Peaceful Easy Feeling

9/09/08
Location: Near Jimez Springs, Northwest NM

It has been a great week. I will include more a little later for I am out on my bike right now and came to a small town of about 500 with a small public library. I don't have any of my software or my camera unfortunately to upload any pictures. I crossed over into New Mexico on Wednesday and spent some time outside of Las Cruces, then headed north through Elephant Butte and ended up in the Pecos Wilderness inside of Carson National Forest. I spent a few nights backpacking up the Santa Barbara River and it was some gorgeous country. The river was very thin in most places, but quite a few pools in several spots that held some cutthroat trout. The best fishing was about 8 miles up river, where some beavers had dammed of the river creating nice wide pools to house some very nice fish. It had rainbows over twenty inches. I could not catch anything on flies, my only luck was on salmon's eggs. The only other people I saw up there were a couple of hippies in search of some mushrooms. I don't think they were looking to make pizza. The weather has been amazing. In Santa Barbara I was camped at around 9000 feet, so it dropped to around freezing at night. Trying to brush your teeth with frozen toothpaste is a pain! On Sunday I left Santa Barbara and headed to Taos to find a worship service to attend. I visited a nice Presbyterian Church, and sang some beautiful old Presbyterian hymns. What gets me about the Presbyterians is that the hymns never repeat themselves, I'm ready to sing again and everyone is sitting down! I was invited to a small picnic with the congregation at the park adjacent to the church. It was a time of great converstations and tremendous foods of homeade breads, pasta salads, and even homeade ice cream. The crowd was a diverse contrast of society. It seems that no one in Taos is from Taos, they are a menagerie of peoples from all walks of life. It seems ironic to me that because they are all so different, they exhibit social normalcy between them. Which seems the reason they may have fled their places of origin to begin with. Enough of that. I left Taos in a hurry after that, it was way too touristy for my liking. I headed southwest to Bandalier National Monument. After checking out the ruins, I headed out in the Bandalier Wilderness for a night of backpacking. This was desolate country. I never saw a soul except for an elk that I walked upon, early one morning. They are cutting me off the computer (thirty minute time limit), TBC. God Bless, Jarod