Bluegrass and pastels

May 19

I woke up to turkeys. I could hear their gobble-gobble in the valley below. Maybe I'm close-minded, but I had never thought of turkeys as high desert birds. As I munched my way through breakfast, I kept wondering: How do they avoid the coyotes?

The hiking was easy. I bopped down through canyons to the sagebrush gorge of the Rio Chama, which I crossed on a one-lane bridge.

(Brett's maps call it the "Skull Bridge," but it just looked like a normal wooden job to me). The mesas opened up around me, painted cliffs carved concave with battlements up top.

 

On the other side, I clambered up some 1800 feet to the top of a the mesa on the northern side of the gorge. I skirted the rim for mikes, then carved inland, then dove off the side in the direction of Ghost Ranch.

Ghost Ranch is many things: It is a conference center, an artists' retreat, and the place where Georgia O'Keeffe fell in love with the desert landscape. (She visited there with the heirs to the Johnson and Johnson fortune in the 40s and decided to stay.) It is beautiful, stodgy, a touch run-down. There's something vaguely Christian about the whole thing but they don't shove it down your throat. I like it here; I wish Lily could see it. Maybe she can teach here and I'll lead retirees on hikes, I thought.

Somewhat more quotidian, they have a sweet all you can eat dining gal. Also, on this day, it was hosting a summer camp for adults who wanted to learn bluegrass. I checked myself into a room, bathroom at the other end of the building, and got right to dinner. I discussed pastels and weeding the facility's labarynth with a very nice group of retirees from Wisconsin over salmon, pork, potatoes, lentils, and cheesecake. Hello, hiker hunger.

After dinner, I sat in the facility's library and sipped whiskey while reading speeches by anti-fascist theologian Paul Tillich. A bluegrass quintet was fighting their way through Soldier's Joy in the reading room behind me, giggling at their own lack of gloss. After a while, almost all the camp atendeees congregated in the chapel for a giant session. I felt positively wrapped up in positive humanity. All these people, doing something just for the love of it, no illusions about their virtuosity. Just for the love of music and community.