Perhaps a little prose is more appropriate for this one…it’s long, but it’s a night I won’t soon forget. This is the story of how $3, a fast car, the threat of instantaneous death by lightning, and a van full of artists, transsexuals, and an Argentinian turned a potentially dreary night into an amazing one. In other words, the very essence of travel itself.
I spent entire morning, up until about 1:30 PM, in the La Quinta working on this blog. Four days without working on it + lots of experiences = lots of time writing. I was actually joined in the lobby by a squad of half a dozen US Border Patrol agents at one point; I took the opportunity to talk to one of them a little. (Like many others, he had a fairly pronounced Latin American Spanish accent. Again, made me wonder how he feels about all of this…) Apparently the border outside of cities is protected by nothing more than a barbed-wire fence — hence the enormous volume of USBP agents.
After I left, a trip down Highway 11 led to NM-9, the southernmost east-to-west road in the state — one filled with exactly that volume of Border Patrol. It was really beautiful, though, a dash across wide-open country with mountains in the distance. Today was to be a low-driving day: I’d actually realized mid-day the previous day that I really wanted to visit White Sands National Monument at sunset to take pictures, but I was a couple hours too late to be able to make it there in time. Hence my stop in Deming, and the time I had to catch up on this blog. White Sands is actually very close to Deming (only a hundred miles or so), so I detoured across southern New Mexico to El Paso, Texas — mainly just to add one more state to my list for this trip. ;-) El Paso is about what I expected, a big, hot Texas city nestled right up against the borders with New Mexico and Mexico.
On the trip north to Alamogordo and onwards to White Sands, though, I started running into late-afternoon thunderstorms. Worse yet, they were exactly in the direction of White Sands. This I hadn’t anticipated — I was watching my time closely, so I’d be there in plenty of time for sunset — but curses! Thunderstorms!
I pressed on anyway, rain and lightning first in the distance, then alternately pouring and drizzling down around me…I was going to see White Sands one way or another. My plan was to stop there, then go onwards to one of the myriad state parks beyond…probably not terribly exciting, and filled with lots of RVs, but a serviceable place to stop for the night.
It was still raining when I got to White Sands…my National Parks Pass let me in; a quick tour around the main park road led me back to the starting point for the ranger-led “sunset stroll”. The ranger was waiting in her car, in the rain, but assured me that she would still lead the stroll if there was demand — since there was one other car there besides mine, I didn’t feel too demanding. :-) But then, on a lark, I asked her about a sign I’d seen on the road a couple of miles back: while the local radio station (“AM 1610”) for the park said there was no camping whatsoever in the park, I had seen a sign for backcountry sites. You had to get a permit at the visitor center, and it closed an hour before I got there…but the ranger said that, no, I could still pick up a permit at the entrance booth before 7:00 PM, and that, as far as she knew, none of the ten sites had yet been occupied. Wow. Being there, it was obvious that camping in White Sands would be like nothing else. I checked my watch. 6:50 PM.
Cut to me, pedal to the metal, going 85 MPH (in a 35) back to the entrance booth. The ranger at the fee station did indeed have all ten sites available; a grand total of $3 and an application later, and I was set up to camp in #5. Just as I was leaving, another car pulled over and asked the ranger for the same thing — I spoke a few words to the woman, who had an interesting accent (that turned out to be Swiss)…she was travelling alone, too, and was planning on camping there too. I turned around and took off for the ranger-led sunset stroll, already in progress; she’d pointed out to me where they were going to be, and I caught up. It was vaguely interesting, though I was honestly more amused by her thick Michigan accent (which I recognized well, having spent four years there in college) than anything else.
I left for the backcountry trailhead right afterwards…it wasn’t far, and when I got there I found a large van, plus the Swiss woman and her car; she’d just pulled in. She was roughly my age, and we started talking — I find amazingly few people travelling solo out there (even though, honestly, I think there are worlds of things to recommend it), so it was great to bond with a fellow traveller…her story was long and complicated, but it basically involved a boy in South Dakota (if I remember correctly) who she’d come here to see a few times, who things had eventually not worked out with, and her dream of seeing New Mexico finally came true that way: she’d been out here since July 13th, and had a couple more weeks before going back to Switzerland. She was training to be a classical singer, and had a particular interest in Native American music. This is exactly why I love to travel, and why I love to travel solo: you meet the craziest, most wonderful kinds of people out there.
Then the group from the van came down off one of the dunes — they’d been playing around there, sledding down the dunes — and said hello… there was Jeff, a former software QA engineer (tester) who’d now been trying to become a photographer (oh, so similar to me…our birthdays were even just one day away); Grace, a former denizen of NYC who seemed to both love New Mexico and love New York, too; Flo, an artist in inflatable sculpture who was in the process of transitioning from female to male; and Kike (KEE-kay), a fiftysomething Argentinian painter and creator of masks who spoke English with a fairly thick accent but who somehow managed to say really profound, interesting things about every other sentence. (Perhaps it was the accent, but he really came across as something of the sage foreign oracle. I really liked him a lot.)
So this group of five twenty-/thirtysomethings and one fiftysomething hung out for a while…it was still raining a little as Katya (the Swiss woman) and I packed up our bags and planned to head for the campsites to set up before the sun set. The group from the van planned to stay on the dunes a little white longer and hang out, so Katya and I headed out. It turns out the campsites were over a mile in, which is pretty trivial as far as backpacking is concerned — but when you’re set up for car camping, like I was, not backpacking, and when it’s drizzling rain the entire time and you’re walking up and down wet dunes, a mile is a long ways. We crested a couple dunes and basically decided, you know, fuck the campsites: the place we were was as good as any, so let’s set up camp here. A struggle with a broken tent pole (mine) later, and we had shelter…the rain had let up enough that it was pleasant enough to sit outside, so we spent time there talking while she made couscous over a camp stove.
The whole time, the weather was dreary: the low, gray clouds stretched horizon to horizon, it was drizzling on-and-off, and the wind kept whipping up. The sun slowly set to little fanfare; White Sands is supposed to be spectacular at sunset, but with gray clouds in the sky the sun set with a whimper. Night fell, and the sky was dark, with no stars or even the moon visible.
Another point should be made, too: there was quite a bit of lightning all around us — none of it was even close enough to produce thunder that we could hear, but the flashes were readily apparent and, honestly, pretty intimidating. It basically all boiled down to this: either we were all going to die from being struck by lightning — or it was going to be an absolutely amazing night, and we’d be far better off for being some of the few people more than willing to brave the elements to have that kind of experience. To underscore this point, we saw flashlights high on a dune on the horizon at one point…after waving them over with our own flashlights, we saw a German couple that was trying to figure out how to get back to the cars: they were scared of the lightning and wanted to leave. I led them in what I thought was the direction of the cars, until they were convinced that they were in the right place and said thanks and goodbye…although my subsequent experience (see below) tells me that quite possibly I led them in completely the wrong direction. ;-) I’m sure they were OK in the end, as were we (obviously, since I’m here writing this)…our camp was in a valley between a number of dunes, just high enough that we weren’t going to get completely flooded if it really poured rain but not high enough to really attract lightning, either.
Of course, it was only at this point, after I’d set up my tent and night had fallen completely, that I realized I’d left my sleeping bag back at the car. I could probably make it with just a Thermarest, but it’d be a lot nicer to actually have something to sleep in. I set off in search of the car — twice. I took long journeys — twice. I missed the car by miles — twice. You have no idea how much difference darkness makes: I knew the car couldn’t possibly be more than several hundred yards off, but in the pitch black, every dune looks like every other and there are no landmarks to orient you. I usually have a very good sense of direction, but I was utterly and completely lost this time. The only thing that made me feel a bit better was when Katya, amused at my complete lack of direction, pointed out the direction she knew the cars were in…and it, too, was completely wrong. Ah, well: sleeping without a sleeping bag would be fine; my tent would keep me warm enough.
Around this time, though, we started hearing voices…the group from the van — who I’d thought had completely disappeared — was just over the next dune. Our voices (particularly Katya’s; classical singers are useful in such situations) and flashlights brought them over, and suddenly we were six. Fortunately, they knew where the f*ck the car was, and two of them gracefully led me back there so I could pick up my sleeping bag. On the trip back, they related their experience being hassled by a ranger, who’d threatened them with a $250 fine for not being in their campsite by nightfall. (Apparently my lack of direction in the dunes is awfully common, and search-and-rescue missions are not unusual.) They basically talked their way out of it, and so here we were.
The rest of the night basically consisted of sitting, standing, and wandering around the campsite with this group of crazily wonderful people from the van, sharing plenty of beer, wine, bourbon, and tequila under the clouds…and then watching the clouds finally fall away, and millions and millions of stars come out. We talked about anything and everything, about art, life, love, sex, politics, happiness…what we were all looking for, what we’d found, what still needed and wanted, how we thought we might find it. Jeff gave a perspective similar to my own, Grace wandered off among the dunes to commune with nature her own way, Flo had fascinating insights into the nature of gender and how you can find happiness in this life, Katya offered her own fearlessly independent viewpoint on America and Switzerland and Native American tribal dance and music, and Kike chimed in with something like the voice of wisdom itself, rendered in this beautiful Argentine accent, searching for words in English but always knowing what he wanted to say.
At one point, Katya felt inspired and walked a hundred yards or so off from the group to sing…she sang songs of her own making, of her own creation, for all I know made up there on the spot, but songs that were breathtakingly beautiful and which sounded distinctly Native American in style. We all were quiet and listened, just being alone with the night and her song… I can say with some certainty that I will likely never again be alone in the desert with five other people listening to a Swiss woman sing Native American songs, but I wouldn’t trade that moment for any other in my life. It is moments like this in travel that make any amount of madness and abuse the road gives you so, so very worth it.
And so it was like that, talking, communing, the wind on our faces, that we eventually fell asleep, our sleeping bags and Thermarests dragged outside under the stars, looking up at the Milky Way as our low voices slowly become less and less frequent. It was 2 AM as we eventually fell asleep…I was in a world completely unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I was happier in that moment than I’ve been in a very, very long time.
To be continued…
Day 6: (Thursday, August 9, 2007) Deming, NM to White Sands National Monument, NM.
Miles: 2171.8 + 237.1 = 2408.9 total. Current distance from home: 1,180 miles.
Photos: 1,217 (16.6 GB) + 19 (239.9 MB) = 1,236 (16.8 GB) total.
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