March 17, 2013
Day 23: Coal Creek Campground to Apache National Forest
The night passes in stillness, isolation, and near-freezing cold. Bundled in a fleece blanket inside a sleeping bag, exhausted from the climb that brought me there, I'm dead to the world for more than ten hours. It's the best night of rest so far.
A mile and a half into the morning I throw up a middle finger to Arizona as it falls behind me and New Mexico appears ahead. They call this place the Land of Enchantment, or alternately, according to Wikipedia, the Land of Sunshine, the Cactus State, and the Tex-Mex State. I'm not so sure about that last one. In any event, I have high hopes that New Mexico will build me up where Arizona so often beat me down.
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The changes start right away. A three-mile drop after the state line sends me below the tree line and out into countryside where the grass glows a blinding yellow in the low morning sun. The rolling hills are dotted with small farms, wandering cattle, tiny barns, rusted water towers, and dark brown, leafless trees. Birds chirp, roosters call, bees and flies buzz, and the howl of highway traffic stays home on this sunny, cool, perfect Sunday in the high country. I talk to cows, pass the tiny outpost of Mule Creek, ride by roads with names like Goat's Pass and Brushy Mountain, and wave back to the pickup drivers who give a raise of two or three fingers and sometimes a nod of the head as they speed past.
The wind that's been blowing strong and straight from the west for the past few days picks up in a big way right about the time I hang a left and start north on Highway 180. The terrain is challenging on its own — rolling hills all the way, heading down and then right back up from one wash or river or canyon after the next. But with 20- and 30-mile-per-hour winds blasting me in the face and on the sides as I wander through a basin, it comes with an even greater mental weight. The flats pass at eight miles per hour, gentle uphills send me down to six, and the climbs out of the canyons push me back to three or four, even though I'm in my smallest gear and pedaling about as hard as I can without popping an ACL. It's like climbing a mountain where the elevation never changes.
For about an hour I go insane, absolutely mental. The stronger the wind and the slower the speed, the crazier and more frustrated I become. Morale goes down, down, down. And then, stopped along the road's edge, with a gust blowing a massive cloud of dirt into my face, I sigh and throw my head back for a few seconds and then level up.
"Whatever man," I tell myself. "You chose to be out here. You knew what was coming before you even woke up this morning. You could have stayed in camp all day, but you picked this instead. So quit with the fucking whining and get on with it."
Outside of the crazy narrative running in my head, the area I ride through gives me a show of phenomenal beauty. Off to the right is the emptiness of the vast Gila Wilderness and the textured peaks of the Mogollon Mountains. To the left, rolling hills and cattle ranches run up into untouched ranges that extend north as far as I can see. It's a stunning backdrop to a difficult ride that leaves me fried by the time I reach Glenwood after cranking nearly six hours to go about 35 miles.
All of the restaurants in Glenwood are closed on Sunday, so I hide from the wind in the town's bar. It's the size of a large living room, the beer comes only in cans, none of the stools along the bar match, and instead of Men and Women the bathroom signs read Pointers and Setters. A 50-something bartender with a cowboy hat and a thick gray circle beard talks with a couple of older locals about a few of the more important parts of life in Western New Mexico.
First it's the finer points of building a fire in the fireplace, which women just don't seem to understand. "If ya don't get yer woman goddamned trained, she'll burn all yer goddamned wood for the winter in two weeks!" says the bartender. He's not joking at all. "I make a fire, it's comfortable. It ain't too damned hot and I can keep it goin' all night. I know what works, that's why I'm doin' it that way. But her? She's goin' through a piece ever' half an hour — got the windows open, leavin' the stove open. No wonder they can't make it goddamned last!"
Then it's about a young local woman: "She's nuttier'n squirrel shit, I tell ya, but she's damn good at raisin' those kids."
And dating versus going to the whorehouse: "He's right! Rentin' it's way cheaper'n buyin' it. Don't gotta buy 'em dinner an' beer an' all that shit. It ain't like comin' by it honestly, but it's sure as hell a lot cheaper."
After that, the armchair doctor's in the house: "I know a buncha women, been drinkin' hard all their lives. Get up to about 70 and quit, just quit, cold turkey. Then ever'thin' starts fallin' apart. All kindsa health problems. Ya can't just change like that — change what yer body's got used ta. How can ya think ya can do that and not expect shit ta fall apart?"
As I finish my can of Bud Light the conversation turns to everyone's favorite topic: the government. "If it wasn't for ranchers an' farmers an' miners," says the bartender, "We'd still be fightin' Apaches out here. The gover'ment didn't civilize this place, the people out here did! Now ya can't farm or fish or log or do nothin' out here. It's all locked down, it's all fucked up. Tryin' to protect them indangered species, but they're killin' ever'thin' else! We had good goddamned lives out here, but not anymore."
Every couple of sentences are padded by yeps, mm-hmms, goddamned rights, and head nods of agreement by the two or three other old-timers that sit next to each other at the bar.
Just outside of Glenwood I pull off into a Forest Service campground. It's a bleak scene: the wind swirls around clouds of dirt, each site has a sad little bench and fire pit, the creek bed along the back edge runs dry, and a sign taped to the door reads Bear in Area. My legs are tired and I'm overwhelmed by the wind, but I know I have a lot of climbing still to come, and every mile gets me closer to the next summit. I also know that the wind tends to settle as the evening goes on. And so, with a deep breath and a shake of the head, I push on to the north.
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The wind's about half as bad, but because I'm dragging over more ups and downs it's hard to tell the difference. It's the same slog as before.
And then everything changes. I crest a rise, round a corner, and descend into Alma. It's a place I haven't seen on any maps, but there's a store and a restaurant, and against all odds the restaurant is open on this Sunday night. I walk in and fall into talking with a table full of cowboys and their wives. It's typical stuff — Where ya goin'? Where ya from? It's gonna take how long for ya to get there? Nah, the wind doesn't usually blow quite this much 'round here — but there's something about the twang in their voices, the genuine smiles on their faces, the head-to-toe denim, and the pile of cowboy hats on the floor next to the table. It brings me comfort. It warms my soul. It gives me further hope that my New Mexico experience won't turn out to be quite the punch in the nuts that was Arizona. Then I stuff myself on cheese enchiladas.
I ride into the sunset on my steel horse. I hope to knock off some miles before dark, but I also have the radar up and on the lookout for a place to camp for the night. Despite the last gasps of wind, the ride boosts me up even more. All the drivers with New Mexico license plates continue to wave, and I wave back. The low sun leads to long shadows and causes every part of the landscape to stand out in high contrast. The greens and yellows of the earth and the blues and whites of the sky radiate with depth and clarity and remind me why I chose to come the more challenging direction.
Seven or eight miles on I spot a Forest Service road blocked by a barbed wire gate. All I have to do is unhook one of the wooden ends, let the gate fall to the ground, push the bike carefully around the strings of barbs, rehook the latch, and then I've got a thousand acres of untouched land where I can throw up the tent and head to sleep with the open range to myself. And that's what I do. As the rain fly creaks and crinkles in the wind and a car passes every few minutes on the highway to the west, I bundle up warm and tight and make plans to wake up long before the wind starts to stir.
Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 1,007 miles (1,621 km)
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