Last Day on the Re-Tramp

As much as Lummis loved Golden, he would chose a different place to go near Albuquerque years later when he needed a refuge.  When Lummis finished the Tramp, he literally went to work the next day at the Los Angeles Times.  Lummis was a workaholic, keeping up the intense expenditure of energy he performed on the tramp.  As the hard-working editor of the LA Times from 1885-1888, he consistently burned the midnight oil grinding out the daily paper.  Eventually, his incessant work caught up with him and he suffered a stroke that partially paralyzed his left arm and leg.  He decided to leave Los Angeles and recuperate on the ranch of his good friend Amado Chaves in San Mateo, New Mexico.

While living in New Mexico he observed and reported on the corrupt machinations of a powerful old guard New Mexican family.  In an article published in the LA Times he accused the family of being behind the murder of an elections worker on Election Day 1888.  Townspeople in San Mateo told Lummis and his host that a peon from Mexico had been paid to assassinate them.

As Mark Thompson puts it in his biography of Lummis, The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis, "He didn't have a death wish, some of his conduct over the years notwithstanding."  Even before the article was published, Lummis had been looking for a place to escape from the threats on his life-- but he evidently still wanted to stay in New Mexico.  He chose a place he visited only briefly on the Tramp: the Isleta Indian Pueblo.

Another Silly Gringo in Their Midst

It's always good to let people know what you're doing, because you never know when someone can help you out.  While on the road I got an email from my aunt in Tucson that they had a friend who worked in the medical clinic at Isleta, and would I be interested in having her show me the reservation?  So the morning after tramping around Golden I got to visit Isleta.

I had to get up early to follow my host into work on the reservation.  Soon after getting off the highway and entering Isleta, I found myself pulling all my worldly possessions through a confusing tangle of dirt roads, surrounded on all sides by a mixture of low, earthen colored one-story adobe houses, mixed with low modern buildings.  Neatly packed dirt.  That's one thing I will always associate with Iselta.

But let me stop here.  I didn't really get to experience Isleta during this first, quick visit.  I didn't have time to meet any Isletans, didn't get to walk around much of the main plaza, or explore the pueblo, so I can't really give you a steel pen sketch of the place.  I don't want to romanticize it by describing the rambunctious young black and white puppy that ran across the plaza to greet us when we arrived.  But I will say I doubt it has changed much since Lummis lived there.  And I did get to do something really incredible:  I was given a tour of the old adobe Catholic Church at Isleta, built in 1710.  And I was honored with a meeting with the priest at Isleta, who personally showed me around the church and many of the ancient artistic objects-- a tribute certainly more to my host than to myself.

My kind and wonderful host in Albuquerque, Bee, had to leave me before the appointed time for the meeting with Father Hillaire. When I entered his office I was greeted by a kind-looking man you would guess was a college professor.  And indeed he could be a professor with his Ph.D. in Linguistics.  Bee mentioned that one of the things that first struck her about Father Hillaire was hearing him deliver a Mass in Southern Tiwa, the indigenous language of Isleta.

Bee gave me some great background on the pueblo over dinner the night before, and in the morning gave me a prep on behavior on the reservation: no pictures, and you can look but don't climb up on the kivas (the religious ceremonial chambers, entered through the roof via ladder).  I don't mind about the pictures, and actually I respect it.

From Albuquerque, Lummis went west into northern Arizona.   Northern Arizona is not characteristic of the rest of the southern part of the state.  It has high mountain ranges that get blanketed with snow, and Lummis indeed encountered lots of snow on his tramp.  2010 was no different.  The last, and biggest of three snow storms rolling through the Southwest was about to hammer northern Arizona.  With my experience with the last two storm systems, I was ready to call it a day.  As much fun as I've been having, I'm eager to land in Phoenix and begin my life.  I actually discuss driving routes with Father Hillaire, and he confirms that the best way to get to Phoenix would be to take I-25 South to I-10, then take that the rest of the way.  I-10 will get me to Phoenix far to the south, safely away from the snow.

So Father Hillaire leads me back out of the reservation (we were both concerned I might get lost trying to get out).  It was a quiet, apt way to end the Re-Tramp, for now.  I make a quick Starbucks stop, then hit the road hard, with near continuous driving for 7 or 8 hours to Tucson, where I stop for the night.  At some point along this long pull I start seeing saguaros, signaling that I am in the Sonoran Desert.











Final thoughts

Going into this driving tour of Lummis's walking route, I definitely had expectations about what I would find and write about.  I expected to find a West radically transformed in the 125 years since Lummis walked it.  I expected to find shocking differences that might reveal startling things about our modern world.  I expected to report on an overhauled West.

But just the opposite happened.  I found myself constantly surprised by how much was still the same as Lummis's account.  Sure, a lot of things are different, but I found the basic outlines drawn in the Tramp Across the Continent to be surprisingly intact.  Some of the things I came across were crumbling ruins, but I also came across things that are still living institutions 125 years later.  It seemed like I couldn't avoid stumbling into some of the same situations Lummis did, merely by retracing the same basic route.

In a lot of ways it seems like the country has merely built up along the lines described by Lummis, and not so radically transformed in the intervening 125 years.  Denver, though it has swelled since Lummis visited, is still a dot of civilization on the edge of the vast plains.  Mountains and mountain passes are still formidable obstacles.  Even one of the biggest changes, the birth of cars and roads and the demise of horses and trains, did not strike me that forcefully: I was driving my car along historic railroad lines, connecting cities that were formed around railroads, rivers, and wagon roads.  I defy someone to drive on Route 40 in Western Kansas, drive in and out of the tiny cities, like pearls on a string, that Lummis mentions, and tell me this place has radically changed since 1884.

  If you committed a crime in Colorado in 1884, there's a good chance you were sent to Cañon City.  If you commit a crime today, you will probably still end up Cañon City.  If you are a Native American seeking advanced education, you may follow in the footsteps of generations of scholars and high yourself to Lawrence, Kansas.  I visited a brewery in Golden, Colorado, today one of the world's largest, that was brewing beer in the same place it was when Lummis came through Denver.  I got to the top of Pikes Peak on a train that's been running since 1891.

Maybe we are not as revolutionary as we think, and are more deeply rooted in the past than we believe.

All in all, in case I haven't shown it in my last few posts, the way the country slowly changed and unfolded was incredibly powerful for me.  The route was like a plot line in a drama about the Continent.  Different emotions are pricked at different times.  The country says different things to you at different times.  It builds you're suspense as you speed west towards the Rockies.  It whispers in your ear soothingly as you coast down the cozy space between the plains and the foothills, and sends you soaring as you reach Pike's Peak.  Then your pulse races when you try to cross the mountains.  I could see easily how this route transformed and inspired Lummis.

Thanks for Reading

I'd like to thank everybody who has read this blog (especially if you are still reading this post!)  The blog made this amazing trip even more fun for me.  Your comments and notes meant a lot and were much appreciated.  Don't be surprised if you get an email about another blog sometime, and I will appreciate your patience with this spam email.

Love ya,

SHU

Golden, New Mexico

Released into San Luis

Now unhooked from the tow truck down in San Luis Valley, I beat it south like a trout released in a pond.  I was traumatized by the La Veta snow-in and wanted to put some serious miles behind me.  One thing about traveling in the winter is you have less daylight, and I feel like I'm always chasing the fading daylight.  In this twilight I now found myself on the West side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range: pretty mountains on my left, with the wide open valley on my right.  The sun has dropped below the horizon, but soft white light still fills the valley.

Highway 159 goes directly south towards New Mexico for many miles, but bends to the west momentarily before diving south again towards Taos, New Mexico.  If you ever find yourself on this little bend, be sure to LOOK TO YOUR RIGHT! and you will see another incredible view of Mt. Blanca.  From this spot the mountain looks even more lonely, even more magnificent than before, and in this fading light all alone on the highway it is stunning.  This might have been the view of the trip.  Too bad there was no place to pull off for a picture.

Soon bright dots of light start to appear above the Sangre de Cristos on my left.  Alone in a car, a quiet moment like this turns you philosopher.  I think about the people seeing the same sight thousands of years ago, and I wonder what it meant to them.  Maybe they would have been struck, like me, with the contrast between the rough rocky irregularity of the mountains and the seeming order and perfection of the points of light above them.  The Sangre de Cristos, so earthly looking, against the starry constellations, so delicate and pristine-looking.  Of course I've seen the night sky before, but it appears novel placed right up against the jagged line of the Sangre de Cristo range.

Snow again

When I draw the curtains on my Super 8 Motel room in Taos the next morning, it looks like someone has dropped the Blizzard of '96 outside my window.  It's a white out all over again.  I can't see anything in the distance, and snow is piling up every second.   Just thinking about the miles ahead make me queasy.

There's a middle-aged Native American fellow in the tiny Super 8 lobby also looking anxiously out at the road and we become lobby buddies.  He's trying to get to Hispanola, down the same road but closer. He's nervous because his vehicle is shit in the snow too.  Our hope is the snow will clear the same way it did yesterday.  It's still early in the morning, so we have time to wait.

The snow isn't letting up, and by 10am I'm starting to loose faith that I'm going to depart Super 8 anytime soon.  But in another hour, like a miracle, the clouds depart just like yesterday.  Suddenly I can see the piñon-dotted mountains outside Taos, and the hot sun is out again.  By the time I wrap up some work on the laptop, Highway 64 is clear as a blacktop basketball court in summer.

A sense of elation similar to getting towed out of La Veta again fills me, and I am all eagerness to hit the road, P.D.Q. (to use a bit of Lummis-speak).  As I start rolling on 64, I literally let out a "yeeehah!" outside my car window (although it may have come out more like a Howard Dean "Yaaaahhh!").  It is beautiful the rest of the way to Santa Fe.  On Highway 64 I rejoin Lummis's route and start shadowing the Rio Grande and experience the Rio Grande gorge.

Searching for Golden


At Santa Fe I get back on I-25.  I have about 2 hours left of daylight, and I want to stop by the ghost town of Golden, New Mexico before arriving in Albuquerque.  From Santa Fe there are two ways to get to Albuquerque: I-25, or Highway 14, also known as the "Turquoise Trail".  This is the road that Golden is on.

This is a climatic moment for me.  It was the experience of reading Lummis's extensive account of Golden, and then discovering it as an abandoned "ghost town" that helped inspire this whole trip.  From the descriptions and pictures available online, it was very difficult to understand what exactly Golden is today.  I had to see it for myself.

I believe there are more paragraphs per square mile devoted to this town of about 300 residents than any other place in the Tramp.  This is partly because Lummis got snowed in here for 12 days.  He intended to stay only a day or two, but about 2 feet of snow would fall before it finally let up enough for him to depart (and he barely survives the tramp to Albuquerque from Golden).  During these 12 days he seems to really fall for Golden, and the lifestyle of the West he perceives.  He makes friends, partakes of Golden's society, hears the local lore, and visits the mines.  He admits that he catches a bit of gold fever himself, and it seems at least one person even gave him a stake in a mine if he ever returned.

In my brief online research on Golden, I can't find an exact moment that Golden failed, but it seems that the big mineral deposits didn't really "pan out".   It's an ominous sign that in Lummis's 1892 book about the Tramp, all talk of Golden's future prosperity is scrubbed.  Although he still notes that, "Our twelve days among its mines were of the most enjoyable of the whole journey..."  And to know Lummis's account of the Tramp is to know that this is really saying something.

I pass the town of Cerillos, which I ache to spend more time in, it looks so cool, but the day is fading fast so I press on.  I see Cerillos on the map, and then Golden further down the highway, but it's taking longer then I expect to find Golden after Cerillos.  I know I will be tramping around in the ghost town in the twilight.  Finally I come to a bend in the road where I see a tiny adobe cross.  This is the first sign that I've reached Golden.  Further down the road I start noticing wrecked old houses.  I turn onto a muddy dirt road, which appears to be the "main drag" of today's Golden.

Golden is not really my image of a prototypical, iconic ghost town.  It's a heterogenous ghost town.  Different houses have been built and faded into disuse at different times.  There are a few lots where people are living today, with modern cars and dogs barking.  Other lots seem to have faded out sometime in the 1970's, some in the 1950's.

And then there are lots with crumbling buildings that look like they could easily be 150 years old.  One of the most prominent ruins, which I later saw identified as the old schoolhouse, looks so antiquated you could have told me it was 1000 years old (not this one, though this looks really old too).

Because there are a few permanent residents of Golden, I don't feel entirely comfortable walking around snapping pictures, but I do it anyway.  There are barbed wire fences and no trespassing notices, but it is still a meditative moment.

It's a really beautiful area.

This is the old schoolhouse.  One of the neat things about Golden is it's history that's just out there, it's not behind glass at a museum.  There were one or two times before this on the Tramp where I came across remnants of undocumented antiquated buildings or other structures, and it is always thrilling.

Well, it's getting dark, so it's time to get a move on to Albuquerque on the other side of the mountains.
SHU