Christmas in Magdalena, and a visitor

December 21, the third full eclipse of the moon on the night of the winter solstice in 2010 years, so good times for change. We watch the shadow spread from the dusty desert village of Magdalena, New Mexico, tin drums and Apache whoops rattling the silence for a while.

And then next morning we hike up all alone the four of us, into the Magdalena mountains, and at 8,000’ sit beneath a juniper as broad as our backs together, bark in thick wedges like the scales of a dinosaur, old enough for the stillness.

It's Christmas, and we splash out, celebrating in the tiny, bright Western Motel, with an ocean of a bed and a sparkling Christmas tree conjured from the twisted bones of a long-gone cactus, a stash of pinecones, and a glitter-ridden burst of Ponderosa needles as a star. After a night’s fiddle-playing at the one and only village ‘Package Store/ Saloon/ Cocktail Bar’ – take your pick, wear a hat – Christmas dinner is at Bobby’s, the garage owner, ‘blaster’, belly as big as that juniper, dignified Navajo wife Clara, here in the high desert since his great great grandfather shepherded sheep to the spot in 1857. His trailer is tight as a tin bath, even more so with the hunched Christmas tree in the corner, and their two daughters back in town. But we feast on turkey and pumpkin and a pile of delicious Indian fry bread. She grew up early on the reservation 30 miles out of town, but was stuck in the Magdalena boarding school for native americans most of her childhood. Those big old buildings are now all shuttered up, bleached in the sun, like so many on the outskirts, once bustling with miners, long gone. Though there are voices still, maybe spit stains on the floor. And, Christmas morning, we search for carols along the empty unpaved streets, find a deserted Catholic church bright in a hole in the tough desert, and sing our own.

We stumble on a good place at the right time. Bobby and co have heart gleaming in their eyes, and names like Walt. Behind us is Arizona, it's almost as if we've fled the place, on the run. Our one and only really unhappy farm, and it spilt on us. We leave and bunker down in Show Low, a place before the border, spirit carried in a name (won, so they say, over a game of cards) thinking of what to do next, lost, downcast, frustrated, angry, lonely, disheartened, alone. But Magdalena beckons, and as we climb over the White Mountains and into western New Mexico, the wild, sparse land carries echoes of our most far-flung adventures in north-western BC, back in September. Like there we might be free, tred light. As we head, squeezed close in Granny White Dragon (now with 220,000 on the clock, and character to her creaks) we feel as so often the intense preciousness of the wee band we are here under the open, alien, desert sky.

Magdalena


Take this oak leaf, brittle

as today, mid-winter. Hold it

smooth as wind in your hand.

Just place it, in the water, let it

carry us home. Let it


be. To lengthening days and blackened

pots, and what? How it will seem,

the dust of Magdalena in a bowl

of soup, fragments in high heels

clipping a street, hurrying

for places where the wind

don't creak and doors

are shut. What of us,


four musketeers, thrown

from our cocoon. Granny White

Dragon still, alone, in-service. While we

ride our leaf across the pond, tipped

beyond. Let go

the lonely cowboys in their high heels

kicking dust through ragged fences,

beer in their eyes. The wash

will take it all, with the empty

bottle snug

in marron grass. Old


juniper heaves another year

on buckled shoulders, bark cracked

as a raven's song. There are honest

smiles between the shuttered

windows, though the sky needs

neither heart nor water and we can live

in fear. Three threads


we weave together for an anchor,

we need no dynamite to blow

our graves. Our place is of

white sand. So as our gilt

leaf tips and we feel

empty, alone, in fear

we might let go our chain, connection

freedom and belief

sink home.

Even away in Magdalena in the glow of our Christmas tree it takes time to find our feet again. But on Christmas Eve we hike up and over 10,500' to the South Baldy ridge of the Magdalenas. That's why we miss those carols! The path's more feeling an absence than seeing a trail, and the snow's heavy as we get toward the top, 'pulling' the kids on the ends of sticks as whatever creature of the moment it might be (horse, snow leopard, cheetah, etc).

And, of course, it all gets very late and the way back is long. As the night gathers we spot fat cougar prints, really fresh, in the snow. We try to keep our eyes on the branches of the trees that we pass under while keeping on our feet. The tracks head off, then re-appear a little later, and we really wonder who's watching whom. The last 4 miles or so are in the dark, me carrying Kai for speed, Freya still skipping, and we're happy.

So, on Boxing Day we pack our tricks, say goodbye to The Western, and head for those hills again. Three cold nights in Water Canyon, warm days, hikes returning to drag limbs of oily ancient trees out of the forest, thick smoke as the pasta brews. Still something not right, unsettled, seeking integrity and the spark of self-worth. And nervous about Coonridge, and Nancy - we've arranged to meet her in Pie Town on 29 December to get the ride in - how it will be, whether we might find ourselves hemmed in again.

But there are sparks as we move. Becs painting in oil. And, in the night before the fire by torchlight, so far away, the feeling to so many of Captn Simon Fraser's gathering of 18th century fiddle tunes, the taste of sea and wind and loss. Thanks, Ginger!

We pop in on the friendly Magdalena postie on the way out. He'll kindly forward the surrealy massive pile of Christmas parcels for the kids (mostly Granny G) that have all gone where they shouldn't after our quick exit from Moonrise.

Dad

It's all so different when we get back. We're two weeks at Coonridge, puffed full by the warmth and edge and opening of the dairy and the land, and we hitch out with Nancy to GWD, ride the snow, and rendezvous with Dad, would you believe it, at the Western. He arrives 30 minutes after us, walking in the door as if he'd just been baking cake in the kitchen. Rather than 4 days into some mad cross-Atlantic canter of a week, talks to medics in Los Angeles about what we learn from the failed prevailling 'wisdoms' of medecine in the past 50 years, and then us. Celebration! The warmth, release and strength that comes from being rooted. You see clear the way the kids open to it too. And there's time for Dad to make his first acquaintance with the bright lights and drawl of the package store, and get a bottle of wine in as I cook supper on the Trange flame outside.

He stays 3 fleeting night though maybe that made it all the more magic. Like the fairy arriving out of the deep blue sky, a blue like no-where else we've been. Kai sleeps on the sofa-mattress tucked close to him, and Freya's brilliant about that because it's special and she doesn't moan. Early morning and they're both in there sandwiching him for stories, snug as bugs.

Those two days we cram. On the first we stock up on Trange stove pancakes (Becs the maistro), then puff up to the near summit (give or take) of North Baldy in the Magdalena's, through groves of golden oak high as your shin. The kids lead the way much of the way, and may have now learnt that over 10,000' you can't get much story out of Grandfather. Up there he's keeping his breath. It would be the perfect spot for argument. Then, the following morning a local almost grabs ahold of us to tell that if she had one day to spin, the absolute must at this time of year would be the Bosque del Apache (woods of the Apache) wildlife reserve on the banks of the Rio Grande. So that's where we go, and she's spot on. There are tens of thousands of wintering Sandhill Cranes and Arctic Geese sheltering in the wetlands, and we hike through high grasses, past water (so long since we've seen any real body of water) and into a spot where we're all alone and twisting this way and that in the wind to watch the bare sky crossed with the drawn stacatto, or the floating descent of a line of cranes, or the tight gleaming beat of geese, or the silent harrier low to the ground. I've never seen such a breathtaking gathering. Just beyond the green and water and the slow chug of a tractor - you could be in the Camargue - the desert unfolds. And we head for chunky, recommended burgers in a western joint, a hotch-potch band sipping beer and shuffling into a tune.

Dad leaves before dawn next morning. We meant to see him off, but he's through the door like that fairy. He takes with him a pretty ludicrous assortment of odds and ends we won't manage to get home (like a fish-tackle box we were given by a guy sleeping on the docks in Charlston. Call it sentimental - we've caught one, a bunch of tiddly Bullheads, and had to swim out for too many hooks), and the first jar of Coonridge Organic Goat Cheese to hit the UK. When he vanishes into the sky that brought him, he leaves the vapour of home, love and passing time.