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General Interest
Last updated on Friday, April 20, 2007
The poor souls who suffer from allergies, whose symptoms range from a stuffy nose and itchy eyes to profound sneezing, often depend on over-the-counter potions for temporary relief. But not true-blue New Mexicans. Land of Enchantmenters grab our home grown hotheaded red or green chile pod to help clear the head. Why? A puissant chemical, capsaicin [kap-SAY-ih-sihn], which is found in most varieties of chile, is known for its nasal passage arousal and decongestant properties. On five quiet acres outside Silver City, M. H. Dutch and Cherie Salmon run a cottage industry book publishing business that serves the nation. High Lonesome Books features Southwestern themes, books written by Salmon, reprints of old and out-of-print books, original books by living authors and used books. Drive any of the three main approaches to Silver City and a moment comes when your eye is arrested by a homely, hand-painted billboard showing dozens of cattle brands grouped around the silhouette of a cow. It doesn't take higher math to put two and two together: A lot of Grant County's residents and acreage are in the cattle business. The range of cowboy poetry, tightly reined in by rhyme, is part of the pleasure. At a recent Silver City festival, the Grand Finale Show included a poem about lawyers, a hilarious bar comedy (smoothly delivered by professional Waddie Mitchell), a poignant eulogy, a historic account of the first round-up, a tribute to the flag, a love story, a graphic description of branding (read by a sweet middle-aged ranchwife in a puffed blouse and purple skirt), and an ironic commentary on drugstore cowboys. Dust devils certainly seem like magic, springing up suddenly from the hot ground, taking pale form from the soil they carry, and dancing whichever way they will. Creatures of warm climates and dry country, dust devils are children of the sun. In 1930, a 17 year-old boy arrived in Southern New Mexico's Gila Wilderness, seeking adventure - and relief from sinus problems. Dawson ("Doc") Campbell would soon become one of the most influential men in Southern New Mexico. He would become a trapper, ranch hand, custodian of the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Forest Service smoke-chaser and ranger, landholder, hunting and fishing outfitter, and general store owner. He would live the rest of his life in the Gila Hot Springs valley, about 40 miles north of Silver City, New Mexico, and pass away on May 11, 1998, at the age of 85. Here in New Mexico, most folks take a casual approach to style. It's a matter of common sense more than anything else. Thanks to sun, wind, and dust, that heavy wool suit is pretty far down the list of clothing choices. In winter, gardeners look to their mail boxes. The seed catalogs are coming. I stare hungrily at the pictures of impossibly healthy vegetables and fruit. I am not just hungering for deeply-purple eggplant or baskets of red, ripe tomatoes. Desert gardeners face conditions that would wither any other gardener: less than 10 inches of rainfall annually; rocky or caliche (clay) soil with few nutrients; extremes of temperature and weather; oh, and a bit of wind. The excitement of finding the first 'color' in your gold pan is an indescribable experience. Even though I had never seen it in its native state before, when I looked down and saw gold in my pan for the first time, I knew instantly what it was. There was no doubt! I exclaimed, "I'll be darn, so that's gold!" A newspaper reporter asked me, "How did you know, did you have it analyzed?" I said, "No, I just knew!" I remembered all those disappointing times I had found only fool's gold (iron pyrite). How could I have missed the real thing! The excitement of finding my first gold was more earth shaking than finding my first love. I truly had 'Gold Fever.' For golfers in Southern New Mexico, there's some good news and some bad news. Sometimes an aspect of the game swings both ways. Today, the value of grazing cows on public land is being seriously questioned. And public lands ranchers like my neighbors are scared and angry. My valley is a microcosm of what is happening across the West. In these last ten years, we have grown from a small community of farmers and ranchers to a larger community of farmers, ranchers, retirees, school teachers, entrepreneurs, small gardeners, and others. We are increasingly polarized. "Cowboys" on one side. "Environmentalists" on the other. Cliff dwellings. What an unremarkable phrase for such a remarkable feat. An entire village carved out of solid rock. Carved not with the bulldozers and explosives that we so casually use today to gouge mortal wounds into Mother Earth, but with primitive tools and back-breaking labor. Carved not to pillage or destroy but to settle into Earth's protective bosom as children settle into their mothers' laps. In 1959, the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report carried the story of strange mirages seen near Yuma, Arizona. On hot, unusually still days, a clear image of a city appeared in the desert to the west of Yuma. It was no phantom either - the shimmering image was unmistakably that of San Diego, California, 150 miles west on the Pacific Coast, beyond several mountain ranges. In circles where wrinkles have profound importance they are furiously discussing the methods of wrinkle removal. I have a personal favorite. Long ago I noticed that stout people are relatively wrinkle-free. Simply stated, if you keep adding material to a container of fixed size, something has to stretch. Would you like to go to a place where people know your name, where you can visit with friends and neighbors while keeping in touch with what’s happening around the world and down the street? Did you know New Mexico had prisoner of war camps during World War II?
This column has talked about ones at Santa Fe and Lordsburg that held U.S. residents of Japanese descent. The camp at Lordsburg also held captured German and Italian soldiers. Another camp at Roswell held almost exclusively German prisoners, most of them from Gen. Rommel's elite Afrika Korps, until late in the war.
On these hot, dry June days when the horizon shimmers, set to dancing by the waves of heat that rise from the ground, I think of beaches. Not ocean beaches - playas -desert beaches. Playas are the dry, incredibly level beds of ancient lakes. Found in desert country throughout the southern Southwest and northern Mexico, and the Great Basin country of western Utah and Nevada, normally-dry playas occasionally fill with a skim of water - sometimes no more than inches deep over many square miles - after a heavy summer rain or spring snowmelt. Such lakes never last more than days or weeks, soon evaporating to leave behind huge expanses of mudflats drying in the sun. Playas were named by Spanish explorers for their resemblance to beaches - very flat beaches. The Seven Cities of Gold has been a New Mexico fable since before Fray Marcos de Niza claimed to have seen them in 1539. As soon as Cortes and crew finished conquering the Aztec Empire in the early 1520s, they set out to find the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, said to have been established by seven bishops who fled Spain after the Moorish conquest to hide gold, gems, and religious articles in the New World. Throughout the Southwest's history, few topics have generated more passion than water. Today battles are fought by lawyers with briefcases rather than farmers with six-guns. The issues are many and certainly changes will come. The chief agreement seems to be is that there are no simple solutions. Penitential practices were once common throughout Europe and other colonies in the New World. The Penitente are considered true representatives of Spanish religious thought and culture. The high point of their worship was the re-creation of Christ’s Passion on the cross. This was accomplished through portrayal of the suffering of Christ, self-mortification of the flesh, emulating the crucifixion of Christ, and singing of alabados (sorrowful hymns). Water is worthy of note here: deserts are by nature dry. Our part of the Chihuahuan desert, once an arid grassland, now dominated by creosote bush, mesquites, and other shrubs, boasts an annual average precipitation of less than ten inches.
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