Cañada de la Cueva: Sand, stone and sun

It’s too hot for this.

Well, it will be. Now, cool east wind brushes canyon walls’ shadow.

The predator sun lurks like the hawks above, the bobcats whose scat dots this arroyo.

The temperature will climb above 80 here, in the hills at 6,000 feet elevation, on October 17.

The wind will shift to the west, whip into a gale. Red flag warning. So dry any spark would kindle and spread instantly.

But we have a few hours before all of that. And we’ll see very few humans here at Cañada de la Cueva. That was the deciding factor, with 812 new cases of the virus in the state yesterday. A record that broke a record that broke a record.

The canyon squeezes and opens. Rock walls emerge: lichen-stitched basalt blocks, pebbles embedded in stone. The Ortiz Mountains prairie-dog above the canyon.

Miles downstream, we see one, then another and another horseback rider descend from the hills to the canyon.

Even this far in, all are masked, as we are. I silently thank them.

“Did you come from the dump?” one rider asks. (Yes, this trailhead is at a dump.)*

We tell him we did.

“That’s a long walk!” he says.

“Yes, and it’ll feel longer going uphill on the way back,” I laugh.

Uphill. In sand. And heat.

The return a two-hour trudge. I knew it would be.

But the big, dark rock walls cover us with coolness as we pass.

The sky glows incandescent blue, a shade that appears only in fall here, that appears even when it feels like summer.

The sky still knows what to do.

Hike length: 7.4 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: very light

Creatures spotted/heard: ravens, hawk, flycatchers, tarantula hawk, butterfly, dragonflies, dark-eyed juncos, flicker

*Where did you hear of a hike that starts at a dump? In “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Albuquerque,” of course!