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and Rhythm & Blues
Iron Horse Free Press supports select contemporary artists who demonstrate exceptional merit without concern for commercial markets.
Midland, TX 79702 ph. 432-686-0397, fax 432-570-0397 Dianne Kuzyns Private collections with her work are Salvadore Dali, Sharon Steel Corp., Margaret Campbell Douglas, Huntington Hartford, Robert Holman, Claude Vieville, Frank Calcgannini, Dr. Michael Auerbach, Rosalie Vortriede, Eric Vortriede, Anselmo Paulino, Heinz Michael Frank, George Dreher, Boraslav Beltchev, Joseph Biaggi, Orthopedic Institute, Arnold Sandubrae. A catalog of her available work can be provided on request.
Urias the Hittite Warrior post publication illustration by Dianne Kuzyns for DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES) Greg Piccolo
In his trio "Heavy Juice" Greg performs live on sax, guitar, & bass, and is vocalist.He plays original material and well chosen classics. Also, he has played on over 30 recordings since 1976 including 4 solo albums since 1990. Hailing from Bradford, Rhode Island, near the Connecticut border, Greg Piccolo played and recorded with Roomful of Blues from 1970 to 1994 and served as de facto leader earning the group several Grammy and WC Handy nominations. Since 1990 he has released 3 solo CDs, each surpassing the previous in originality. Acid Blue | Heavy Juice | Red Lights
Too many choices: stay high, as long as you can by George R. Dreher, ©9/2002 I ran this classified ad in the Taos News after my Labor Day backpacking trip across the Jicarita Divide: To the pranksters who in the night at Hodges Campground in Penasco on Sunday, Sept. 1, stole my 12-volt cooler with all my food, don’t be scared, please call George at 915-686-0397 for more brisket and cheese delivered free. What started as a beautiful trip ended on a sour note, but it could have been different. As I was descending Jicarita Peak through Indian Canyon I wondered to myself, “Should I stay up here another night or go back to civilization?” Since I had a fever from a chill I got from the cold gusty winds the night before sleeping amongst the marmots, I decided to get off the ground and sleep in my van. And I was tired. At age 51 it was not as easy as it was 31 years ago when I was carrying an even heavier backpack and leaping around like a mountain goat. I had done the 30 mile hike up the West Fork of Rio Santa Barbara, across the Jicarita Divide, and down Indian Canyon over a half dozen times, the last time with my 13 and 14 year old daughters which was about eleven years ago. So I was already psyched about this trip and like thousands of other people I had had to wait for rain for the forest to open up this year which built up my excitement even more. When I came down, the Santa Barbara campground was crowded but not full, yet I decided not to stay there and I drove looking along the river but all those sites were full. I came to the now closed off north road of Hodges Campground which has 100 yards open before the sign “No Vehicles” which sits in the middle of the road before a rock slide. The sun was going down quickly so I parked my van, I later learned that further up the Hodges Campground was completely full anyway. That 100 yards of dead end road turned out to have a large amount of traffic. While I was quickly cooking a supper of hamburgers, salad, and ripened peaches, a welcome change to the nuts, seeds, and dried fruit I had eaten the previous 3 days, there were two pickups and two ATVs that came down and turned around. I was exhausted and had a fever so I hit the sack as soon as I could, it was already dark. I wrongly calculated, from wishful thinking, that I could leave my coolers outside. I preferred to leave the 12-volt cooler outside the van because the fan stays on constantly so it’s noisy. It is hooked up to my battery pack and it keeps food good and cold as long as the batteries supply it with amps. My power supply could keep it going for 10 days without re-charging. I can recharge it with the van’s alternator. It was hard to fall asleep I was so exhausted. But also, after I closed my eyes three more headlights of cars and pickups came down the road and turned around, then an ATV came down the road, but it kept going around the bank and past the barricade fading into the distance. I had just drifted off to sleep for about the 4th time when I woke again as a pickup came down the road playing loud music and stopped 30 yards in front of my van. They turned off the music while assessing the scene in front of them. Then they turned the loud music back on and pulled up right in front of my van so all I could see was headlights out my window, I thought they were drinking beer and had decided to be @$$holes while taking a leak. I’d never heard that tune before but it sounded like Los Lobos and I was grooving on it while at the same time wishing this wasn’t happening. I thought it strange that just the week before I had been trying to get my friend, Greg Piccolo, a job as the opening act for Los Lobos and now these punks were using them as their banner while harassing me. It seemed like a conflicted dream. I debated whether to get up but decided they would leave sooner if I didn’t. I just wanted to go to sleep. Why would they try to get me up? Could they in a warped way have wanted to meet me and in my fevered exhausted state I was being rude? Nah. When I heard one of them call out, “Puto,” I thought, “Oh, man,” and figured they wanted a fight. Actually, I had been very gripy all day because of my fever and would have been a good candidate if I didn’t have such an aching body. One of them must have been walking around, this was all in the course of a couple of minutes, and saw my coolers, I think there was three of them. They then turned their vehicle around very close to my van so I thought they were leaving, but when their headlights were on my coolers I heard a sound, “snap.” In my half-awake state it took a few seconds to realize that that was the sound of my 12-volt cooler getting the wire ripped out of its plug. Then a “hee-hee-hee” laugh and they peeled out and away. In my exhaustion my head plopped back down on my bed for a moment. By the time I had gotten up and out to verify my suspicion, they were heading back north up the campground road toward Penasco with the same groovy song still playing loudly. They appeared to be moving very slowly, almost taunting me to chase them. So in a split second I reached for the van keys, but quickly realized the futility of a chase in my lumbering camper, and I was so tired I dreaded re-parking my van in a level spot after a futile chase, something I had spent some time doing earlier. I started thinking of my loss. The 12-volt cooler, I had spent weeks deciding between an Igloo or a Coleman and decided on the Coleman because it came with an AC adapter for the same price. I needed it when I spent time in the hot desert mountains of Big Bend National Park, which are closer to where I live than these mountains and have no people. In it was a beef brisket I had smoked for 6 hours before leaving, a 3 pound block of feta cheese, 3 cans of frozen O.J., a smoked chicken breast, blue cheese dressing, bar-b-que sauce, two leftover hamburgers cooked that night that I put in a mess-kit pan I had been using for back packing for 30 years…. Wait my pan! Oh, no! Now they had my oldest and most used pan. Ironically, I had deliberated whether to put the burgers in a different plastic container or leave them in the pan. They were probably surprised they didn’t steal a real ice cooler but got one that was useless without the cord. I had fresh fruit, berries, and salad in the other two ice coolers. With the 15 gallons of drinking water in my van, I was capable of camping for weeks or more. They were probably surprised that everything inside the cooler was already cooked and all they had to do was heat it up, or eat it cold in their drunkenness. Were they eating it in a house down the road in Penasco? Were they heading down the mountain to some other town? I doubt I could have gotten close enough to get their license plate number, my van is a six cylinder 1978 Ford that doesn’t gain speed quickly. If I had chased them would they have gotten stopped for speeding and I gotten my cooler back? Not likely in an area without any police and I would have been behind them and gotten stopped first while they got away. Or would they have pulled off the road and been able to stand me off in a 3-1 confrontation? They probably were carrying firearms, but unlike 30 years ago when I hunted game from necessity, I wasn’t. I still carried my 10” knife though. About half of the things I carried in my backpack 30 years ago I still had and half had been lost or left behind over the years. So I reminded myself that things are just things. But that little seasoned pan had been with me a long time, like my hand-sewn Frostline tent and down sleeping bag. I put the other ice coolers into the van and lay there seething, thinking about the waste. One final ATV buzzed around me toward Santa Barbara C.G. and then returned ten minutes later. Pickups returning to their camps drove down the main road all night long until almost daybreak. I pulled out of there as soon as I got up and looked for a better spot to eat a fruit breakfast. My hike up the West Fork of Rio Santa Barbara had started in a usual manner, kind of a period of transition of consciousness, from daily life to an almost surreal paradise. I carried enough food for 4 days. In half an hour when I reached the footbridge I thought back to the time my daughters and I had gotten a late start on the same route and had camped there. Further on, every time I pass the split in the trail for East and Middle Fork that steeply winds higher on a ridge I remind myself, “Best for horse riders,” and contentedly continue along next to the river anticipating the meadows. This year because of scarce moisture it’s not as green and lush up there as it used to be. The flowers are wilted, the colors not as vibrant. Once spongy marshes are hard. But it is still a wonder to experience the change in vegetation and geology with increasingly higher elevation. And I often get the thrill of walking up on a big buck, turkeys, sheep, marmots, or experience the sight of an elk at the crack of dawn, or an eagle soaring, and this trip was no exception. I know I’ve really entered the wilderness state-of-mind when I start becoming amused by the squirrels’ antics, the rhythm of woodpeckers, flitting birds, buzzing bees, crawling spiders, ants, scurrying field mice, and fish hiding in the waters of streams and lakes. When I reached the meadow I could see the divide without any snow, barren gray rock. There are dozens of places I’d camped at in and around the meadow and memories flourished even if the mountain flowers were wilting. I exchanged greetings with a camper and we both admired the peacefulness. It could be a mile from the beginning to the end of the meadows and at the end, where the path crosses the West Fork, strangely there was just a trickle of water. Though up higher several little streams fed it some water, it got soaked up faster than it got fed. Most rockslides where often a marsh had sat at the bottom were dry, no underground streams of melting ice, until the very top ridges, and then I found only one. A couple of turkey hens were surprised when I popped in near No Fish Lake, and they hurriedly disappeared with a clumsy fluttering of wings into the dead wood and undergrowth. I slept without a tent at No Fish Lake, waiting to scale the divide until the next day, trying not to get that headache from not being adjusted to the high altitude. At the lake I climbed higher without the weight of my pack up the steep spring feeding the lake and through the timber to the lakes hidden behind the somewhat dried marsh, sometimes rocky tiers above, to more pristine lakes, beautiful with the Trampas Peaks overlooking from behind. It is still awesome beauty though the water’s edge has receded several feet. I woke the next morning to the sound of birds, then all was quiet again for 20 minutes, then in the distance a woodpecker started his daily chore and I was up. A little bit later I ran into the woodpeckers scavenging a dead tree beside the trail and I curiously watched their work for a while. Getting to the top is always an awakening when you first see the peaks: Truchas, Baldy, and Santa Fe to the southwest, also the rolling forest of the Pecos Wilderness to the southeast. The contrast between walking the close in forest and then seeing the wide open sky with distant views hits you. It is at this point that the hike becomes a pilgrimage. Above tree line it is only your soul doing the talking as you trek mile after mile through the high country grass and rock fields on the way to Jicarita as you experience a spiritual reality check. There are few distractions and little or no water unless there is snow to melt. The last water I got was from the stream feeding No Fish Lake, miles back. I was counting on Jicarita Spring to still be springing out from under the rocks on the north ridge past Jicarita and I carried less than 3 quarts of water, not abundant but barely enough in that cool atmosphere. Looking south I saw the river valleys and expansive woods of the Pecos Wilderness. I had been on most of the rivers, trails, and ridges at one time or another and recalled when I could cover 30 miles in one day and then get up and do it again the next. Really, the Pecos is very good horse country. But in hiking you get a chance to soak it up more slowly, stop more often, feel the ground under you. However, I’ve been saying for years that I’ll never hike it again, just do it on horseback. But then there are horses to care for. Once, my buddy John Pape had his horse leave him up there and it ran all the way back down to bottom after they had climbed up to Trampas Lakes. In the past I had seen Big Horn sheep at Chimayosos or Santa Barbara peaks but this time I didn’t find any until past them, just before descending to the rock field. Once when my daughters were with me a herd of twenty or so came charging down the mountain toward us. I ordered my daughters to stand still as their tendency was to start running. This time I saw only four sheep who weren’t interested in me and bounded away down a steep hill after we had exchanged stares at 40 yards for a few minutes. I looked back at them as I made it to the rock field and they had spread out to graze. After walking a little further I couldn’t distinguish their tan head and shoulders, brown hindquarters, and white butt from the rocks and brush on the hillside anymore. Looking downward, poor Middle Fork Lake was just a barren circle of dried mud. There is an abundant marmot population this year, big and fat. The population has increased a lot since 30 years ago, probably because they are not hunted as much anymore. One knows they are around when hearing their squeaks, usually a warning of your approach for others, but sometimes it’s just chitchat. Marmots look a lot like beavers but live in the high country rock piles. On July 4, I had seen the beaver ponds lower on the Rio Quemado above Cordova when I walked up the Spanish Land Grant stopping short of the closed National Forest boundary. They were already having a hard time because of the low water level in their ponds and then the Borrego Mesa fire had recently burned on their area. There was white foam that was used to fight the fire still floating in the water and hanging on the tree branches. The marmots seemed to be having a much happier time of it, I saw 15 or so, but they quickly disappeared under the rocks. I smelled smoke from below on the East Fork and spotted smoke from a campfire drifting up from the firs, then heard sporadic shots from a small rifle and saw a horse grazing. I guessed they were hunting rabbits, they were being quiet, I only heard a voice once. I was trying to pass the rock field and couldn’t decide whether to take the low trail that had some brush or the high rockier trail that required climbing. I took the low trail that is more intimate with the East Fork but then wished I’d taken the high trail to get the panoramic views because I wasn’t saving energy going through the brush. Past the rock field is a spot I’ve slept at many times. People have constructed shelters at several places on the divide made from the flat rocks and this is such a place. Several marmots were living in the rock pile nearby and there were very abundant elk droppings on the patches of grass below where I pitched my tent. Depending on the wind direction the rocks offer some shelter. Usually when I look out at the crack of dawn I see elk nearby, maybe a bull or two on the next hill, but not this time. There were gusty chilly winds all night and I woke up congested with a fever, several times during the night I felt the chill cover my body and I kept moving the zipper on my down sleeping bag up higher. I was in a $20 tent I had bought at Wal-Mart because it weighed 2 pounds instead of the 5-pound high country tent I had always brought in the past and the pounding winds flapped it in the night. This ridge has a good view of the Mora Valley with Holman almost straight below. With Jicarita still several miles in the distance I was hoping to find some springs, as I wanted to drink water to bring down my fever. The ridges bob up and down and keeping a relentless steady plodding pace covers the distance with amazing quickness. It was Sunday morning and during one rest stop a church service ran through my head, the Lord’s Prayer, the Doxology, and the Gloria Patri flashed though my consciousness. In the distance I saw four blurry figures moving on top of Jicarita, they weren’t erect and moved like elk. Before noon I was overlooking Serpent Lake, a steep short distance below the ridge, then I looked up to see 2 hikers ascending Jicarita with a dog and surmised they had come from the lake, a short day hike. Upon reaching the base of Jicarita I saw another Serpent Lake hiker with a dog coming behind me. It is impossible, I think, for a horse to cross the whole Jicarita Divide from end to end. Though you see horse tracks throughout, there are half dozen intersecting trails allowing travel for short segments. A burro may make it further than a horse, but would be very likely to break a leg over the loose rock. I looked for springs but there weren’t any south of Jicarita so I saved my water for the descent. When I reached the top of Jicarita I first saw Wheeler Peak, highest in New Mexico, to the north in the distance, past U.S. Hill and Taos Canyon. It is in a steeper range than the Pecos with the Moreno Valley (Eagle Nest Lake) snuggled to its east and Blue Lake to the southwest, up from the Taos Pueblo. I remembered hunts in Taos Canyon for everything from rabbit to elk, bear and lion, with Zeus (Robert) Reese when I was staying in a one room wood shack in the Moreno Mill logging camp. There we’d wake up and unfreeze our socks with the heat from a wood fire started in the cold darkness of early morning before departing to Black Lake to cut timber in knee deep snow, work that eventually made the space for Angel Fire. A canyon beginning in Black Lake extends like a long finger all the way through Ocate to Mora, a settled and beautiful valley. I remembered another hunting compadre, Pancho (Pete) Trujillo, who had fought to keep his family’s claim of title to Black Lake which had long since been recorded in other people’s names, over a Spanish Land Grant. Moving to the north side of the flat-topped peak, a couple of hundred yards square, I saw Penasco and the Llanos above it where I had many memories. I first saw the Llano with John Gamble who was interested in buying Walter Brown’s property in Upper Llano; he had dozens of junk cars strewn in his back yard in 1971. There is a view of Jicarita and the Rio Grande Gorge from Upper Llano, a lush grassy plain when there is water in the ditches. A deal couldn’t be struck with Walter who was the first gringo to live in Llano and who eventually decided he didn’t want to move after he tried living in Albuquerque for a while. So later some land was bought on the other side, in Llano de la Yegua. We built what became known as “The Cone House”, half underground made from our own adobe bricks. This higher side of the Llano has the best view of the Rio Grande Gorge. Between these Llanos lies the Llano Largo valley. I had thought of buying a place there along the Rio Santa Barbara with tall willows and abundant shade. There are no great views but the allure is a slow paced atmosphere offering a relaxed tranquility. I had stayed at various places in the Lower Llano off and on for several years. An enchanted commune called the Hog Farm was never dull with Little John, Davie, Dennis, Steve and Jason. Oily Don put the motor from the burned out Army surplus generator into my 1948 Willys jeep. And with Carol in a $20 rent house next to architect Richard Nelson that later burned down. And I stayed at Richard’s who had goats, drove a Terraplane, was very kind, and let me chop wood, or when Earl was in India I stayed at Earl’s next door. I rode Earl’s horses, Lela, a stubborn Morgan mare who liked to bite, and Ganja, a Palomino Mustang gelding whose trick was to stop suddenly to throw you over the front, but he was very dependable once on a mountain trail. Looking to the West I saw the Truchas plain and remembered living in Cordova hidden below it on the Rio Quemado, which is fed from Truchas Peak, second highest in New Mexico. Cordova has narrow branching roads that dead end. A group of us moved to John Gamble’s place, the last house up the river, the only Gringos at the time in the town, to help him build a dance and acting school. Six of us in one small room with a wood burning stove, no electricity, an attic, and water from the river. Marge had a 1947 International pickup. We had good neighbors. I would start there and walk all the way to Truchas Peak and beyond, through the small plots of the Spanish Land Grant, Quemado Falls, and the basin, then scale the divide that overlooks Truchas Lake and the Pecos Wilderness. We had a jug band and by request performed for amazed town people in exchange for breakfast. But the school never materialized and when everyone left except for Barbara who stayed in the one room house I stayed in Charlie’s teepee further up river with all my possessions in my backpack, making trips into the Pecos Wilderness to forage for food, hunting game and fishing. This July 4, I left my van at the neighbor, Eurencio Lopez, an artisan woodcarver, and walked up to the forest boundary through the Spanish Land Grant and the recently burned forest. Eurencio lost his cows in the fire, but the forest is now being closed to grazing. 30 years ago it was the most beautiful river I knew of. Santa Fe can’t be seen because the peaks hide it, but beyond the peaks near Camel Rock one summer several of us from Llano and others in the area worked on the set of Robert Downey Sr.’s making of “Greaser’s Palace”. It’s a movie in the mood of the times, kind of wild and zany, mildly sadistic, satirically Avant Garde, oblique in symbolism, but teasingly wielding a sublime message and in ways a parody of “Zabriskie Point” while still independently original. Robert Downey Jr. had a small part as a kid. I stayed on Agua Fria during that time and rebuilt a 1954 Ford pickup at a junkyard way down the road when there was still some of the Old Santa Fe left. I could see many other places with memories from the peak, Taos, the Rio Grande, Dixon, Espanola, Ojito, Ojo Sarco, Picuris Pueblo, Holman, Ocate, and strained to see the Trigg Ranch past Roy where there were wild horses. The parties in Ojo Sarco were notorious for drawing the mischievous “Bandidos”, nomad horsemen with fence cutters. Our trips to Taos were supply missions. I had first seen Taos in 1970 when after hitch-hiking from East to West coast we bought a $150 car to drive back, landing at the Taos Hot Spring in the afternoon and then that night at a commune called Morning Star. They ran down the road to make sure we knew no cars were allowed at Morning Star. There was also a hot spring at New Buffalo commune in Arroyo Hondo. A year later we returned, leaving New Orleans when I was on a leave of absence from Columbia U. and moved to Cordova. Years later the Taos hot spring, once a community spa but then in ruins, was destroyed to prevent people from going there over private land with new owners. Laying on my back and napping I awoke looking straight up and instead of the usual black hawks there was a bald eagle soaring directly above me with its silvery gray, white and black feathers gleaming in the noon sun. The black hawks had moved off to the side. It soon moved a short ways toward the canyon and started playing a game of stalling out, in which it would catch a thermal and go almost straight up until it would start falling, then it would flap its wings a while to stay up, and then glide downward. My eyes stayed glued on it until it was out of sight far over Santa Barbara Canyon. After making the steep northern descent from the peak I found the apparently perennial underground Jicarita Spring still running on the last ridge before reaching the tree line and drank a half-gallon straight from the rocks. There were lots of animals going there at night so I took a while and looked it over, getting as close as possible to where it sprung from under the rocks to make sure the water was safe. I could have run it through my new water filter but it ruins the pure taste of it. I had three quart bottles plus I had picked up one to pack out that was left as trash by a careless hiker. I filled them all and headed toward the trees. But, I soon wanted to get rid of the added weight so I drank one quart, then a while later another. The first fir stand, with well spaced trees and spotted with rock piles, is beautiful to walk through. It is followed by a similarly well spaced garden like pine stand that was very silent. Here begins a steep wooded descent intermittently landing at flat rock piles. These and other magnificent Ponderosa and Blackjack Pine stands around the area are stately. Indian Canyon descends steeply and my bad knee that started going lame on the way up before I reached No Fish Lake always gets much stiffer on the way down. This causes me to get in a sort of a crouching position and almost jog, or I can walk straight legged and very slowly. I drank another quart anticipating water in some springs below, but the next several springs were dry. When reaching the lower meadows after several miles there was enough water to make a noise bouncing on the rocks in Indian Creek (in Arroyo Seco my small daughters called the sound the “roaring rushing river”) and I contemplated camping another night, to postpone my return to civilization. The tempting peaceful beauty beckoned with its tranquility, but sleeping off the ground in my van won out because of my bothersome fever and I came on down. I already told you the rest. I guess the moral of this story could be: Stay high, as long as you can. And acting in retrospect the next morning I drove way up the Rio Chiquito, a stream over the next ridge that feeds the west ditch for Llano, it was dry. Then I drove down to Truchas to find a road that leads to a trail up the Rio Quemado to the peak, I have always started lower in Cordova. While walking around on those old logging roads that go almost to the base of Truchas Peak, I walked up within 30 yards of two big bucks, one looked like an eighteen point, but they disappeared in 10 seconds. Then it was time to start heading back to where I lived and worked. I had gotten paid $1 per ton in my youth to cut timber for the Moreno Valley Mill and I learned the feeling of owing my soul to the company store. In the early fall of 1975 we left out from the Pecos Wilderness three different times and turned around twice before finally going all the way to Midland, an 8 hour drive, to find work in the West Texas oilfield, a.k.a. the Iron Orchard. I started at $2.50 an hour and have learned the feeling of leaving the place where you want to be, to be in a place where you work. The mountains in West Texas, a 3-4 hour drive in the Chihuahua Desert, are dry and sparsely populated but I have learned to appreciate the beauty and many forms of life in the desert. And I have learned to respect the heat and relentless sun. But the dryness this year in the Sangre de Christos is alarming. The colors of the foliage aren’t as vibrant as usual. Usually the yellows, oranges, purples, reds, browns, and greens in the grass and small mountain flowers on top of the divide jump out at you with the bright light, this summer they are duller. Usually a sweet smell permeates the marshes, this summer the lilies are wilted. The change is the mystic beauty of balance contrasting wet and dry. I hope the rain and snow comes back. Talking with some guys I met this summer, a man in Truchas thinks the Space Shuttle pops holes in the ozone and this has caused the dryness, a man in Llano thinks the fire in Los Alamos released massive radiation that caused a change in the weather. The National Park Service says the drying trend has been developing over several years. Speaking of trends, when he first came to the Llano, Richard Nelson, who has lived there for 32 years, reminds me he left his pickup at Santa Barbara Campground and came back a few days later to find the wheels missing. My friends in Chihuahua, Mexico, always move my car off the street and into their protected driveway. So why did I possibly think I could leave my coolers outside my van? There hasn’t been much noticeable change around Penasco in any other ways in 30 years. I may have been very tired, but I think I felt experimental. Or, as the Dave Matthews song I’ve heard on my daughter’s CD goes, “It’s a typical situation in these typical times, too many choices.” ©George R. Dreher, 9/2002, Iron Horse Free Press Link to Penasco, NM, e-zine:
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