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