the water is used for
agriculture. And it’s all drying up. Huge pecan and pistachio orchards sit bone
dry.
Jason
has fond memories of driving along the Rio Grande and stopping to eat at little
walk up and simple restaurants by the water, cool after hot El Paso.
Today we took his memory drive and there is no river. It is a dry river
bed, not a trace or memory of flow in the dry sandy bottom. In plentiful years they "turn on" the river in March, this year they are hoping for June.
Every week, every day I become more sensitive to the sweep of this trip and
what an extraordinary opportunity it is to see the West. Parts of it
anyway. There is so much that we only scratch a surface, then move to
scratch another. In the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Jason found a screen
that lit up all electrical connection the country. East of the
Mississippi was solid lights. West--10%, at least less than 20%. Entrusted to us even now are extraordinary expanses of wild dark territory in our beloved West.
We left Las Cruces and then returned for the second time. We returned to eat
and shop and because we liked it and we didn’t know where else we might want to
go. We camped at Leasburg Dam, one
of the earliest on the Rio Grande. It is
so small by comparison to the huge Western dams. Am reading Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner.
The pervasive theme is the near total ursurption of public water benefiting
private interests at government, at our, expense.
The conversation was never about whether the dams should be built, or even
if they made any sense, had any use or could be paid for. The conversation was about who could most
quickly build the biggest. We paid the
Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to compete with each other building biggest and fasted without intelligence and sane economies.
Water. During what Reisner calls the “go-go” dam
building era of the 30s and 40s those developing initial water policy in the
west thought water had no use until humans wanted it for agriculture. Or worse, dam building to be dam building. The use by the environment through which it flowed was never even
considered, let alone considered of value.
There are no 1920s
champions of the environment. Not even a
mention of allocation for in-stream flow.
The Watterson brothers are the closest I can come to finding heroes of
the 1920s water policy. Wilfred and Mark
did six years for embezzlement and grand theft. Wilfred was the president of the county bank
with more interest in helping his neighbors maintain the Owens Valley than he
was in good banking practice. Los
Angeles decision makers through skullduggery and worse took all the water from
the Owens River changing a beautiful mountain valley into a desert. The water thieves not only went free; worse,
they wasted the water they stole.
The Watterson
brothers went to San Quentin for six years.
In trying to save the valley they over extended their bank and lost
everything—including the money of their depositors. From Reisner, “They had done it, they
said, for the good of the valley and as outrageous as it sounded it was
probably true. None of the money ever
left Inyo County . . . During the trial, people who had lost everything nodded
and agreed. Even as the Wattersons were
being charged with 36 counts of embezzlement and grand theft, the citizens of
the Owens Valley were pledging $1 million to keep them in business.”
The story includes
dynamite and guns. Is this too part of
the evolutionary process? Am I a foolish
romantic to want to float Glen Canyon?
I shudder for my
mistakes and naiveté. A park ranger in
NM talked to us about Lewis and Clark carving their names into a tree when they
went through Colorado. Finding we were from
Montana, a guy in camp told us, “I lived in Montana for awhile, worked
for the Crow tribe up on the Flathead.”
Maybe. Could happen I guess. Blog mistakes in understanding and fact are
always fully my own.
Traveling together
day in and day out in our small trailer is a refiner’s fire of love and
relationship. We have had a surprisingly
small number of fierce conversations that have led to softer understanding and
greater intimacy. I didn’t ever doubt
that we could do this together. Still in
all, I am grateful for how it has been between us.
Travel alters one,
we change in response to landscape, people, climate, weather. Maybe too it is the retirement thing where
we are free to do as we want each day without demands and structure of work
place. Some of it feels too personal to
share here and some of it I can’t yet say in words.
Thanks for watching over us and listening in.
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