I took Monday off from the job hunt and headed out for the Badlands. I was there last fall and fell in love with the place. If you’re in to sheer desolate beauty, you won’t find a better place to spend a day. The Bisti Wilderness area is about 30 miles south of Farmington, New Mexico or 60 miles north of I-40 out of Thoreau, New Mexico, along Route 371. Either way you choose to get there, you need to keep your eyes peeled for the turnoff as the sign is small and faded. Bisti is not what you might call a huge tourist attraction. I spent about 5 hours wandering this time around and at least that much my last trip and saw not another human being. Or much of anything else on 2 or 4 legs.

Between the Bisti and the De-Na-Zin Wilderness to the east, the Badlands (Bisti means Badlands in Navajo) occupy 38,381 acres of some of the most bizarre country you can imagine. Sloping hills of red, gray and black, windswept passages, hoodoos and weird rock formation abound. Once the bed of an ancient sea, when the water receded, prehistoric animals made Bisti their home. When the last of the water disappeared, a 1,400-foot-thick layer of jumbled sandstone, mudstone, shale, and coal lay undisturbed for 50 million years. The receding of the last ice age left behind exposed fossils and eroded the rock into fantastic hoodoos. Today, the ground is soft and yielding, covered in multi-colored rocks, petrified wood and the bone and tooth fragments of the enormous beasts that once roamed this land.

Here is something you don’t see too often, or for too long, in the Badlands: Water.

Precipitation in the Bisti area averages a mere eight inches a year, and usually comes in July and August when temperatures rise to melting highs. When a downpour does occur, the soil, typically baked to ceramic hardness by the sun, softens into a slippery, yielding substance. The last time I was here in late fall, the ground was as hard and dry as the bones you find scattered about. New Mexico saw some heavy spring rain the week before I made this latest trip and the water had cut deep channels and turned the ground into shoe sucking mush.

If you’re not into serious quiet, the Bisti might get on your nerves. There ain’t a whole lot of life here beyond some plants and a handful of lizards, snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions. There aren’t even birds flying overhead most time. About the only tracks you ever see are those of other humans and the occasional dog or horse.

The wind blows almost constantly across the Badlands resulting in some bizarre twisting of plants and strange rock formations.

Sometimes the wind can get quite creative.

And, after a long day of hiking, there’s nothing like a comfy chair to relax in.

A year ago I spent Thanksgiving at the Abo ruins and Christmas day driving through the Jemez Mountains. I was a bit under the weather this Thanksgiving (an odd expression, that. What would being over the weather mean?) and didn’t get away. This year on Christmas I made it down to the Quarai ruins. I took my flute.

Quarai, along with Abo and Gran Quivira, are part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions which the Spanish more or less forced down the throats of the Tiwa Indians back in 17th century. The original name for the area was Kuah-aye. The Spanish mission at Quarai was built in 1629 and abandoned for lack of water around 1671. The Tiwa Indians had been around the area since the 1300s.

Quarai is about 30+ miles south of Albuquerque, 8+ miles north of the town of Mountainair. It was, as I expected, deserted when I got there. There is something profoundly peaceful about being in the ruins when no other humans are present. After walking the trails for a bit, meandering through the house blocks and visiting the Kiva, I settled in the main part of the old church and played my flute.

I just started playing the flute a couple of weeks back so I’m not all that good at it yet. Did a rousing rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb, though. I have that tune down! Since I had my practice book with me, I played a couple of traditional native style melodies as well. They didn’t sound too bad. Hopefully next year will find my playing improved.