October 9, 2013
by David Ryan
9 Comments
If you have been to Taos, New Mexico, you’ve probably taken a picture of San Francisco de Asis Church. If you haven’t been to the church, it’s only four miles from the center of Taos in the small community of Ranchos de Taos. It is a simple and beautiful building that has been photographed by Ansel Adams and is the subject of several Georgia O’Keefe paintings.
When you approach the church, you’ll be coming in from the back.
September 24, 2013
by David Ryan
5 Comments
Chaco Canyon, in the middle of Navajo Country in northwestern New Mexico, is one of the most amazing places in the country, if not the world. One thousand years ago, it was the center place for the ancestors of today’s Pueblo Indians. Their enormous great houses, great kivas, and other structures defy the imagination. All were built with stone tools, without the aid of pack animals, in an area with very limited natural resources.
Their remarkable achievement was recognized by UNESCO when Chaco Canyon was named a World Heritage Site in 1987. There are only eight World Heritage Cultural Sites in the entire country.
With all this attention you would think that Chaco Canyon would be overrun by visitors. It’s not. In fact I am always surprised by the number of people I have met who live in New Mexico who have never been to the canyon.
Industrial tourism decried by Edward Abbey in his wonderful book Desert Solitaire has not hit the canyon. You won’t find any stores or restaurants at Chaco. The only accommodation is the campground. If it’s full, the next place to camp is over twenty miles away. And the last thirteen miles of your drive into the canyon will be on an unpaved road.
When you get there, you won’t find giant RVs and tour buses idling in the parking lots. You won’t have to enter a lottery or get a ticket for a specific time to visit a site. And you won’t find yourself on a nose-to-tail elephant walk as you wander through the sites. You can take everything in at your own pace. And when you leave, you’ll be glad you made the effort to get there.
My wife, the dogs, and I recently revisited the canyon to hike to the Jackson Stairway. The stairway was built during the canyon’s occupancy and is named for the 19th century photographer of the old west – William Henry Jackson. The stairs are off limits for climbing but (as you will see) they are well worth the effort to hike there.
The stairway is above the canyon rim and can be reached by taking the Pueblo Alto backcountry hiking trail. The hike is a little more than five miles.
The trail to the top starts behind this pueblo (Kin Kletso).
September 6, 2013
by David Ryan
13 Comments
One of the themes of The Gentle Art of Wandering is that you can even find the natural world in a densely populated urban area by seeking out the many creases and corridors that exist there. My dog Petey and I had a chance to do this when we visited Washington, D.C. in July.
This particular adventure actually started over 48 years ago in 1965 when a friend and I visited Washington when we were in high school. We were traveling on our own, and, after spending several days of doing what you are supposed to do in Washington, we decided to take a walk.
Our walk started by following a set of streetcar tracks to see where they went. Streetcars were no longer running in Washington in 1965, but many of the streets still had tracks. We followed a set of tracks that were near the White House and headed west.
The route took us through the Georgetown neighborhood. At the edge of Georgetown, the tracks left the street and entered a private right-of-way. The tracks were still on the ground even though it had been a few years since the last streetcar had run on them. We followed the tracks as they ran along the top of a bluff overlooking the Potomac River.
The tracks finally ended at an old fashioned amusement park in Glen Echo, Maryland. From there we kept the walk going by following the nearby tow path of the old C & O Canal. We stopped walking when we reached the Great Falls of the Potomac and took a bus back to Washington.
Since that walk I have often wondered if the old right-of-way to Glen Echo was still there. I had been to Washington many times since that first walk but always had other things to do and never took the time to check it out. This time I made the right-of-way the reason for the visit.
Our adventure began by parking our car on P Street in Georgetown. Surprisingly on this section of P Street, there was still a streetcar track. But rather than immediately following the track, we made a brief detour to the main street (M Street) of Georgetown to climb the Georgetown stairs.
These are the tracks on P Street. Rather than getting power from an overhead wire, the streetcars in Washington got their power from an underground wire. The middle rail in the picture was a slot for the streetcars to access the underground wire.
If you have seen the movie The Exorcist, you have seen these stairs. Ironically the stairs are adjacent to an old streetcar barn. You can even see the tracks on the floor of the barn. We climbed the stairs and walked back to P Street to start following the old streetcar track. Continue Reading →