New Englander Nears 2nd Anniversary of Living on the High Plains

You know you’re in [eastern] New Mexico when:

...It's 72 degrees outside and the weather channel tells you that it's fixin' to blizzard in a couple of hours. And it does.

...You don’t even notice any more that the wind blows a lot of the time, but you do notice that you have stopped combing your hair. Ever.

...You haven’t seen a man in a business suit in years, and if you did he would look reeeeal funny. Men look just right in cowboy boots and cowboy hats and those long, lean jeans. Jes’ right.

...You think, that’s the way the Good Lord meant for men to dress, even inside of your own head.

...You no longer stop and think hey, those are hymns about the background music they play in stores. You get "The Old Rugged Cross" stuck in your head for days.

...You’ve seen Pat Boone at Cowboy Church, still looking good after all these years in cowboy boots and cowboy hat and those long, lean jeans, and have thought nothing of it.

...You even know what Cowboy Church is.

...You also know what a piggin’ string is and no longer think it’s gross when they carry it in their teeth.

...You nod knowingly when a man confesses, "Life just ain't right if I don't get to rope every day."

...Flat land looks just about right now, and you’ve gotten scared by a TV car commercial where the car is tooling along right in the mountains, next to a big drop-off, with no guard rail. White knuckled, heart-poundingly scared by a TV car commercial.

...The only drop-offs we have here on the side of the roads are called bar ditches and they only drop off a few inches.

...That cow-y smell comes rolling through town and you think one of two things. 1) oooh, it’s just like living [jes’ lack livin’] out on the ranch or 2) ahhh, that good ol’ smell of money.

Help me! Ah’m fixin’ to assimilate.

My Clovis video returns

I am trying to toughen up. When I posted my very first video, My Clovis, on YouTube the negative comments got me down and I removed the video after a week or so. It had gotten 135 views, but it just didn't seem worth it to have to read harsh comments about the town every day from the same kind of bitter people who had posted the video Boycott Clovis, New Mexico.

I sent an email to the editor of the newspaper to ask why some people seemed so angry at Clovis, and if he thought there were any Clovis fans out there. And then the fun began. The editor, David Stevens, made my question his "question of the week" in the newspaper (scroll down to the Editors' Notebook on the March 28 edition) and on his blog, Falling with Style. You can see some of the great answers he received on the March 26 and March 27 posts.

This morning an op-ed piece by local media personality Grant McGee appeared on the editorial page of the Clovis News Journal print edition. You can read it online here. He talked about My Clovis and I scrambled to get the video back online. You can see it here and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqX81erwpYQ.

Please feel free to comment here or on YouTube. I promise to try to be less tenderhearted this time.

~Clair Z.

My Clovis

Ah, YouTube. When I saw a negative video posted there called Boycott Clovis, New Mexico I worked hard making a slide show of the photos that I have been taking since moving here. It took me quite a while to do because I have never put together a video using jpeg files before.

I thought that it might be a good idea to present a more positive view and to show the beauty that is here for those who look for it. I posted my little effort on YouTube, but soon found that I am far too tenderhearted to deal with the kind of negative comments that started appearing. Folks had apparently decided that they didn't like Clovis, and they resented any attempt to see it in a positive way. So I'm taking down my YouTube posting, and doing my best to obliterate my account there, which was under the name of "cloviscowgirl" because they already have enough clairz-type names on file.

P.S.: Things are looking up! See the March 28 posts on this blog.

Ogallala Aquifer

This is it—Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the web are uniting to put a single issue on everybody’s mind—the environment. According to the Blog Action Day web site: Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future. Close to 16,000 blogs with over 12 million readers are participating. This would be a great day for you to contribute to an environmental charity. Start here. http://blogactionday.org/charities .
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I am certainly no water expert, but I hadn’t lived in the southwest for long before I decided I wanted to learn more about the subject. Newspaper articles often referred to the Ogallala Aquifer, so I wanted to find out what it was and why it was important. Here is what I’ve learned.

The Ogallala Aquifer is a vast deposit of water lying under eight states in the High Plains of the U.S.: South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It is variously estimated to cover between 174,000 and 225,000 square miles, and lies between 50 and 300 feet below the surface. It was formed about 10 million years ago of gravelly soil that holds groundwater down below the water table. Experts believe that the aquifer contains roughly the amount of water contained by Lake Huron. Drawdown, or water use, of the aquifer occurs when agricultural, industrial, and residential users withdraw water for surface use. About 94% of the water is used for irrigation in areas that formerly were a part of the Dust Bowl back in the 1930s. Recharge, water going back into the aquifer, comes from rainwater and snowmelt, a slow process in this dry climate area. Since the 1970s it has been apparent that drawdown is greater than recharge, leading to an ongoing depletion of the aquifer.

Adding a whole new aspect to any water discussion is our search for alternative fuels. The biofuel ethanol seems like a great answer to our dependence on oil-producing nations. However, in order to produce one gallon of ethanol, three to six gallons of water are used. Even more water is used in growing the corn necessary to make the ethanol.

The states concerned wrestle with issues of water policy, conservation, sustainability, and ethics. Should the water be used now, or should policy dictate sustainability? Do we continue with current irrigation practices to grow the corn and wheat that our economy demands, or should we conserve for the future? Do we continue expansion of biofuel production at the cost of permanently damaging water resources?

For more information, research, and discussions about the Ogallala Aquifer, see the following links.

Conserving the Ogallala Aquifer. http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2003-1/2003-1-04.htm

Ogallala Aquifer and Ethanol - The Potential for Another Dust Bowl: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/09/21/ogallala-aquifer-and-ethanol-the-potential-for-another-dust-bo/

Ogallala Aquifer Depletion: http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/issues/society/ogallala/ogallala.html

Producing Ethanol Could Strain Resources: http://environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=1550

Water Encyclopedia: http://waterencyclopedia.com/Oc-Po/Ogallala-Aquifer.html

Water-Level Changes in the High Plains Aquifer, 1980-1999: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2001/fs-029-01/

A Good Day for Rabbits

Cool damp morning air on sleep-warmed skin. Breeze-blown sprinkler water freckling my cheek. Fiery red orange sun popping loose from the horizon. I use just two speeds on my bike on these early morning prairie rides: "Wind at my back," and "Going the other way."

It's a good day for rabbits; I've seen two already. They are always there, I'm sure, seeing me, but today I have a good eye for them. They start to hop, then freeze when they see me, one eye cautiously looking my way. "I see you, little rabbits" I say softly, and wait for them to move on.

Mary Austin, when writing about the desert in A Land of Little Rain, said this: "Rabbits are a foolish people. They do not fight except with their own kind, nor use their paws except for feet, and appear to have no reason for existence but to furnish meals for meateaters." I think that rabbits dancing in the moonlight might disagree.

Reason for existence? I am glad that I am not judged so harshly. Or am I?

The Road to Tucumcari

We went off for a ride to find some mountains the other day and we found them after only sixty miles, but in a very surprising way.

We are new to living on the high plains. Every day we are reminded that we are on the plains because we are surrounded in all directions by fairly flat land; but there is nothing to remind us about just how high we are. My brain has learned, after years of living in New England, that if you are on flat land you are probably near the sea, and if you are high up you are probably surrounded by hilly terrain. However, here in Clovis we are actually at an elevation of 4266 feet above sea level, but there are just no visual cues for me about our altitude.

At least not until we took the road to Tucumcari, in search of our mountains. As we drove along the country roads, marveling at the sky and the wonderful colors of the fields, we kept an eye out on the horizon for some nice high mountains. When we passed the town of Ragland, we were confronted with one of those signs that warn trucks of a steep grade ahead. We barely had time to wonder where the grade might be when our vehicle nosed down the way a car will suddenly do in San Francisco when it heads down another steep street.And there were our mountains, below us! There was an abrupt change of landform, soil, vegetation, and of the way we saw our world. From our flat farm and ranch land plains, we headed down to a red-soiled, canyon-cut, rolling valley dotted with creosote bushes. We saw what looked like small black volcanoes at a distance, and beautiful mesas all around with layers of red and cream-colored soil.

The Plains Close-Up

I always thought of the plains as being flat and wondered why anyone would want to live there. Now that I do live here on the high plains of New Mexico, I am kind of ashamed to have known so little. We spent some time yesterday at the 3700 acre Ned Houk Park a few miles north of Clovis, and have just begun to find out a few things about this prairie country. It's not flat--the country has a hilly roll to it that conceals all sorts of surprises. It smells wonderful, fresh and fragrant. And, of course, the more you look, the more you see. We came upon small watering holes and larger lakes; we saw a whole village of very healthy looking prairie dogs; we visited with a small herd of buffalo; and heard all sorts of unfamiliar birds.






This looks like a little owl (click on the photo for a bigger view). At first I thought that he was a prairie dog predator, because while he sat on this fence post the curious little prairie dogs stayed well underground. However, after a little research, I now believe that he might be a burrowing owl. These little owls apparently utilize the prairie dog burrows for nesting. What do you think?





Here is part of the herd of buffalo that we saw near the old Ned Houk Homestead. The baby saw me taking pictures and got up and started inching toward me, but the bull in charge soon moved all of his family well away from potential danger.






Although its quality is not so good, this was the best picture that I was able to get of a prairie dog. They were all over the field, running from hole to hole. Some of the little ones appeared to be playing, chasing each other and wrestling.