Colorado: Longmont: Golden Ponds Nature Area

Wildflowers. Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

I took advantage of another warmish and sunny day in Longmont to check out the Golden Ponds Nature Area.

Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

 
Almost immediately, I was presented with this sobering sign:

Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

Reminds me of a similar sign at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. Where I was camping. Eek. Which led to this internal melodrama.

OK, I wasn't actually perturbed by the sign at Golden Ponds because the park is so open, it was daylight, and there were plenty of critters around that were much more tempting than me, such as geese, small dogs, and young children. Plus it is practically in a suburban subdivision.

Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

Gosh, it was a pretty day. The walkways are flat and wide.

Wildflowers. Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

Wildflowers. Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

Because it was May, pretty wildflowers bloomed. There were baby geese.

Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

There is a mixture of open field and creek-side woods.

Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

There are ponds for fishing.

Wildflowers. Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

The mountains frame the views.

As I write this, it brings quiet peace to revisit some of the park's flowers in this video:

Along a path, I met up with this handsome fellow:

Grasshopper. Golden Ponds Nature Area, Longmont, Colorado. May 2016.

He reminded me of his gentlemanly cousins outside Morgan City, Louisiana, at Brownell Memorial Park.

Louisiana: American Alligator is the New Mountain Lion

Went to Lake Fausse Lake Point State Park today.

One of the first signs I saw:

Lake Fausse Point State Park, Louisiana

Another sign helpfully noted the average size of an American alligator is between six and 12 feet. So it can be as long as a room.

Which reminds me of this sign:

McKittrick Canyon, Texas

.. which is like the sign I saw when I first arrived in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Predators all the same, just different teeth and wrapping.

"One Thing That Scares You Per Day Keeps Apathy at Bay"

Rattlesnake, Rattlesnake Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico

One thing that scares you per day keeps apathy at bay, said one of my thoughtful readers in response to this post.

It's funny about fear. What doesn't scare me, scares you. And vice versa.

For awhile, I did Something Meaningful every year on or about my birthday. It had to be something that pushed me out of my comfort zone.  One year, I considered three choices: 1) go dancing, 2) engage in a gestalt therapy session, or 3) jump out of a plane. All three caused fear, and I chose the one that was the least scary. You guessed it. I jumped out of a plane.

I want to get around to the point that fear, after you complete the act that causes fear, is often funny. My skydiving story is very funny.

I laughed til my sides hurt on reading Bill Bryson's account of a possible bear (or two!) outside his tent, in A Walk In The Woods.

I was gasping for breath laughing at Molly Langmuir's story of her four-day hike in the Tetons, during which she was terrified of mountain lion or bear encounters every moment.  An excerpt:

On a scale of one to 10, how much fun did you have?
I'm actually not sure I had any fun. The trip was challenging, which I always like, and now that I'm through it, something I'm glad I did, but I basically spent the entire time in a state of sheer terror, so there wasn't much room for fun. I guess a one?

What was your main terror?
The bears. From my summer in Jackson I knew people out there take the bear situation very seriously — most years at least one person is attacked, if not in the Tetons, in Yellowstone — and to prepare I read the “Be Bear Aware” chapter of my trail guide about ten times (it is filled with this kind of thing: “a large percentage of hikers mauled by bears were hiking alone”) and dutifully bought bear spray. I still managed to keep my fear in check until I got to the park ranger station to sign up for campsites. The ranger who gave the canister you're supposed to keep all your food in and leave 100 yards away from your tent at night explained that even if you drink an Emercen-C in your Nalgene you should put it in your canister, and that was actually what put me over the edge. Because if bears can smell an Emercen-C in a closed Nalgene, they were clearly a sort of advanced supercreature that could definitely sniff out the crumbs I’d likely drop on myself at some point. Plus, for all I remembered the last time I had used my sleeping bag I had been binging on beef jerky right next to a barbecue smoker. Also I didn’t know how far 100 yards was.

Cheryl Strayed said in her recent book, Wild, the story of her 1990s hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, that she told herself that she did not fear mountain lions, bears, or rattlesnakes. That this was necessary for her to be able to embark on the hike. If she'd allowed herself to consider fear, then she couldn't have gone.

I'm currently trapped between the Strayed and Langmuir approaches --> telling myself there is nothing to fear on one hand, and on the other, continuing to walk with fear, when I go on a New Mexico trail. Where we have mountain lions and bears. I've not broken the fear barrier as I would like. I laugh at myself about my fear, although this doesn't make it less palpable when I'm in the moment, on the trail. 

Sign at Antelope Wells border crossing, New Mexico

Rattlesnake artwork, Chiricahua Desert Museum, Rodeo, NM

A funny thing about my predicament is that I'm not scared of rattlesnakes, but that's just about all anyone talks about here as far as scary things go. Indeed, in two out of three NM/MX border crossings, the first sign you may see is a Watch Out for Rattlesnakes sign.

Rootless Weaponry

Weapons and rootlessness. What?

I do happen to be re-reading Friday, a Robert Heinlein favorite of mine (and for which there will be a Rootless Lit review later), in which defensive and offensive security techniques are prominent features.  

And there's the whole zombie apocalypse to consider. And the end of the world is coming up later this month.

But, really, it's all about mountain lions. 

Decision made: I'm going to buy a knife. It turns out one of my sisters, let's call her Xena, has been carrying a knife for years on her wilderness hikes, for the express purpose of self-defense. And with mountain lions specifically in mind. I have now consulted her and one of her sons (a master hunter) on this matter, and while her son was a little blase about the mountain lion thing, Xena got it immediately, and shared these thoughts: 

1. Once you make the decision to stab an animal in self-defense, then you need to go all the way, which means you need to: 1) stab many times - not just once and then wait to see what happens; and 2) stab and twist, stab and twist.
2. Get a 4.5" or 5" blade.
3. Get a knife with a good, non-slip grip.  
4. Don't carry your knife at your belt. Carry it over your chest so you can grab it with either hand. I always carry a pack when I walk, and it has a chest strap, so I thread the chest strap through the knife sheath's belt loop. 

Xena also had a good idea on light.

Now, I've got this flashlight that I love, but unless the great flashlight is in your gear when you need it, doesn't make any difference how great it is. Now that I'm temporarily rooted, it's easy for me to get sloppy and not move the flashlight among my three bags as I change them. Xena gets around this completely by always having on hand those lightsticks that you break open to create light. They are: 

• Inexpensive
• Don't have an expiration date (on further research, the manufacturers say up to 4 years)
• Are very packable

So that's another thing I'm getting. Some lightsticks to stash in each of my bags and in my car.

And mace or pepper spray. Because there are bears here, too. Yeah. 

I've got shopping to do.
 

Cycling Across America

No, that's not me doing that.

But on my way to Raton, New Mexico yesterday, I saw a guy tooling away on a bicycle on I-25 South, hauling one of those baby carriages behind him.

As I noted here, long journeys have been on my mind lately. Today, I tried to find any online evidence of this person's trek, didn't succeed, but discovered a cottage industry on such journeys:

Bicycle Routes Across the USA, by Shular Scudamore. You can also access his blog and related information via this link.

The Across America North Tour does all the planning and logistical arrangements for you. It ain't cheap.

Bike Across America offers trip reports and guidance for those interesting in giving it a go. The info's a little dated, but still interesting.

New York Times reporter, Bruce Weber, has cycled across America twice: 1993 at age 39 and 2011 at age 57. Good reading. (Google on "On Wheels: America at 10 M.P.H." and then pull up the cache versions of his 1993 entries. Alternatively, if you're actually a card-carrying NYT subscriber, maybe you'll be able to get to the archives via the links in the 2011 articles.)

Trek Travel, like The Across America North Tour above, facilitates the cross-country affairs for you - all you have to do is ride the bike. 2013 cost: $15,999.00. 

The Adventure Cycling Association offers cross-country trip journals here.

Again, cycling across America is not in my plan. Noooo, I'm still fixated on mountain lions on a New Mexico trail. .... Carrying a boxcutter sounded like a good protection strategy til a conversation with one of my sisters today, who told me that another sister carries a very big, very sharp knife when she hikes in the wilderness.

So that's what I'm thinking about.

Cloudcroft, NM: Salado Canyon Trail, and a Whistle Killer

Salado Canyon, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

AKA: New Mexico: Fall Colors, Part 2


Recently, New Mexico's rails-to-trails organization opened a new trail route to Bridal Veil Falls, which is in the Salado Canyon, near Cloudcroft. Truthfully, it's closer to High Rolls, so you can go with that, if you prefer. 

I didn't go there.

But I did take a short walk on the related Salado Canyon trail, to the trestle bridge.

Before that, though, I did a due diligence search for some fall foliage, and I found a little here, at the creek crossing on the road that I have not yet followed to its end.

Salado Canyon, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

I turned around at the creek and went back to one of the trailhead markers. Got out and almost as soon as I set foot on the trail, proceeded to slip and slide on the loose gravel.  What the heck? So I placed my feet a little more carefully, and all was fine. As I walked, I could just feel myself become lighter, airier, freer. Disney bluebirds were about to flutter into my bucolic bubble. Just as I puckered my lips in preparation for whistling a happy tune, I saw a flash of something unnaturally white in my peripheral vision, to the right.

Salado Canyon Trail, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

I walked over to investigate.

Bones. A trail of them. Leading to an empty hide, dried and contracted from days of exposure to the sun. A dark brown pelt. Largish.

Mountain lion? Mountain lion?

Trail of bones, Salado Canyon Trail, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

Carcass that used to cover said bones, Salado Canyon Trail, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

The Disney bluebirds evaporated in a pouf, as did my whistle of a happy tune. My inner wuss had returned.

My rational mind told me not to be stupid. There wasn't even a sign at the trail head saying to watch out for mountain lions. But my wuss side tried to do numbers on my head.

This didn't keep me from continuing my walk to the trestle bridge, however. The train that used to chug its way through here was the Alamogordo and Sacramento Railway, primarily used to transport lumber from the mountains to the basin below. I'd learned from a museum docent a couple of weeks ago that once trucks were pressed into the lumber-transporting service hereabouts, it was discovered they were more economical than trains, especially since they were able to carry longer logs than the trains. So the train business petered out.  

View from trestle bridge. Salado Canyon Trail, near Cloudcroft, New Mexico

There were quite a lot of large droppings on the trail. Probably horses. I didn't take a picture of the droppings.

It was nice to stand on the trestle and listen to the creek below.

Later, once at home, and having successfully rebuffed all non-existent mountain lion attacks, I thought I'd exercise some cognitive therapy and find out how many mountain lion attacks actually occur in New Mexico. I estimated virtually none.

I didn't want to see this headline right off the bat: New Mexico Man Torn Apart by Mountain Lion.

I found a less salacious source of information here: Mountain Lion Attacks from .... . The author has compiled reports of confirmed (and unconfirmed) attacks for North America, formatted per decade. This link happens to take you to the 2001-2010 page.