Reserve, NM. I was up to my old tricks on a hike when I became aware of an unusual thirst and satisfaction. By 'old tricks' I mean choosing hiking over mountain biking on unusually cold days, leaving early, walking up canyons with my dog, and avoiding marked trails. Obviously I never take my GPS gadget or study Google Earth before going on an outing: no cheating is allowed!
What was unusual was the badlands topography: one arroyo and ridge, leading to the next. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I had never noticed before how extreme randomness in a landscape creates a desperate thirst for some kind of order or pattern.
Looking at badlands has somewhat the same effect as looking at "Medusans" in an episode in the third season of Star Trek: the Medusans were reputed to have the most sublime thoughts in the galaxy, but their bodies had evolved into a formlessness so ugly that the mere sight of them would drive human beings insane.
For awhile the only "order" was gravity. Even when a dry creek bed has only 1 or 2% slope, it is surprisingly easy to tell upstream from downstream. And of course there was the Southwestern death-star to navigate by. I had decided to take a clockwise loop and try to hit the road I was dispersed-camping on.
I was laughing at myself for this new-found lust for order and patterns out there. But I couldn't think of anything else. Signs of ranching, an abandoned telephone line, litter, anything! At long last a straight barbed-wire fence appeared. Doesn't that sound exciting? But it was, and "beautiful" too. I walked along it, feeling a ridiculous amount of satisfaction. Surprisingly we came out on the road I was camped on, and walked it home, feeling quite smug.
What was unusual was the badlands topography: one arroyo and ridge, leading to the next. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I had never noticed before how extreme randomness in a landscape creates a desperate thirst for some kind of order or pattern.
Looking at badlands has somewhat the same effect as looking at "Medusans" in an episode in the third season of Star Trek: the Medusans were reputed to have the most sublime thoughts in the galaxy, but their bodies had evolved into a formlessness so ugly that the mere sight of them would drive human beings insane.
For awhile the only "order" was gravity. Even when a dry creek bed has only 1 or 2% slope, it is surprisingly easy to tell upstream from downstream. And of course there was the Southwestern death-star to navigate by. I had decided to take a clockwise loop and try to hit the road I was dispersed-camping on.
I was laughing at myself for this new-found lust for order and patterns out there. But I couldn't think of anything else. Signs of ranching, an abandoned telephone line, litter, anything! At long last a straight barbed-wire fence appeared. Doesn't that sound exciting? But it was, and "beautiful" too. I walked along it, feeling a ridiculous amount of satisfaction. Surprisingly we came out on the road I was camped on, and walked it home, feeling quite smug.
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| Not far from the badlands, it turned very nice. |
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