La Liendre

In New Mexico, if it’s ever had a post office, it’s in the state gazette forever. Thus La Liendre – named for the sting of the louse – is on the map. Forget about finding it, though. It’s off the grid. The San Miguel County road that leads there is an unmarked, 3,000 foot drop off a gravel highway, little more than a cow track, rutted with potholes, studded with boulders. Not a ride for the faint of heart.

The town was settled in the 1830s by Hispano ranchers, Spanish colonialists traveling north from Mexico before the Mexican-American War. By 1900 or so, the ranchers were all gone. Their church, their school, their houses and stores are all in ruins. There is a tiny cemetery with wooden crosses whose names are indecipherable.

The original human settlers to these parts, though, were Anaasází, a Pueblo culture so ancient that anthropologists remain mystified by it. The surrounding countryside is riddled with sacred caves called puyes, incised with petroglyphs of antelopes, bighorn sheep, and deer.

Jeanna has been taking me to La Liendre for decades. We hike along the Gallinas River, searching for arrowheads and Paleolithic scraping and grinding tools. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where 10 hours can vanish in ten seconds without the intermediary of heavy psychedelics.

On Saturday, the guys and I drove up to Vegas and spent a few hours hiking La Liendre. Definitely the high point of what was all in all a great trip for me.

I had a really good time in New Mexico, although I’m much too brain dead to write about it now – got in at 5am yesterday and then had to get up to get RTT on the 8:45am Syracuse-bound Amtrak and dash off to the first Tax-Aide class. Slept for 12 hours but still not thinking too clearly.