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Carlsbad Guide
Last updated on Thursday, February 20, 2003
Recently I wriggled my way, not into a cave, but into a goals-setting retreat of Carlsbad Caverns National Park staff - three long days trying to articulate the park’s mission, renew its vision, turn sweeping desires into measurable goals, tasks, and work assignments. We were 24, nearly a quarter of the park staff, including superintendent, division heads, rangers, maintenance men, administrative aides. We talked much about team building, but the underlying theme is how we balance the contradictory mandates of preserving the park’s fragile caves with that of encouraging tourist visitation. Carlsbad Caverns National Park runs five guided off-trail tours. They are so different it’s hard to imagine they are in the same park. Spider Cave delivers an intimate caving experience, wriggling into the hidden underworld, coming face-to-face with earth’s inner secrets. Lower Cave is back stage at the opera. These five off-trail tours take you off the beaten path. Plan time for them. They offer an intriguing glimpse into Carlsbad's world of caving. Winter in Carlsbad isn't about snow, ice or cold. It's about warmth. The warmth of the holiday season. And families coming together. Carlsbad is alive with the ultimate celebration of the season - Christmas on the Pecos River. The flora and the fauna come together in the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park at the north edge of Carlsbad, New Mexico, on U.S. Highway 285. It takes visitors through the diverse Chihuahuan Desert, the largest in North America, that spans Southeast New Mexico into the rugged terrain of the Guadalupe Mountains and Mexico. The Park is located on top of the Ocotillo Hills overlooking Carlsbad and the Pecos River valley. I’m flat on my belly inching through the crawl space into Spider Cave. My head lamp casts a shadowy glow into this twisting channel, but I can’t raise my head far enough to see where I’m going. The cave ceiling scrapes my back. The cave floor is rocky as a mountain stream, and jagged stones nip into my chest and thighs. I’m dragging myself - there’s not enough room to crawl - trying to follow the soles of the size ten boots ahead of me. The boots disappear around a corner.
Summer: 1966. The powdery sand blew off the rock face I was clinging to and into my eyes. I blinked and squinted into the sun, craning my neck up to look up the steeply canted rock.
Through dusty glasses I looked between my outstretched arms at the stretch of the rock face above and suddenly felt utterly alone. I could not see anyone above me, only hot white rock. My fingers were jammed into a crack and my knuckles were bloodless from the grip.
Southeastern New Mexico does not exist.
I knew that at an early age. No one travels there except the people who actually live there. It was a startling lesson for a world traveler transplanted to Lovington by his mother who wanted to "go home" after her divorce. She was born there. I know. She showed me where: a tiny white house on the outskirts of the "city". It was the only city I'd ever known that you could cross on foot in a day. Or less. And when you came to the city limit there, the city actually ended. Desert from there on out.
The ideal visit to Carlsbad Caverns starts by hiking down the natural entrance: We plunge into the earth; light into darkness, summer heat into cool shadow. We're explorers, wending our way to the center of the earth. The air turns musty; water drips. We imagine the cave's first explorer, Jim White, descending by rope, home-made kerosene lantern in hand. We wonder how, without this trail, without these lights, he managed to find his way out safely.What is a flume, you may ask? According to the dictionary, it is a narrow gorge with a stream flowing through it, usually, or an artificial channel or chute for a stream of water. The latter describes the Flume at Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Irrigation was a necessity for the arid Southwest as it couldn't depend on rainfall and snow for moisture to grow crops. For centuries Native Americans and Hispanic peoples regularly watered small fields with canal networks, acequias and brush diversion dams.
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