Four days into my vacation at our recently built small house
SE of Santa Fe, and hopefully getting into a pace where I spend less time on
work email and more on sitting out on the east deck in the early morning cool,
sipping coffee and watching the hummingbirds with binoculars. I think that they
are broad-tails, with deep green back; the majority would be females, though,
without the scarlet neck. Most of the other birds seem to be some variety of
sparrow. Our land and the surrounding Galisteo Basin Preserve is beautiful, and
there are lots of trails on the ridges and in the basin; mostly more or less
level after going down into it (and, of course, back up). Have done many of
them, and on Friday night, when I arrived, we joined a group for a geology talk
and hike describing the layers from a really long time ago to as recently as 45
million years ago!
There is a
temptation, though, to do mountain hikes, covered in woodland, to beautiful
streams, so we did one on Sunday, the “Borrego Loop” off Hyde Park Road (which
runs NE from Santa Fe to the ski area). Much of the Borrego Trail is downhill
through forests of Ponderosa pine and tall aspens and some spruce and fir, down
to the Tesuque Creek; the segment of Windsor Trail which forms the base of
the triangle runs more down along the creek, and the Bear Wallow trail back is,
thus, uphill. Close to 8000 feet and 36 hours from my baseline 400 feet in KC,
it took a lot out of me! The book says a 760 foot gain, but I don't know if that is net or gross -- a lot of down also! I was ready for lunch (lovely) and a nap. Well, I’m
almost always ready for a nap. That’s how I know it’s vacation! We’d done this
before, with my sister and brother-in-law, in the snow of winter. Mountains
have the advantage, compared with canyons, of being down on the way back, this one was a little different
for hiking in the mountains. I also note that the book doesn't seem to care too much about total elevation gain; if it is not too steep and the trail is in good shape, it is "easy", as was this one.
This morning got up early to see the sunrise, despite having
been up late seeing La Traviata at
the gorgeous outdoor Santa Fe Opera last
night, have breakfast and hang around for the guys who work for the builder to get
our eastern door open before going on the morning hike.
The
house is glass on 3 sides (except north) but none of the windows open so the
breeze comes through with the east and west doors open. The wind is from the
west, so can blow the east door (hung inside) closed, so we had two rubber
doorstops in it. A big enough gust came, however, to slam it closed hard, with
the doorstops wedged into what should be a tiny potential space between metal
door and sill, making it impossible to open. They used a couple of prybars to
lift it from inside enough to pull the doorstops out from outside.
There is a
trail along the railroad tracks just north of here; they run (and people bike
it) into Santa Fe to the northwest; there is a tourist train, but also the
Southwest Limited runs through Lamy, NM en route from Chicago to LA. Lamy is
the closest stop to Santa Fe, so maybe there are a different set of tracks
heading out of it to Albuquerque. Pat just took it from KC to Lamy overnight
last week, but, of course, didn’t stay on to see where the tracks go this side
of town. Anyway, there is a barbed wire fence along the tracks making it hard
to get to overland, but the other night we discovered a trail that starts off
the road across from us and winds through the desert to the tracks and an
opening in the fence, where the bikers and hikers (us) can get through. Lovely
walk; took the hiking poles even though I didn’t need them for balance on a basically
level walk but it is apparently more exercise since you use your arms. Then
walking along the rail trail, mostly right alongside, some up and downs where
the tracks go through a narrower area, and some (for fun) walking along the
rails (there I did use the poles for
balance). Someone has put birdhouses all along the fence line, and at one point
we came across a large patch of squash
plants; blossoms but no fruit yet, and presumably, given the location,
volunteers. The tracks go over a very pretty wooden bridge over a wash, and
eventually cross US-285. There we turned south (using the poles as leashes for
the dogs) a short ways to our own road and back about a mile and a half. 
I notice, walking
back the mile or so along the road in the direction we usually walk out on
(coming back on a higher trail), two things. First, it is mostly uphill; going
on an easy downhill is never so obvious. Second, there are a lot more mature
piñon pines here than farther down the road, for some reason. At 6700 feet, our
trees are almost all juniper and piñon, unlike the Ponderosa and aspen of the
higher elevation, and lots of the piñon had died from bark beetle, drought
making the trees’ defense (coating them in sap) more difficult. Over the last
few years we’ve seen more piñon coming back, often in the shelter of protective
junipers, but down the road there must be a microclimate that has had them
surviving. I cut across our land, looking down because ground-hugging prickly
pear look a lot like the other vegetation until you get close, and I see a
tiny, one-inch high, hedgehog cactus. All the other cacti are prickly pear and
cholla so it is a lovely surprise.
By now, it
is getting warm, but it has been a lovely hike, and I’m not completely wiped
out by climbing up and down. There is a lot to be said for level hikes!
