It took me the better portion of the morning to get my chores done -- packing food, doing laundry, checking on emails and the bank account. I spent a fretful hour or two reading the New York Times on my phone. The disconnect between our national political life and the the reality I am observing is enough to make one's head spin. One the one hand, there's hubris and self-interest of the least enlightened kind; on the other, a landscape and crowd that seek to dissolve the self entirely and focus on beauty and service.
And learning bluegrass.
I got everything squared away and shipshape by round noon, with notable exception: stove fuel. The teeny gift shop at Ghost Ranch didn't carry the gasoline line deicer my stove runs on. Actually, they didn't carry much of real utility except M&Ms and string cheese. Everything else seemed to fall square into the Tchotchke Category.
I could have tried going stoveless for a stretch, but I am weak and love hot tea or coffee in the morning. The closest town, Abiquiu, was less than 20 miles away. It felt dumb to hitch and lose those hours for just one thing, but when you want it, you want it. I stopped at the front desk to ask for a sharpie to make myself a sign saying "Abiquiu," so people knew it would be a short hitch.
"Why do you need a sharpie," the concierge said, giving me a suspicious look. Did they not allow hitching? I explained my plan.
"Ah, well then," he brightened, "just use mine!" With that, he produced a sign with "Abiquiu" printed on one side and "Ghost Ranch" on the other.
"It's a good one," he said beaming, "worked great getting me to and from work all this week."
I love New Mexico.
I got a ride before I'd even hit the highway, climbing into a rented Ford Focus while still on Ghost Ranch's driveway. They were a couple from Baltimore who terrified me by asking for whom I'd voted but who made great conversation the rest of the way. (I demurred that as a midwesterner, I had been taught not to discuss religion or politics in mixed company. This was, of course, a lie.)
Abiquiu consisted, for me, of Bode's general store. It was a real general store: everything from genuine Parmesan Reggiano to 2-cycle oil. I found my fuel and got lunch in the cafe, including a surprisingly good abbey ale from a nearby monastery. The crowd filtering through was half tourists, half locals. For some people, this was clearly a social center. For others, it was a chance to stock up for the coming week. A rail-thin young couple with running shoes caught my eye -- maybe other hikers?! -- but they were only buying vegetables, no caloric MOABs, so they must have been from another tribe of dirt hippies.
Back at Ghost Ranch, I had a lot of trouble achieving escape velocity. Maybe I should stay, I thought, watch the big finale bluegrass concert tonight. A couple people I'd met during my time there tried to get me to stay. But the weather said I had three days of hiking before a storm came in, and I wasn't keen on spending another night in a high country snow squall. I settled my pack on my shoulders and strolled out of Ghost Ranch.
As I walked out of the facility, I walked into Arroyo desk Yeso, a beautiful box canyon. A clear line of water snaked over a sandy bed and through clumps of boulders. My route finally took me up a narrow side canyon and onto the southern end of the Mogote Ridge. I found a nice grassy patch and put myself down for a beautiful sleep.
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