The hills above fill my vision. Fast breath fills my body as I climb the steep slope.
I turn and the land below falls away, opens a panorama, brown and green, white and blue. Snow-dusted hills stretch to mesa walls. Frosted mountain peaks tower on the horizon.
We’re wandering a cluster of hills above the spa at Ojo Caliente. As we climb, the hills block the cold wind. Western bluebirds surprise us, darting among the junipers on the high sage plain.
The trail dumps us into an arroyo. Rivulets of snowmelt have sculpted the sand under our feet into marble. Red clay fingers poke from the arroyo walls. Small springs trickle beneath us, hardening to ice at the arroyo wall’s dark base.
The hills across the valley gleam in the last of the sun. Three structures glisten atop a hill. Those are the places to live, we decide, then realize at least one is a water tower.
Winter-bare trees alert us to water before we hear it. The Rio Ojo Caliente flows just a few steps from the arroyo’s end, at a truly heartening rate for a desert midwinter.
We follow the Rio to a historic barn, locked, and a labyrinth, which we pace in full.
We chose this hike solely because we could complete it by sunset from a late-afternoon arrival. In this one circuit of the landscape, the desert showed us so much.
Hike length: 3 miles
Difficulty: easy
Trail traffic: very light
Wildlife spotted: Western bluebirds, Steller’s jays, coyote tracks and burrows
Woman Seeks Elevation 