Avian Neighbors...

All over our farmed desert, scattered green plants are pushing up without the benefit of hardly any rain this winter. Cottonwood are leafing out. Yucca are bulging with new clownish heads of still crew-cut leaves. Wild arugula, that opportunist, ranges along ditches and underground irrigation lines. In our back yard, the peach blossoms on the tree in the backyard have blown out and the fruit are already the size of peas. Must be spring in Deming.

Along with spring comes bird-song, and plenty of birds, most of whom have been with us all winter.

White-Winged Doves, pale-bellied, larger and fatter than Mourning Doves, make a big hoo-hooing all day around the house and on the electric wires along the lane. One of them sits on a post supporting the open-weave roof above the rear patio. She has been nesting for a couple of weeks at least, as still as if made of ceramic.

Other doves spoon in the pine trees. 

Gambel’s Quail daily skitter across in front of the car as we pull up the drive of the house at dusk and early morning. Too close, and some go aloft sailing into the mesquite bushes. One or two panic and skitter the other way, reverse direction again, and then dive into the dry gramma grasses. 

One day, we came across one one dashing across Monte Vista Road in that vertically-held position of the species. Suddenly it tripped at the edge of the ditch and fell flat on its beak!

 

Never seen anything like that from a bird.

Crows, of course, and in such multitudinous murders, glean pecans after the harvests out on Columbus Road, the road to Mexico. 

About twice the size of a crow, an occasional Raven makes a noise up in the cottonwood trees beside the house. I had heard the call before, but was unable to place it with any bird in view. 

Then it appeared and its identity was unmistakable -- large, blue-black, and it was voicing the Latvian name for raven: kraukli(s). 

Kr-auk-k-li. An interesting tonal quality to it hard to imitate with this human larynx. Kr-auk-k-li.

Cool.

 

Wrens galore, a few nesting in the lanterns on the front verandah. An occasional house finch with red throat and head. The blackbird with the freakishly long tail we saw feasting on spilled dog kibble in the Wal Mart parking lot: a Boat-Tailed Grackle.

Our friendliest or at least most fearless guy is the Curve-Billed Thrasher. About the only bird that feeds on the seed eggs we've hung in the pine tree outside the kitchen window. Drinks from the water dish. Fixes his red-orange eye on us while we are washing dishes by the window.

We do not have a picture of him, unfortunately, but we do of another avian neighbor...

This bird preys on brown people migrating to find better habitat. It has no brain of its own, but is operated remotely from a station on Hermanas Road, half-way to the border with Mexico. Here it is in its nest.

Mining the Past...

We drove a wide loop through Old Mesilla, Las Cruces, and Hatch ("World's Chile Capital") to arrive eventually and impulsively at Lake Valley, a silver mining town in the 1880s that is now a ghost town on BLM-managed land. It is located on NM 27, 13 miles North from the one-house hamlet of Nutt on NM 26, also known locally as "Hatch Highway."

Boom to bust and now dust...

We turned off on a dusty exit just as the range land ends and the hills begin. From Deming directly the ghost town is a drive of about 35 miles. Eleven structures survive in a dilapidated state from the town's heyday beginning around 1883 and ending around 1895: a few residences, a school house (that later became a saloon and even later a gas station), a chapel, a general store, a tipple, a depot, a wall, and not much more.

The Bridal Chamber...

Close to 3.5 million ounces of silver were taken from the mine that was the reason for the town. Called the "Bridal Chamber," it was an unusually compact resource of about 9 feet wide by 40 feet long, with the highest concentration of silver per ton of ore around. One tongue-in-cheek source in 1884 said the silver could be melted off the walls with a candle.

Poet Walt Whitman was an investor in the mine with 200 shares. The mine owner, Whitaker Wright, continued selling shares long after the mine had stopped producing silver, and along with others who had been duped, Whitman lost his shirt. Wright, when arrested and brought to trial in England, dramatically swallowed cyanide in the courtroom rather than go to prison.

Cool, huh?

Why go to a ghost town? It has to do with the quiet of the place after so much hustle and bustle during its economic boom. To do also, I think, with seeking a past to the present which at times makes no sense. For me personally, it has to do with the sculptural qualities of decay and breakage one finds in ghost towns, and a fascination with anything humans have abandoned and nature has reclaimed.

Riffing on the Yucca...

Contemporaneous readers of the March 1, 1883 issue of "Silver City Enterprise"were presented with this intriguing suggestion:

Who knows but what soap weed will prove one of the principal sources of wealth in New Mexico.

To date, however, no known major commercial enterprise is devoted to exploiting this resource. Nor is it apparent that anyone of that time followed up on this proposal, either. Yet, yucca elata, known also as soapweed, soaptree, and palmilla (little palm), is fairly ubiquitous in New Mexico. Where mesquite does not dominate, it grows in nearly every uncultivated area of the desert. That may be why it is also the state flower.

Yet, Native Americans once upon a time did find it useful economically.

The Mimbres and Apaches used the fiber from the leaves for dental floss and to make rope, baskets, mats, sandals, belts, and other cloth. The Mimbres and Mogollón both chewed the ends of leaves to make paintbrushes for decorating their pottery. The immature seed pods provided an occasional food and the trunk and roots provided soap and shampoo for all native groups. Immediately after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, yucca suds were employed in ritual cleansing -- to wash away the spiritual pollution of over 100 years of missionary conversions. 

In our day, enlightened homeowners allow the yucca to grow as landscaping. Under their care, these grow fuller and fatter than in the wild. Another non-native use was instituted by the local Bohemian (Czech) community of Deming in the 1950s. They used stripped-down yucca flower stalks in smoking klobase, a type of sausage, during their annual fundraiser for a local church. Over 5,000 sausages would be hung inside the smokehouse on these sticks. They did not affect the taste, and could be reused for 15-20 years.

The soaptree exhibits several erratic and eccentric growth patterns. One desert rhapsodizer I've read refers to its growth as "irresponsible" (jokingly I assume). They can grow single trunk, multi-trunk, singly, in clumps, etc. A number of yucca plants in our area have reminded me and Agapi of animals and human figures. Here are pics of our recent finds:

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Llama, where's your mama?

Remember Cousin Itt?

Towering Tall Man.

Sasquatch, Escaping!

Here's one that Agapi espied on the road up to Silver City. It combines a couple of nearly dead branches of a plant to make one unique, maybe irresponsible, individual.

Warrior, with Weaponry.

Here's a yucca you can't bring home to mutha:

Ah, Super Freak... Super Freak...

Okay, it's been shopped. But what makes it freaky is that leaves are growing at the top of the flower stalk. That shouldn't be. I thought it was going to be a one-of-a-kind find, but we recently came across two other plants with the same sporting tendency.

My Close-up... Please.

Well, so much for pareidolia (seeing things in things). Until next time...