First Aid Practice

March 22, 2021

Hello everyone,

It's been kind of a strange week for us, even pushing the weekly email back by a day. Erin got really sick from food poisoning on Wednesday night. She was cleaning out the refrigerator and making some meals out of left-overs...she ended up with a massive stomach ache(I had a minor one) and then overnight she couldn't keep anything down and pretty much slept in the bathroom. That laid her low for a few days and bled into the weekend. Then, not to be outdone, Willow headbutted me late Saturday night like a charging Rocky Mountain sheep and split my lip and gave me a swollen, bloody eye. She thought we were playing, but lunged at me way too forcefully, just about knocking me senseless. At first, I thought she had bitten me and gave her ass a good crack, but then realized that she was just playing. In fact, she looked miserable for the rest of the night and clearly was wondering what she had done. In any event, it swelled up and is rather bloody, but thus far no black eye...I look pretty shifty, though, I must say. Cheyenne pulled the same stunt on Kim about a month ago and then on Erin a week later, so we're all learning to take our lumps from these rambunctious pups. In fact, Erin and I have been treating this all as good first aid practice for living out where we do. We don't have insurance and, even if we did, it's a half-hour to Las Vegas and 45 minutes to Santa Fe, so were something to happen we're not very close to any kind of help. We've been here exactly 90 days now and in that time have had to deal with: multiple cholla and cactus needle extractions; Ela and Willow trying to eat each other multiple times; Willow running through a barbed wire fence; elevation sickness; all kinds of aches and pains; and then this week's latest and greatest...we're getting really good at diagnosing and treating all the random things that keep flaring up! And, we've developed quite a war chest of treatments along the way...a little baking soda, some vinegar, citrus, alcohol...you get the idea.

Spring is definitely in the air out here. I'm seeing more and more birds and bird activity. Ducks have been gathering on the pond. We're starting to see flying bugs on warm afternoons and escorted a huge, two-inch beetle out of the house just on Saturday. We're hearing coyotes yipping and singing in the morning at dawn, which is a new occurrence, and seeing them moving around a little more, in general. And, just to make sure that everyone stays on their toes, we still have the random(but not completely irregular) dog run-through on the property. Interestingly, from an anthropologist's viewpoint, this seems to always be a weekend thing and never happens during the week. The weather is still all over the place, but is hitting the 60Fs with relative ease lately and a lot of nights have started to regularly be above freezing. That being said, we woke up to snow this morning and by noon had a few inches on the ground. The sun is so warm, though, that none of it was left by the time I fed the horses this afternoon. And, just to make sure that we don't start living in flip flops, we're getting 6-10" of snow Tuesday night into Wednesday and are looking at highs around freezing and night-time temperatures dipping down into the teens...then it's going to be 70F again this weekend!

A few corrections from the last few emails: the government website for wildfires is: fire.airnow.gov - I had mistakenly tacked a 'www' onto it; when I was mentioning PO Boxes in San Jose, I said that there were 180 boxes or so there...there are only 151; and I pinpointed the ford in the Pecos River as being right at San Jose, but it seems to have been further downstream at San Miguel. That being said, the river runs through a fertile little flat between the two, and considering later trails cut out San Miguel and went directly to San Jose, I think there might have been a ford there, too(it is no river by East Coast standards). From the reading that I've been doing, San Miguel seems to have been laid out first and became the border crossing between the US and Mexico in the Southwest once Mexico had gained its independence in 1821. There was a customs house right in between the church in San Miguel and the Pecos River and once you crossed the river you had to have your wagons inspected and a tax imposed that would later have to be paid once you reached the end of the Santa Fe Trail in Santa Fe. Traders soon got wise to this and started stopping east of San Miguel to streamline their loads into as few units/wagons as possible, thus avoiding some of the taxes...these were usually assessed by the wagonload. The Mexican authorities grew wise to this, as well, and we're soon patrolling as far as up to 25 miles away(where the town of Las Vegas would later be laid out) to head this off. We drove down to check out San Miguel the other day and found not much other than the church left. I was mistaken, it was four miles downstream of San Jose but on the same side of the river, not on the opposite side as I had originally said. Ribera was later laid out on the opposite shore just a tiny little bit above San Miguel. It's hard not to feel the immensity of this ancient trade route that we have found ourselves on. Obviously, the Santa Fe Trail running through here was huge, and then the subsequent railroads and highways, but they wouldn't have used this route unless it had already been used for millennia. Clearly, by studying the lay of the land, you can see that this is where the High Plains roll into the southern tip of the Rockies and the Pecos River Valley is the conduit that connected the ancient, settled, agrarian societies of the Rio Grande Valley with the roaming, unsettled, hunter-gatherer societies of the Plains. Some days it's hard to get anything done with Rowe Mesa and the sights of this valley staring you in the face!

Now, finally, for some pictures. First up is the big beetle that we saw in our house over the weekend...you can clearly see him looking up at me here once I had him outside on the driveway. Next, is a black & white view to the north from the northern section of the property...look close and you can see Rui sneaking by on the right. The next is the highway sign at the bottom of the ramp at the interstate exit that we get off and on to go everywhere and anywhere...exit 323 on I-25! We've solved our pallet issue with transporting the hay by just using a 50G Rubbermaid tub...here Annie, Negrita & Rosie are digging in. Then, an up-close black & white detail of Nanette's mane...she's the big, pretty gray. This is followed by another black & white detail of all the tracks in the sand right in front of the big feeder...I always sit on a big boulder that's next to it and the light hit this scene just right the one morning and there you have it! Next is my walking stick, my Iroquois War Club that I've mentioned before. It's nice and light, but harder than Hell, so a great thing to have with you on dog walks around here...you never know what you're going to run in to, literally. Then, a bunch of landscapes: the pasture first thing in the morning after a skiff of snow last week; another beautiful sunset walking back home from the barn; another great sunset out walking with the dogs in the big field; the far end of the pasture along the frontage road with the peculiar, finger-like low clouds that we get here; a shot of the big pines that we have in our northern section; the big standing stone along the driveway at sunset; an old, broken-down cattle-loading ramp from the original ranch. Lastly, our two local churches. Last week I had a close-up of the church in San Jose, but this picture shows how closely Rowe Mesa looms over the town. The second one is of the pretty, little church in San Miguel...the Santa Fe Trail ran along the northern(right) side of this church. These are our two new favorite towns and were dying to find some wonderful, crumbled, historic ruin to rescue and rehabilitate! Hello, Erin's Little Cocina!

Take care.