Poppy-peeping OR Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills

Wildflower season is here and at least in southern New Mexico the gold standard is leading the way. Alerted that the Mexican gold poppies are blooming on the lower desert, we made plans to head on Sunday to Rock Hound State Park, which is just below Deming, NM, which in turn is right on I 10, about an hour southeast of us. But we opened the Silver City Sun News on Friday to see images of poppies covering the hillsides around the Lower Box of the Gila. The Lower Box refers to a box canyon that leads down to the Gila River on the upper edge of the lower desert! Convenient – in our hiking class on Wednesday, one of the hikes they told us about was the Lower Box; they even provided a map. So that became our Saturday plan.

Driving down Rt 90 toward Lordsburg, we marveled that there were no signs of poppies in the desert – it looked exactly the same as it always does: shades of green and gray and light brown. Never having gone poppy-hunting before, we didn’t realize that the plants only grow on the hill- and mountain-sides facing the southwest (mostly) and at particular elevations (mostly) and probably in certain soils. We followed our driving instructions, which included turning off paved road and washboarding, sliding and jostling about 20 miles over a road that varied between dirt, sand and rock. We began to see faint glows on the sides of the hills and the slightly-more-distant mountains. After passing the windmill as advertised, and the corral as advertised, populated with a number of penned and not-penned very large cows – with horns – not as advertised, and going through a ‘close the gate please’ barbed wire fence gate, we finally reached the wash that presages the canyon. We parked, carefully avoiding the sandy low point of the wash. Did I mention that we were driving my town-mouse Volvo – what else! Unloaded the car of 2 2-leggeds and 1 with 4onthefloor, shouldered our packs, making sure we had all the water we could carry plus two bottles left in the car, picked up walking sticks, camera, binocs, leash just in case, and headed down the wash. We walked for some time before we came to the dam that was built some long years past, and started into the real box of the canyon. Problem was, we were getting no closer to the poppies we had seen on the hillsides. Walking the box would be fascinating, but that wasn’t our purpose for this trip. So we climbed up, or rather scrabbled and clutched our way up to the ridge, where we could see that the golden hillsides were on the other side of the box canyon, and very possibly the other side of the Gila River which flows by the end of the canyon, though it might be more accurate to say that the canyon falls into the river. We had gotten a late start on the day, having a morning to spend in town; it was by now about 3 pm. We were on our last bottle and a half of water, plus a granola bar and a juicy-juice. Somehow, it did not make sense to pursue the objective on this trip – the objective being to put ourselves into the middle of the field of gold – which could have been another hour away, if even attainable. Turning back was not a universally-held notion. However, 2 humans and the dog finally reached agreement, scrambled back down the hillside into the canyon and started back up the wash.

On Sunday, still game for poppy-hunting, we packed more water jars, more fruit, and made sandwiches and headed south again, this time on Rt 180 to Deming. Again, marveling at the lack of anything of color or note on the way down. Just dustdevils. Good thing they were only little devils; on Friday, serious dust storms had caused the closure of Rt 180 over most of our route. But this day was calmer, bluer, warmer. Rock Hound State Park is on the southwest side of the Little Florida Mountains, not to be confused with the Florida Mountains just to the east, and much taller. In fact, the Florida Mountains were covered with snow above a certain elevation, while the Little Floridas were covered with poppies; wonderful contrast. Certain areas of the mountain-sides just glowed in the mid-day sun. Interesting how the flowers grow more densely in some areas, and less so in others. The growth in the state park was adequate for the objective—to surround ourselves with gold. With a visitors center, a bathroom, picnic tables and well-maintained trails, we couldn’t have found a setting more different from the previous day’s challenges of dirt roads, potty-in-the-sand and a way marked only by the banks of an ephemeral stream bed.

We climbed the trails, Nick going further up than Nutmeg and me. I took lots of shots, knowing that most would not survive the editing. It’s very difficult to get good images at the height of the day’s sun; it’s much too bright; the light is much too harsh. But when you’re there and that’s when you’ll be there, and not earlier or later in the day, you take what you see. Nutmeg must really have been tired – she whined each time we stopped for more than a minute or so. Or else she flopped down. And then I had to encourage her up and moving again. After “rolling in gold” for a couple of hours, we decided to head for home.

Today, we’re tired. Little old 4onthefloor really didn’t want to go all the way around the block this morning. After her necessaries, she tried to convince me to turn back and take the short walk home. Nick was likewise moving slowly. I am suffering from walking-stick shoulder, caused by regularly poking the walking stick into the earth to keep this 2-legged vertical. But happy. This is why we moved here!

Here is the link to my set of images from the weekend on flikr. The images are about half from the Lower Box and half from Rock Hound. Also in the process, I discovered a website that provides up-to-the date information on where the wildflowers are for several states. I got a little…envious, I’ll admit it…when I saw the images posted on the website for California and Arizona. I don’t think we have that many varieties; certainly there aren’t that many blooming now. But we may be able to make a weekend trip in a couple of weeks to nearby Arizona. And who knows, we may be surprised—a whole world of unsuspected wildflowers may spring up here in the area. And if not, we have the blossoms of cherry, weeping cherry and other ornamentals to oh and ah over as we drive around town every day.

Suddenly, Spring....Maybe

Suddenly, last Friday, Spring! Instead of cold, damp, cloudy and snowing, it turned brilliant. Not diamond-hard cold brilliant as in a dry winter morning. But soft, blue and fragrant brilliant. The songbirds unwrapped their winter mufflers from their throats, leaped to the tops of the trees and telephone wires and unfurled their spring songs. The mountains held onto patches of snow in their north-facing crannies, but the rest of the world faced a warm and warming sun.


It’s true that we have had an unusually cold, wet and snowy winter; very unlike last winter (our first here) that was dry, mild and sunny. Led us to think all winters were like that, and that’s where Silver City got it’s moniker: “Four Gentle Seasons.” Not all. If you talk to those who’ve been here ‘only’ 8 or 10 years, they say this winter was unusual, atypical, even unheard of. If you talk to natives or virtual-natives, they’ll tell you that they remember winters like this…but not many. Just so, native Washingtonians – the few of us that there are – would tell you that this winter in DC was not a once-in-a-100-year winter, although certainly not typical any longer.

I read last week that the snow pack is the deepest up at elevation (9K and higher) that it has been in many years of long-standing drought. The snow-melt down the Gila side of the local ranges is expected to be 2 ½ times normal runoff; the snow-melt down the Mimbres up to 4 ½ times. A lot of water, much needed here and in the desert, on the surface and to recharge the aquifers. And the desert bloom is expected to be spectacular. We’re planning to plan some trips out and around to go desert-bloom-peeping!

And Maybe the snow isn’t quite done with us yet. Seems like every Monday for weeks, I’ve gotten up to snow. I resisted complaining for a long time: after all, I could have been in DC this winter. But it finally got to me. I even started giving weather reports on Facebook in a sorta whiny kinda voice! If all the snow that fell on Mondays for the last several weeks stuck, we would have been in direct competition with DC for snow-on-the-ground accumulation. At least here, the ground never really freezes, and the snow accumulates a little then melts. We had at most 3 or 4 inches on the ground at any one time, that would then be gone the next day – except in the north-facing crannies. After a glorious weekend, I woke up again this Monday…to snow falling! Those poor songbirds, back into their winter mufflers for another day.

On Sunday a week ago, Silver City put on our first annual (we hope) International Women’s Day Parade and Celebration. It started because 3 women had coffee together (or whatever) and started some back-of-the-napkin thinking. As an aside, I contend that most of the most ingenious inventions, the most creative solutions, and the germination of the most imaginative art started on the back of a napkin: linen, cotton, hi-class paper or Papa John’s, napkins are the stage and the floor for creative sketching. Anyway, the three began imagining what a parade to celebrate Int’l Women’s Day could be like, here. What we ended up with was a colorful parade of floats and puppets, street drummers and dancers, and women in costumes representing their wildest dreams (at least those that could be expressed in a family parade). One of the highlights of the parade was the large characterization of the fertility Venus of Willendorf, the 4-inch original of which was dated 24,000BCe. Women marched carrying banners and girls marched carrying hand-painted cardboard signs acknowledging the women they admired, everyone from grandmothers and sisters to the Virgin of Guadeloupe and an Indian Bodhisattva. Men marched wearing t-shirts with the acknowledgement, “Awaiting Instructions.” In addition to the pictures included here, check out my Flikr album of the parade!


This was one of the days when Mother Nature (She’s probably an international woman. That’s probably why she cooperated at the last minute) couldn’t quite decide which season she was; the morning started with something white, changed to rain, rained on and off until 1:25. The parade was planned to start at 2 pm. At 1:50 the skies turned blue with gentle cumulus and long mares’ tails clouds. The parade was over by 2:40 and it was raining again at 3:05.

In the way unique to a small town, that single weekend (from Friday March 5 through Sunday March 7) found our entire weekend’s schedule featured on the front pages of the Silver City Sun News: on Friday, a close friend was featured front-page above the fold in a photograph showing her painting, as part of the story on First Fridays; on which for the next several months, several galleries will be open late, with hors d’oeuvres featuring either artists’ new works or new artists’ works. Our friend, Sue, owns Yello on Yankee gallery and she was featuring a new series. Below the fold on the same front page was the group for which we held tickets later the same evening, the Boulder Acoustic Society. And of course, Silver’s own Venus of Willendorf was on the front page on Monday. Try to find your entire weekend covered by the Washington Post, including images of your friends and neighbors on the front page -- that is to say, assuming the story isn’t a tragic one or doesn’t involve 36 inches of snow!

So Maybe it is really Spring. Maybe this last Monday was the last time I’ll start my week watching white stuff drift by my window. And Maybe we’re solidly into the next Silver City season – the Windy season! ss