Ojito Wilderness Area

I have been terrible about blogposts since I have discovered the ease of Facebook. Since moving to New Mexico we have been busy actually doing things and nothing is fucked up so things aren't as humorous to write about! So what have we been doing? Lots of things. The main things are hiking, exploring the state, raising chickens, doing lapidary work (grinding stones) and I have started learning to work in silver.

This post is about one of our little hikes. The Ojito Wilderness Area is one of the many many hiking/biking areas an hour or so away. It is out near San Ysidro in the Cabezon area. We have been out that way many times and even though areas are only mere miles from each other they can be hugely different landscapes. We had visited this area before but it was in the snow and we wanted to see it without snow. One of the features is the hoodoos which are only in a small area and no where else out this way. Very interesting. I have become enamored with New Mexico skies, churches, ruins and twisted trees. Here are some of the twisted trees we encountered.

 

 




               
Besides the trees themselves (which are ancient) I love shadows of things. With the bright light here I was thinking of a series of "anti" things - just the shadows...not the actual things themselves. A non-portfolio of sorts.

Beside the twisted trees there are hoodoos which are formations of dissimilar materials that erode differently and make it look like rocks are balancing on other rocks etc etc. Very cool stuff. Bisti Wilderness is a major hoodoo area we have not visited yet so we found these which are closer to home.

   

                 

We finished up with the hoodoos and drove over to a dinosaur trail. A dinosaur skeleton was found and removed from the end of the trail a few years ago I believe. We didn't see any evidence of the dig but did find some petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are ALL over the state by the thousands. We encounter them everywhere!

  

             

Cieneguilla Recreation Area

Jeff and I wanted to get out of the house and do a little hike. It was cold on our mesa and we figured it could be windy everywhere or maybe we could find a small protected pocket somewhere. Jeff had a hike in mind but we had to find it first. We drove up toward Santa Fe (about 45 minutes north) and were following directions in his book but still couldn't find a real trail or parking pullout so we opted to do something else. This something else turned out to be a very nice surprise! Not only was the weather really really nice but the spot was spectacular! We ended up at the Cieneguilla Recreation Area on a trail you might as well call THE petroglyph trail. Albuquerque has amazing petroglyphs at 3 locations that are considered one park. There are thousands at those sites and just like here you can walk right up to them. This spot though has really spectacular ones and lots of them.

We started up the trail to the top of the bluff. It was a typical trail for here. We got to the top not having seen any obvious petroglyphs. We went atop the mesa and peered over the edge at a farm and saw a few pecked into the rocks so we opted to climb down to take a look. There were petroglyphs all over in the densest concentrations we have seen. They don't appear to be as worn as the Albuquerque ones. Just like Albuquerque though these are pecked into basalt. The view from on top of the bluff was of a couple mountain ranges and Santa Fe way in the distance. Snow capped the peaks and it was really pretty in the bright sun.
        

           

  

 


 At some point I will have to research the meaning of the things. For now though it is enough to have seen them.

Petroglyphs at Piedras Marcadas Canyon, Albuquerque NM

Every week I try to go out photographing with a photographer friend. Sometimes I pick the spot and sometimes he does and often times he picks places I probably wouldn't go on my own. This trip was one of those times...we went to the zoo and then stopped on the way home at the Piedras Marcadas Canyon in Albuquerque. A couple other folks joined us for the zoo part of the day and it was very interesting to see what everyone came up with. I only took a couple animal photos there, and the rest were part of my working project...Shadows- Photographs of Nothing. Enough of that. Petroglyphs are always interesting to see and think about but really don't make great photos. What am I going to do with them? That aside, we walked on the sandy trail through acres of wildflowers. There always seem to be wildflowers around. Yes, we did get distracted and spent a bunch of time in the fields a little off trail while we headed to the volcanic cliffs. Petroglyph National Monument has on of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in North America. There are approximately 25,000 images in the West Mesa escarpment. The park itself is actually in three different locations. It is a 17 mile long cliff of basalt formed by eruptions around 200,000 years ago. Boca Negra Canyon is a super short walk with signs pointing to specific petroglyphs. Only 5% of the petroglyphs are at that site but it is the most visited because there are facilities and it is a short walk. You have to drive through neighborhoods to get to it and houses are literally only an acre or so away.



Another of the sites is the Rinconada Canyon which has been closed due to washed out trails. I haven't been there yet. We rambled over to the Piedras Marcadas Canyon, drove past houses in a neighborhood, parked in the neighborhood and walked out on the sandy trail to two of three main clumps or outcroppings. It was smack in the middle of the day so the light was pretty harsh and most of the datura flowers near the rocks were closed but we did scope it out for a different morning trip. Since we were there though we hiked and climbed around and took a few shots. It amazes me that you can just go right up to these historic bits of art. It amazes me that a neighborhood is right there - what a cool thing to be able to wander in every day or night. It is also great that there wasn't any trash or vandalism. Very nice to have this wonderful stuff 40 minutes away. I plan to go back at dusk or dawn and definitely in the winter when there is a dusting or snow or frost!
 

Cueva Lucero

Cueva Lucero is a cave in the Juana Diaz area that is close to the road, well visited, and offers Taino petroglyphs and pictographs as well as a huge amount of graffiti. When we first entered it didn't seem like it would be that interesting for a few reasons: it was an easy saunter to get there, the cave was very small and didn't involve crawling or much mud, there was a lot of graffiti mixed in and over the interesting stuff. It is kind of like going to the Guanica Dry Forest - if you don't know anything about the plants there and their uniqueness it is a scrubby place that doesn't seem special at all! Luckily we had some avid caver friends with us who know what is what and who have some historical information to help us comprehend what we are looking at. This trip was done to try to document through photos, drawings and mapping the locations and designs of important petroglyphs and pictographs. The other people used rulers to show scale, or gave locations inside the cave as to where they were located and I just set out to record the images themselves.

When you slip through a hole into the cave you are really in a giant room where the top has fallen in. The area is bathed in light and the rock walls that get light have a green tinge to them. This opening above is huge and there are also little tube type "windows" up above. There are two main passages that lead to areas that have a lot of carvings in them. This petroglyph is inside the initial entry. It is believed the Taino slaves would escape to this cave to hang out I guess. They couldn't read or write so many of the designs are very simple. (I am trying to piece together information I heard, that I've read about, and if any one has good information for me I'd like to investigate these things further!)


There are mainly pictographs and some are very faint which is why we are documenting them. This one is obviously a bird, probably a heron, but some of the other designs are kind of odd looking and don't look like anything to me.

This could be a pelican.

These carvings are designs found elsewhere in the cave as well. Some designs are repeated in multiple places. I don't know if this is the sun god I've read about but the other design maybe is a butterfly?

The designs are all very simple. It is disappointing that there is so much graffiti covering things, but the graffiti also has a story to tell (that is another post).

These are probably turtles.

A centipede maybe?

Possibly a coqui? I guess it is natural to try to figure out what things "are." I don't know why I feel like I need to know but I do. Maybe there are clues as to what things were living here and what was important to the people. I would love to come here with an anthropologist!

These figures were in the main fallen-in-area. I have many more photos of different designs and a lot of historical graffiti that is interesting but you can't fit many images on a blog post so they'll have to wait! It was a small but interesting cave that when you start really seeing what is there becomes a very interesting cave. Every cave has a personality and this one is the first that seemed full of people!