Feb 6, 2022: A Walk to Crystal Gardens

We take a walk up to Crystal Gardens. Sounds like a great destination, doesn’t it? Clair, Alan, and I wander up the county road from our place, which has been plowed since the last storm dumped a foot. No one lives up here in the winter, and after crossing the Continental Divide 1/4 mile above us, the road eventually dead ends at the Jicarilla Apache Reservation boundary. We pass our barn and notice that a horse has been sheltering inside. (The horse is gone, but there are a number of “apples” left behind, and she had peed on Alan’s truck.) The horse likely belongs to our only neighbor (she lives a mile away in the other direction).

Then we leave our property and keep on walking, crossing a tiny bridge. It’s named after the woman who coerced the county into installing it, “Ily’s Bridge”. It’s pretty sketchy; but apparently has been in place for 20 years.

There’s a million elk tracks here, and I notice something else (can you see it?):

It’s a lot of recent mountain lion prints, one set very large, one smaller, likely a mama and cub, who have traveled up the road like us, following the elk. You can tell it’s a cougar by the size (as big as my palm), the absence of claws, and the round shape. She’s probably showing her little one (likely born last spring and soon to leave home) how to track, in hopes that one of the elk is ill or lagging. There’s plenty of rabbits, turkeys, foxes, and mice, too, for a hungry lion. Clair is VERY interested and carefully smells each of the hundreds of prints, keeping us waiting for 10 minutes.

From there, the road climbs more, and we can see a house on the left. It’s a long-abandoned place, but I think was once quite lovely: 3 stories of log and stucco, with a sunroom, huge cistern, a (collapsed) Gro-Dome, and the remnants of a garden and corrals. Looks like no one’s been there for years. Wonder how long it will stand?

Finally, we get to Crystal Gardens.

Not much to look at maybe, but it raises a lot of questions…who put it here? Were they trying to start a business? See the dolphins? The shed gave us a better idea of why New Mexico so embraces the color turquoise: the building both sticks out in a pleasing way against the winter hues, and also somehow fits into the surrounding landscape. It compliments the sky and makes us smile. What more do we need? Will anyone ever return here?