Tso'odzil: The Mountain of Enemy Gods
Last weekend I convinced Sara to go camping with me somewhere. After considering a bunch of places, we decided to go to Mt. Taylor - a big-ass mountain about an hour west of Albuquerque near Grants, NM.
We took all of our camping gear and enough food for about a week! We headed out Friday after work and arrived on La Jara Mesa just a little before the sun kissed the horizon goodnight.
We lit a candle and drank a bottle of wine while staring into the clear, crisp starry night. It was cold, but not so windy and we felt a thousand miles from the nearest person.
That night we froze our assess off. Literally! I had to amputate a cheek... well okay not really but it felt that cold. It definitely gave us some reservations about sleeping up there the next night. But as the sun came up the warmth began to wash away our hesitations.
Our plan was to climb to the top of Mt. Taylor. We had a bit of a late start, but were soon on the road to the trailhead, and then starting out on the trail in the snow.
We thought it would be a cinch... 2.5 miles or so up. Maybe, we thought, we could keep going and hike all the way to the La Mosca lookout!
That didn't happen.
About a half-mile up the snow got thick on the trail and in some points Sara and I found ourselves up to our knees slogging through the snow up a steep incline. We had fun looking at all the animal tracks and elk bites on the aspen trees. We didn't see anyone that whole day, but there were fresh footprints on the trail and we came up with all sorts of crazy theories about how tall the person was, whether they walked with a limp, and what their deal was based on small clues left by their feet.
The snow layed thick on the trail all the way up the mountain, which made the hiking exhausting. Eventually the wind kicked up and my fire boots couldn't hold back all that snow, leaving my feet wet and icy cold. But we were determined and finished climbing to the top.
Once at the top, we cooked lunch and ate it while staring at the snow-dashed slopes that flowed in all directions from the mountain top.
The wind was so strong and both of us so cold there was an unspoken understanding that there was no damn way either of us was going to camp out another night. Instead, we got in the car and drove home like that was the plan all along.
That night I laid in my warm soft bed and slept like a hibernating bear.
posted by Greenstar at 12:24 AM
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After we got back home, I did some research on the area and found out some interesting stuff.
- Mt. Taylor is a sacred Navajo mountain often called Turqoise mountain or Mountain of the Enemy Gods, because it was thought that the chief of the enemy gods lived there.
- I also learned that the mesa we slept on, La Jara Mesa, was recently discovered to be sitting on top of about 8 million pounds of Uranium! We did see some unnaturally large jackrabbits up there, but I had no idea! The uranium was found in the 80s, then sold to some big mining company, then sold again in 2003 to a multi-national mining company, which currently has plans to develop it and sell the ore.
-md
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