freethoughtandmetaphor

The “blogosphere” is a strange world of unlikely connections.  One blogger who found my website is Russel Ray.  I enjoy his photos of San Diego so much that I’ve added him to my blogroll, the links in the right hand column of this page.  You might like his work as well, especially if you have any connection to San Diego.

I’m not as accomplished a photographer, but I’ve been practicing, so here are a few from a hike I took in the mountains last week.  It has been too dry to produce many wildflowers this spring, but there are other things to see.  I hiked up to Dripping Springs in the Organ Mountains, a three mile round trip to several old ruins.  Halfway up are a stunning pair of alligator juniper trees.

One of the ruins is Nathan Boyd’s sanatorium, built in 1917 for patients with tuberculosis.  That disease brought many “anglos” to New Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

A more substantial ruin is Van Patten’s Mountain Camp, actually a rather nice hotel resort in its prime, built in the 1870’s.  It once had stairs up to a nice entrance.

On the way back down the mountain one can see, though it doesn’t photograph very well, the town of Las Cruces in the Rio Grande River valley.

It had been about six years since I made this hike.  The ruins are not much changed in that time.  Two other hikes at Dripping Springs can take you to a cave which once housed a hermit, before Van Patten’s time, or to a waterfall – when there is water in it.  I left those for another day.