Departures: NM99: Part 5

Desert landscape: one of the few kinds a person with allergies can enjoy...

A Walk in the Chihuahuan Desert

1999.03.22 MON

I thought, "The writer awoke before dawn. He put his shoes on." I've made that reference too many times; it's not funny now if it ever was. But it's before dawn and my brain isn't too picky about what it spews forth. I slathered myself with sunblock, made sure I had plenty of water, sandwiches, and flashlights. I set off as the sun started to poke over the horizon. The desert was cool. A breeze was blowing. I walked through the resort and beyond its bounds. I was within the park now, walking along a road which gently wound up into desert hills. The only sound now was the thwap thwap thwap of my shoes on the road. I stopped walking and listened. Far away, there was the sound of a truck--it came to me echoing off the side of one of the hills. As the truck got further away, the sound faded, disappeared.

There was the sound of a light breeze. If there was any sound of human civilization, I didn't hear it.

I looked around. I thought that the hills in this area might help to bring down moisture, because the plant life seemed to be a bit richer than I'd seen elsewhere in the desert. There were plenty of prickly pear plants, tall yucca, little wildflowers. Then I heard something. The click-clack of rocks.

I looked around, didn't see anything. The noise continued. Then I saw the deer bounding away--two, three, four of them. They were scrambling up a hillside, dislodging rocks. I thought, stupid, stupid deer. I mean, these must have been the least stealthy deer I'd ever seen. Every carnivore for a half-mile around must have known that there were deer scaling that hillside. Then I reconsidered. Why did these deer need to be stealthy? They were moving pretty fast. Obviously these hills were pretty hard to climb, seeing as how their surface fell away as soon as one put any weight on it.

I decided to stop mocking the deer, and get on with the hike. The sun rose. So did I, as I made my way further into the hills. These were the sounds of the desert that morning:

• Click-clack of deer
• Birds chirping
• Soft rattle of dead leaves on ground that had curled into dry, stiff cylinders
• Wind
• About once every five minutes, a motor vehicle

An occasional vehicle went past. Generally, they were overtaking me. No doubt these were rangers and park workers commuting. Some vehicles came back, mostly buses; no doubt they'd dropped people off at the park and were now returning to civilization. People in these vehicles gave me the steering-wheel-finger wave, except for those who waved at me out the window. I waved back, but never initiated waving; I'd hate for them to think I was a stranded motorist, trying to flag someone down, so stupid that I was walking away from civilization.

I was glad that the resort no longer offerred van rides to the caverns. This was too scenic. Who would have thought that the desert would look so good?

As I got up to the crest of the hills, the wind became strong. I held onto my hat. It was a little after 8:00; the visitor's center was open; soon the cave would be open; and now the tourist vehicles were zipping past. The sun was starting to heat up the world, and I was glad when I finished making my way across the parking lot and made it to the visitor's center.

Photo: flowering yucca. Photo stolen from a calendar. Attributed to B. Crisman/NPS

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