Saturday, December 31, 2016

El Paso: A Celebration of the Desert


September 2016


On a warm Saturday, I attended the Chihuahua Desert Festival at the Tom Mays Unit in Franklin Mountains State Park.

I bought some cool earrings from a group of high school students who belonged to a club related to desert conservation. These earrings feature Kenya's Tusker beer, with its signature yellow, black, and white palette.

Tusker Beer earrings.


They replace earrings I bought a bajillion years ago in Seattle, also made from Tusker beercaps. Those earrings eventually fell apart over the years.

Prince had died recently, and this young musician gave a tribute performance at the festival, choosing Purple Rain:




Made me think about a whomp-ass, zydeco interpretation of Purple Rain by Corey Ledet at Vermilionville one Sunday afternoon. Unforgettable.


Later, I joined a small group to walk to an old copper mine near the Tom May Unit. We went into the mountain.

Between you and me, the mine itself was rather anti-climactic, but the visuals of climbing in and out of the mine were all very birth-womb-mother-Earthy, which was cool.


El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.

El Paso - Franklin Mountains State Park, Tom Mays Unit Copper Mine. September 2016.


Above is a good image of the instability of the hiking surface in the Franklin Mountains. As I learned here, even a flat terrain demands some attention.





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