Neshka, Ashi and the Taos Plateau

Wildness does not go away because we bring it indoors. This is especially true of animals. Tom had two Malamutes, Neshka and Ashi, named for Eskimo heroes he had read about. He lived with them in a one room cabin up Coal Creek Canyon. The cabin was part of a string of sagging structures lining the old railroad tracks that one old cantankerous woman manged for her income. She cursed out a story of shooting a bear from her porch while looking me up and down like I was a piece of dressed meat. When the dogs weren't keeping Tom warm in his hut he would clip them to the clothes line in back that served as a run.

Tom was of slight build and less than medium size. The dogs were basically bigger than he was. No matter, he was the master and would hurl them onto the floor gripping their neck and growling at them during times when they needed reminding he was their top dog.

His brother was dying in Florida and he needed someone to care for the pack while he was gone. I had spent many evenings with Tom, choking on the wood smoke in the little cabin while we discussed archaeology, anthropology, and life in general in the wild west. I went home with him one afternoon to pick them up.

Some Malamutes can seem almost like other dogs, friendly, happy, wanting to play and basically being good campers around the kids. Not Neshka who was the lead between these two brothers. He seemed more wolf than dog to me and had a cunning and wily look about him. Ashi was mild and followed Neshka who I did not trust.

I had business in New Mexico and Tom and I talked of my taking them with me that next week. I custom fit a piece of heavy wire mesh to the rollbar of the landcuiser. This would serve well as a cage for the two in the back of the truck. We packed up and headed out of Boulder for the Land of Enchantment.

Our first stop was up the forest road at the southern base of Kenosha Pass where I let them run. After a time I whistled and back they ran and off we went once more. The day grew old as we drove onto the Taos Plateau and got to San Antonio Mountain in northern New Mexico. It would be dark within an hour or so and this wild place would be a good romping ground for them before we pushed on to Albuquerque.

                                                                   San Antonio Mountain

The Taos Plateau is a vast and treeless high plain area that was formed by volcanic flows. A veneer of soil has formed on the old basalt flows that supports cactus and some grass. The landscape is bleak and breathtaking in its vastness. A perfect place to let the dogs run. And run they did until I felt a twinge and whistled them back in. They ran up to me and Neshka came right up with head lowered looking intently at me with yellow eyes. I praised them for coming and let them run again. This time they took off like the wind. I had never seen them run like this. I suddenly started at how far they quickly had gone and began whistling once more. Their forms were now faint in the fading light and then gone with only the whisper of the wind swirling about me.

I stayed out there till way after dark but never saw them again. This was long before cell phones, not that they work here even now. My family was expecting me. I drove home and my brother vowed he would return with me. We got back to the spot before dawn.

This area is part of the region frequented by the Basque sheepherders out of Spain. I had seen ones camp the day before. We parked the truck where I had released the dogs and hiked to the area of the herd. We spoke to the Shepard in Spanish, asking if he had seen El Lobos (the wolves). He had not and we got his assurance that he would not shoot the dogs on sight if they weren't harassing the sheep.

We hiked back over and as we got closer I could see the silhouette of a dog under the truck. It was Ashi who trembled and would not leave my side at that point. Two knobs of hills rise above the plain nearby and we headed over to them. Clambering to the top of the southern one, I spied Neshka on the far side at the bottom of the hill. He looked at me, I looked at him. I called to him and he turned and ran disappearing into the distance.

We never found Neshka. Tom and I returned with Ashi to camp one night a week later on a protected ledge that formed below the knob. We had a fire and told stories long into the starry night while gazing at the lights of Taos some 40 miles away while Ashi trembled at our sides. Tom's cantankerous old landlady told him he should never have trusted such a fool of a friend as me but Tom never blamed or faulted me in any way. Neshka was mostly wolf and that area of northern New Mexico is home to bands of wild dogs even now. We felt sure he had roamed as a king and there may very well be other Malamutes in the canyons and hills in that region that look a lot like Neshka!

Camping ledge, Taos Plataeu

(For another story about Tom, please see the first post of this blog, "Under the Eternal Sky")

The Distance We Travel

Mountains are the backdrop of our life in the west. Particular mountains are like old friends, creating touchstones filled with memory and thought. Their presence work to remind and challenge us throughout life. This is why I return to place time and again and am rewarded by memories and new experiences weaving themselves together in the eternal moment. 

This day was an exceptional revisiting of mountain friends while learning about new ones. I was climbing Lookout Mountain in the eastern San Juan's on a late summer day. It was silent and the air was still as I came up through the Elk scented and shadowy woods to the rocky cliff below the table top. The sun was warm clear of the trees, even hot at times as I clambered onto the flat land lofted into the air like a floating island out of Avatar. The brilliance of place manifests itself in these parklands at the summits of peaks and ridges. Everything about you is impacted by the uniqueness of where you are. The world is as if just born, laid at your feet to see for the first time.

 

                               Lookout Mountain from the west

San Antonio Mountain could clearly be seen far to the east, past the valleys and treed hills all around. This magnificent roll of ground had long thrilled us as kids as we journeyed from Albuquerque to the San Juans for camping and fishing. For this hill marked the gateway into Colorado from the south and the Land of Enchantment from the north. High on the Taos Plateau it can be seen from great distances and had often been a comfort to see from window seats far overhead on many plane flights across the country. A touchstone indeed over the years.

The gentle roll of San Antonio Mountain in the distance

Once the eastern view had been taken in, I turned to gaze out to the west. The most inaccessible spiky Grenadiers of the western Weminuche wilderness punched into the sky. A smile emerged as I also saw La Ventana now mostly called by its English name, The Window and the Pyramid. Like San Antonio mountain, the Window and the Pyramid were backdrops to my life as a boy. So many years ago at the age of perhaps 15, I had climbed the Pyramid, as a pilgrimage into the sacred Weminuche.  

The boy, the Window and the Pyramid, circa 1974

A cool breeze began, whispering up from the valleys below that now had deep and long shadows crossing them in the late afternoon. I rubbed my neck and looked over at San Antonio Mountain and then again gazed at the Pyramid. It turns out that both of these mountains are just over 48 miles from the top of Lookout Mountain. A far distance on foot in such a turbulent landscape but close to view from here. Which really is farther to go I wondered to myself. The miles between the landmarks? Or the years since first seeing and climbing these mountains? Sighing and turning, I began my descent, the cooling air in my face.

Rio Grande Pyramid along the distant horizon