Author: womanseekselevation

Yesterday morning, we put our 16-year-old cat to sleep.

After lots of crying, my husband wanted to take a walk, so we did, wandering new and old paths in our neighborhood and sitting in the park for a long time.

I don’t know exactly what it is about a hike or a walk that’s most healing: the physical motion, the time to think, the reminder that there’s a whole world going on around you.

But I’ve found solace in hiking before, and so have the two of us together, and certainly plenty of famous people have too.

It was tempting to sit in the house and stare at the walls today. But it was empty in here, too. We knew being outside again would be good for us.

We ended up right back where we were last weekend, in the bosque, this time on the west side of the Rio Grande.

When we got out of our car midmorning, the parking lot was mobbed, and it was loud. But after we passed under the Montano Bridge and began walking north, we saw only a few people.

The narrow path flirted with the river’s shore, gaps in reeds leading to a grassy spot on the bank, or to a sandbar.

The leaves of the sweet-smelling, invasive Russian olives glinted in the sun.

Mountain views opened up as we passed through meadows.

We saw a dog chasing a coyote. (This will probably betray the gaps in my animal behavior knowledge, but I thought that would work the other way around.)

A few minutes later, we watched a coyote (maybe the same one?) run, then swim across the shallow Rio. Two orange-and-black butterflies danced across our path.

We saw two egrets wing across the water and above the trees. They’re the only water birds I can remember actually seeing on the water in New Mexico.

We watched a bluebird, a bright flash amid the green cottonwood leaves.

After about a mile, a side channel of the river blocked our progress along the trail on the bank, at least momentarily. We headed back on a shadier path through the cottonwoods.

Our cat loved being outside. As sick as he was, he insisted on stumbling outside Thursday night and again Friday morning before we took him to the vet for the last time.

When he was young, he was a fierce predator who once killed two hummingbirds in one day and severed more than one lizard’s tail.

At the end, he spent much of his outdoor time sitting in the grass, watching his fellow creatures instead of trying to devour them.

Always, he loved the world around him.

Our walk this morning reminded us how much there is to love.

Hike length: 2.4 miles

Difficulty: easy

Trail traffic: light north of Montano Bridge, heavy elsewhere

Wildlife spotted/heard: lizards, egrets, Western bluebird, coyote, butterflies, dragonflies, bees (some REALLY HUGE bees), nuthatches, sparrows, Cooper’s hawk

 

It’s been a rough year already, Albuquerque, in a lot of ways. Like many places, the issues we face here are deep, and they can feel insurmountable.

This week I got the chance to see my city through fresh eyes, and to remember why I fell in love with it and why I stay.

My sister visited from New Orleans this week. She wanted to experience Albuquerque the way my husband and I do. That meant hikes.

That meant getting up as early as we could to visit Elena Gallegos Open Space in the Sandia foothills before the sun pouring down on it grew too hot to enjoy.

That meant watching a frog bask in the tiny wetland on Cottonwood Springs Trail, interrupting a lizard doing his daily push-ups on a stump, crossing bone-dry arroyos and talking about what it looks like when they flood.

That meant getting up as early as we could again the next day to visit the bosque. It meant watching blue dragonflies dart by. It meant stopping in our tracks to watch three robust-looking coyotes lope toward the jetty jacks, and talking with people on horseback who’d been close enough to see a fourth. It meant walking out onto a drying riverbed to see the Rio Grande. It meant stopping by the visitor center to see 17 turtles chilling in a wetland.

After we took my sister to the airport this morning, my husband and I squeezed in a North Valley ditch walk before the afternoon heat settled in.

I stalked ducks with my camera; every time I got close to them, they flapped out of the ditch to put some distance between us, showering me with water. I texted my sister a picture of the ducks.

We’ve made our home in a hard place. All the local landscape and food and art and architecture and culture and history we soaked up this week doesn’t change that.

It reconnected me to why we do it.

Hike 1: Elena Gallegos loop

Distance: 1.2 miles

Wildlife spotted: lizards, frog, bluejays, butterflies

Trail traffic: moderate

Difficulty: easy

 

Hike 2: Bosque loop (Bosque Loop Trail + River Loop Trail)

Distance: 2.3 miles

Wildlife spotted: coyotes, lizards, dragonflies, butterflies, turtles, hummingbirds, geese

Trail traffic: popular

Difficulty: easy

 

Hike 3: North Valley ditch loop

Distance: 2.2 miles

Wildlife seen or heard: donkeys, peacocks, ducks, lizards, butterflies, grackle, doves, horses

Trail traffic: light

Difficulty: easy

When we pulled into the parking lot of today’s hike, our first sight was a Forest Service hotshot firefighting crew.

Thankfully, they were just patrolling. This time.

The last fire in David Canyon was three weeks ago. We walked through embers so fresh we could still smell them, and blackened tree limbs that glowed silver in the sun.

One canyon wall resembled an eyebrow, fire-stripped trees like sticks from an older blaze.

Yet we saw and heard more birds there than almost anywhere we’ve ever hiked. Every time we stopped to rest under a tree, we heard only two things: the wind and birds chattering to each other and us.

David Canyon sits on the edge of a residential area in the Manzanita Mountains. A couple of lucky souls live in houses perched atop the high canyon walls. As you wind your way down through the forest, killer views of the Guadalupe and Mosca peaks in the Manzanos appear. Those mountains are just 12 miles away, according to our guidebook.

The steep descent put us exactly at eye level with a pair of nuthatches as they looped around a tree trunk, chattering.

We stopped to rest when we reached the canyon floor, a meadow running both north and south.

Then a climb up through thick forest eerily spotted with burn scars. Rocky ledges crossed the trail. Two large lizards with distinctive gray stripes darted along the rock.

The climb took us to a forest road winding along the ridge. We could see the top of the opposite canyon wall. As the road grew steep and rocky, we gained an unobstructed view of the Manzanos behind us, and the Sandia foothills peeked into view in front.

The final section of this hike took us down into David Canyon again, following two rugged forest roads. Ponderosa pines towered overhead, late-afternoon light slanting through them, bird cacophony cascading down.

If you look at your feet on this hike, it’s pretty monochromatic. Dry grass lines the path; in some spots, the pine needles we sat on to rest were so dried out they were gray.

But if you look up, color saturates your vision: deep green pines wave in the wind, blue sky above, a violet-green swallow flashing overhead.

Hike length: 8 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: minimal

Wildlife spotted and/or heard: lizards, crows, hawk, raven, violet-green swallows, black-capped chickadees, vesper sparrows, nuthatches, hummingbirds, woodpeckers

TIP! One of the best things about this hike is that, with the extensive network of trails and well-marked forest roads in and surrounding David Canyon, you could easily change your mind en route about what you wanted to do here. This excellent route, which I would never have found otherwise, comes from Stephen Ausherman’s “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Albuquerque.”

Trails hiked: Birdhouse Ridge-Tunnel Canyon loop, plus a little bit of West Ridge

Hike length: 6.4 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: moderate

Wildlife spotted: many kinds of butterflies, vulture, crow, lizard

I wasn’t sure where to begin today.

Like all of Albuquerque, I was grieving the loss of a beloved woman, a mother, wife, businesswoman and community service leader, in an unspeakable accident. With my colleagues, I’d written an obituary and created a tribute to her this week.

My spirits low, I dawdled getting to the trail. But when I got there, I could see that what this place had was good for me.

A fragrant green tangle of pinon and juniper. Blue sky and clouds sliding by. A gradual but steep climb to a rock shelf with a sweeping view of the deeply forested East Mountains and faraway Guadalupe and Mosca peaks.

This place is the Milne/Gutierrez Canyon Open Space, accessed behind the Cedar Crest post office. It’s close enough to Highway 14 that you can hear some level of highway traffic throughout most of the space. But the higher you climb, the more that’s overtaken by bird song, the wind and the squeaking of branches. The trail network is well-marked and lightly traveled, especially on the upper trails. We found no map of the full trail network online or at the information board, but it was easy to choose your own adventure.

A little brewery sits right next to the open space entrance. And a barbecue joint is close enough that the smell of smoked meat tantalized us as the sun fell and we meandered along an arroyo. You could stop at either or both to cap off an afternoon spent wandering high above the valley.

Or you could just head back to reality, feet aching, fortified with sunlight and gratitude.

Hike length: 6.8 miles

Trail traffic: light

Difficulty: moderate

Wildlife spotted: jays, caterpillar, beetles, rabbit, hawk, lizard

 

Getting down that is going to suck.

I’d just scrambled up one level on the side of a cliff with the assistance of my husband and some rocks. I’d scrambled up worse, but never with such a steep dropoff on one side. I knew I could get back down it, but I also knew doing so would trigger my fear of heights.

Once I was up, looking down wasn’t easy, but it was productive.

I was staring down at 90-foot-tall hoodoos sprinkled with ponderosa pines. We’d traveled through a 1,000-foot-long slot canyon before we began the climb.

My legs were rubbery, but as the trail switchbacked further up, the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo Mountains came into view behind the hoodoo field.

And at the top, I could see into the Jemez Mountains, the Dome Wilderness, Tetilla Peak and back to the Sandias, too.

I was standing at the highest point of Tent Rocks National Monument (Kasha-Katuwe in the Keresan language, and a place of great significance to the people of Cochiti Pueblo). We have a six-million-year-old volcanic eruption in the Jemez to thank for the existence of the hoodoos, formed of soft volcanic tuff that’s eroded over millennia.

On a clear and brilliant blue day, Tent Rocks also provided a spectacle we rarely see while hiking in New Mexico: crowds. It’s one of the most-photographed destinations in the state, and over 130,000 people visit every year. On summer days, you might have to wait up to 90 minutes until a parking space opens up. We had no wait to get in, but at one point, we waited as a group of seven people  squeezed through a particularly tight spot in the slot canyon one at a time.

Given how popular this hike is with tourists, I was surprised by how challenging it is in spots. The slot canyon and the path through the hoodoos rise gradually, but the trail up the cliff rises 200 feet in 0.3 mile.

Oh yeah, scrambling down that cliff. I tried to back down; I thought it would be physically easier, but I could not make myself do it. We regrouped and let some less acrophobic people by. When I saw one go down facing forward, I did the same, finding enough footholds and handholds to land solidly.

From there, a passage back down and through the slot canyon, all cool rock, light, shadow and sky.

Hike length: 4 miles (including the Cave Loop)

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: busy

Wildlife spotted: bluejay, white-throated swift, crow, bald eagle?!? (sitting on a power line above the Rio Grande just outside the monument boundary)

Thanks: I’m grateful to the people of Cochiti Pueblo for allowing the public to use its land to access this amazing place.

Want more hoodoos? I got more hoodoos.

*Note: The Veterans’ Memorial Overlook loop, which we’d also hoped to hike today, is closed until Tent Rocks can hire another ranger to patrol it. There were only two working the busy park today.