The Grassland and the Gorge

Kiowa, originally uploaded by craptastica.

A few weekends past Sara was asked to do some National Visitor Use Monitoring on the Kiowa National Grassland, and I came along for the sites. We woke up early, packed some food, my camp stove, books and stuff, and hit the road heading northeast. 3 hours later or so we came to the town of Wagon Mound, then passed over the Canadian River Gorge, passed through the town of Roy (pop. 100!), and finally hit the grassland boundary.

It was a Saturday, and windy as all hell. The wind was cold and burned my face as I struggled to put up the requisite Visitior Use Monitoring Protocol road signs on the dusty dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Soon we had set up the signs, the traffic counters, and orange cones - then we waited.

6 cars came that whole day. More than we had ever expected.

You see, this portion of the Kiowa National Grassland is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, close to nothing, and maddeningly desolate... but it's spreading tawny grasslands house something special. It's draw is Mills Canyon.

The story goes like this. Once upon a time the Kiowa indians roamed these plains like predators. They preyed on nearby agriculturally-based tribes, and in the 19th century their hunting grounds were the desolate plains of eastern New Mexico. Eventually manifest destiny trapped them into a reservation and the land where we were was taken over by a man named Mills who ran an extensive orchard operation.

Mills Canyon is a couple mile stretch of a magnificent river gorge where the orchard grew in the fertile soils that bordered the Canadian River. Eventually Mr. Mills built some houses and other structures in that gorge and was very successful. But, you got to give it to the white man to put all his hopes and dreams in a very narrow and deep river gorge! Eventually the floods came (shocker!) and wiped out everything he owned. The story goes that he died a poor man who had to beg for a cot on his previously owned property to die on.

Some say it was the curse of the Kiowa, and others chalk it up to plain stupidity. Who knows for sure. The only thing that I know is that the cold winds speak of sorrow, of loss, of broken dreams. The winds of Mills Canyon.