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Greetings from Rockport, Texas

This blog is the third in a series of four about Cyndy Keesler’s and my six-week trip through the Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

In all, we visited and/or hiked in five national parks, six national monuments, one national forest, one national preserve, one Navajo tribal park, three state parks, and one scenic backcountry area. 

Read Part 1 (Utah) here.

Read Part 2 (Utah, Arizona) here.

View Cyndy’s pictures here.

November 11 to 15: Cyndy and I walked through the ruins of the Pueblo Indian tribes at Hovenweep National Monument. We walked 1.5 miles on the Little Ruin Trail where we saw several round, square, and D-shaped towers grouped at the canyon head.

From there, we made our way to Durango, Colorado, where we visited my cousin and his wife. Good conversations about life, health, politics, and the future of the United States highlighted this long weekend.

Cyndy and I also went farther north to the mountain town of Ouray, the “outdoor recreation capital of Colorado,” where we stayed Friday night at the Historic Wiesbaden Hot Springs & Lodgings and enjoyed time in their mineral hot springs pool and underground, sauna-like Vapor Cave. We hiked to two waterfalls.

November 15 and 16: The 15th featured a lovely visit with a long-time friend in Pagosa Springs that started with harmonic vibrations of a gong-laden sound bath at The Edge of Silence and concluded with an in-depth discussion about Buddhism at our friend’s home in the rural mountains.

On the 16th, Cyndy enjoyed a “spa day” at The Springs Resort in Pagosa Springs.

November 17 to 21: We went for two rides in hot air balloons: On the 18th, with Sol, the pilot at Rio Grande Balloon in Taos, New Mexico, and, on the 20th, with Murray at World Balloon in Albuquerque.

With Sol, Cyndy and I were the only passengers, so we were in a small, cozy basket for three. Sol took us over and then down into the 800-foot-deep Rio Grande Gorge where the basket—and our feet—were close to the rapids and the top of the balloon was below the surrounding rim of the gorge. We landed at a rural regional airport.

With Murray, six passengers flew, including one of his chase crew, in a larger, compartmentalized basket. We launched from an empty urban lot and flew over the city as more than 20 other private balloons launched north of the city.

Coming down, we barely cleared a four-lane road and landed in a nearby field.

Murray said that Albuquerque, the ballooning capital of the world, “Is the only place where you can call into work and say, ‘A balloon landed on the road in front of me, and I’ll be late for work,’ and the boss will believe you.”

The origin of hot air ballooning began in 1783 when two brothers, Joseph-Michael and Jacque-Etienne Montgolfier, of France, observed that smoke rises and also that women wore copious skirts that would “balloon” up in the wind.

France’s King Louis XVI financed their experimental flights that carried animals aloft.

But the king also stated that only nobility could participate in the first attempts at human flight.

The king’s decision created severe consequences when the noblemen landed in a farm field where the peasants thought they were being attacked by a fire-breathing dragon and, thus, defended themselves with pitchforks that destroyed the balloon and could have killed the fliers.

Louis XVI thus decreed that all future flights would carry a bottle of his best champagne on board to appease the peasants.

This tradition continues today with a ceremonial toast of champagne, mimosas, sparkling non-alcoholic beverage, or orange juice plus snacks, such as New Mexico’s official state cookie: Biscochitos, a crisp butter cookie flavored with sugar, cinnamon, and anise.

The wording of the toast is like a prayer:

“The winds have welcomed you with softness. The sun has blessed you with its warm hands. You have flown so high and so well that God has joined you in your laughter and set you gently back again into the loving arms of Mother Earth.”

After flying with Sol, we visited the Earthship Biotecture community near Taos.

Here, individuals and families live in homes of distinctive and ecologically practical design that are totally off the grid. The roofs are inverted to catch rainwater and store it in cisterns. Electricity comes from the sun and wind, stored in batteries. Heat is generated through passive solar windows on the southern exposures. Insulation is in the form of thick ram-earth walls made of tires and augmented with decorative glass.

The mindset is based on the concept that “there is no Planet B.” Earth is our nest in the stars. We had better learn to live in harmony with it and its natural resources.

In practice, for example, water is used four times: once for drinking; then gray water is filtered and fed to vegetables and decorative plants that grow indoors; this is filtered again for toileting; and that black water is fed to outdoor plants. 

Near Albuquerque, we took a 150-mile day trip into the surrounding mountains.

In the Pueblo of Jemez, we walked among ruins that were numerous and large, including the multi-room San Jose de los Jemez mission church, that resonated with “the echoes of the past” culture of the indigenous people of Gisewa, whom the Spanish, in the mid-1500s, summarily called “the Pueblo people.” (pueblo means “village”)

The Pueblo of Jemez encompasses 89,000 acres and is home to more than 3,400 tribal members.

From there, we went to Valles Caldera National Preserve, “a diverse landscape born from an explosive past.”

About 1.25 million years ago, this vast mountain meadow, with its wide vista, was created by a spectacular volcanic eruption and subsequent erosion. We saw a herd of elk, two or three dozen in number, lounging and sunning themselves in the grassy vegetation. 

With the afternoon sun waning, we hustled to Bandelier National Monument.

Here, near the Rio Grande, the Ancestral Pueblo people of 600 to 1000 years ago carved their homes into the volcanic tuff, planted and harvested the “three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash, and hunted deer, rabbit, and squirrel.

Bandelier has over 70 miles of hiking trails. We walked the Main Loop Trail of 1.4 miles that winds among some of the ruins built away from the cliffs in Frijoles Canyon and then to the caves.

Some of these have wooden ladders on which we climbed to peer into or enter a rock-face home.

I found the kiva (men’s ceremonial chamber), about 20 feet in diameter and with adequate headroom for standing, to be particularly inviting and solemn. Someday I would like to go back there to meditate.

As darkness set in, we chose not to climb a series of stairs and wooden ladders to ascend 140 feet to the Alcove House, formerly known as Ceremonial Cave.

On the morning of November 22, as we pulled our trailer out of Albuquerque, we stopped at Petroglyph National Monument, which abuts the western edge of that city.

With an estimated 24,000 images chipped into the flat faces of large volcanic rocks by Native Americans and Spanish settlers 400 to 700 years ago, this is one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America.

Cyndy and I saw hundreds of images while walking on three miles of clearly marked trails in two of the monument’s three canyons.

Modern indigenous people value this area as a “valuable record of cultural expression” with “profound spiritual significance.” 

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Thank you for reading my stories. Six Weeks in the Four Corners states, Part 4, (the final part) will come your way in about a week.

Robert (Bob) Weir sits at the opening to a cave in Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. This cave, reached by climbing a wooden ladder, was used by the members of at least 23 tribal nations as a kiva or ceremonial place.