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By chris Date: 2006 May 25 Comment on this Work [[2006.05.25.14.07.26506]] |
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Yesterday was quite the road trip. I think we've maxed out our adventure quota for the next month or so. Which is good. So we decided, purely on a whim, to visit a (real) ghost town down in Socorro County: Riley. Settled around 1880, the post office closed in 1931, and it's now just a glorious wrecked shell of a town. Perfect. We took the interstate down to Socorro, then headed out to Magdalena - the last "real" town and jumping-off point. Now, there's something you need to know about desert ghost towns: they rarely sit right off nice paved roads with a Starbucks handy nearby. In our case, getting to Riley meant negotiating about forty miles of dirt and gravel and sand. For a dirt road, that's a hell of a long way - on a bad enough road, five miles can feel like fifteen. In fact, in some places we had to cross dry arroyos and, right before reaching Riley, traverse the Rio Salado, which DID have water in it. I stepped out first to make sure it wasn't quicksand, and it wasn't. So we made it. Cool. And what achingly beautiful country... Ranches were scattered here and there but, except for one 4WD vehicle tailing a plume of dust far ahead of us, we didn't see a single person. 9,143' Ladron Peak sat on the horizon, watching us. Called "Thieves' Mountain", it was where all the bandits and outlaws and bad guys came to hide out after shooting up a bank or something in Albuquerque. Now I knew why. If I'd just arrived here from New York, such isolation would have no doubt terrified me. Now it felt natural. And not only natural but necessary. This shattered and sun-blasted land is my home. Our home. The town itself was pretty well preserved - in the sense that you knew it was in fact once a town. There was a church, cemetery and, most impressive, an old schoolhouse. It was in excellent shape. There was even an intact outhouse alongside the building. Scattered about as well were a number of crumbling adobe cabins, and it was amazing how much of the debris of daily living had been left behind - broken china, cookware, mattress springs, metal appliances. Of course we touched nothing. It felt like a sacred place to us, like sifting through the wreckage a plane crash, almost. And, of course, there was also the matter of the rattlesnakes hiding out from the searing sun under the countless sheets of rusted tin littering the ground... We didn't stay long. It was too hot anyway - probably in the mid-90s with no humidity. It's the desert. It's supposed to be that way. But I had no sunscreen and could feel a nasty burn coming on. Belinda was turning red. So we beat it out of there - my wife at the wheel, deftly handling the dips and dodging the blowout-causing rocks, my hand resting on her knee - and, in another hour or so, were safely back on the highway. No signs were there to tell us how far we'd come or how far we had to go, but as long as we could see the sun and the mountain we knew we were headed the right way. We need ghost towns. All of us. Among other things, they remind us just how flimsy and impermanent this invention we call civilization really is. But we're sure diggin' it while it lasts. And that's the point too, I guess. |