December 11, 2012
by David Ryan
3 Comments

Wandering in the Bisti Badlands

New Mexico is called “the land of enchantment” for good reason. The state’s history and culture are unique and the landscape never ceases to amaze. It constantly changes. In a twenty mile drive you can go from canyons, cliffs and mesas to sage brush plains and back again. The dramatic landscapes and clear light are what brought Georgia O’Keefe and many other artists to the state.

Some of the state’s most dramatic landscape can be found at the Bisti Badlands in the middle of Navajo country in the northwestern part of the state.

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December 2, 2012
by David Ryan
9 Comments

Wandering to San Acacia Butte

San Acacia Butte is located immediately west of the Rio Grande near the settlement of San Acacia a few miles north of Socorro, New Mexico. Some maps identify it as Black Butte and the locals call it Indian Hill. Some locals also call the settlement San Acacio rather than San Acacia.

Most people who visit San Acacia Butte come because they want to see rattlesnakes or they want to visit the New Mexico Principal Meridian.

Map provided the BLM

Several Principal Meridians were set across the country for surveying the country’s public lands. This meridian is the starting point of the New Mexico public lands survey. Land descriptions in New Mexico and parts of Colorado are based on this point (see the map above).

There are people who make the effort to visit Principal Meridian locations across the country. To learn more about where to find meridians, see – http://www.pmproject.org/. Continue Reading →

November 23, 2012
by David Ryan
0 comments

Bomb Targets in the Backcountry

The last blog post covered some of the surprises that you can find while wandering in the backcountry. One of those surprises was part of a fuselage from a fighter plane that the Air Force uses for night rescue training. But the fuselage is not the only thing you can find with a military twist in the backcountry.

In the book The Gentle Art of Wandering I mentioned using Google Earth to solve a mystery regarding metal debris that we found in the New Mexico backcountry. When we looked at the area where we found the metal in Google Earth we saw the remains of a bomb target built during World War II. The pieces of metal were fragments from bombs dropped on the target.

Look carefully at the Google Earth image below and you can see the rings from the bomb target. The target is about a thousand feet wide.

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