The City of Rocks, New Mexico sprouts up out of the desert like a gaggle of tumescent warts on an otherwise pristine cheek-- unexpected, disturbing and fascinating all at the same time. The volcanic bulges, pockmarked with huecos and pockets, are as pleasing to ogle and photograph as they are to climb. The rocks sing with a straining, tenuous energy that embodies the uncontrollable forces that made them burst out of the earth in the first place, millions of years ago, like some kind of terrestrial ejaculate.
Deming, New Mexico, twenty-five miles away and the jumping of point for exploring the City of Rocks houses a similarly seminal epicurean experience-- the green chile-salsa-smothered, tortilla-wrapped delights of Tacos Mirasol (309 East Pine St. Deming, NM) Located less than fifty miles from the green-chile capitol of the Free World, Hatch, New Mexico, the flat-grill artists at Tacos Mirasol miss no opportunity to bathe their wares in green fire. The
tacos al carbon swim in chile, cilantro and lime in a kind of mystical goulash that will open doors in your mind to other, as-of-yet un-glimpsed dimensions. They are the perfect fuel for scaling the tumultuous blobs at the City of Rocks.
On our most recent trip, en-route to Deep East Texas for Christmas celebrations, Katie and I found ourselves dabbing green-chile salsa from our chins around four in the afternoon. We were aware of the existence of the City of Rocks but had never visited and it seemed an ideal spot to stop off for the evening. By five o'clock or so we were pulling into a campsite at the City of Rocks and with a few minutes were off exploring the boulders.
Wind and time have sculpted the thumbs of volcanic stone at the City of Rocks into rounded, bulbous nodes supported by thick columns. Many problems overhang slightly to a lot and in often times down-climbing a problem proves as cruxy as scaling it in the first place. Unimpressed with the sketchy down-climbs, Katie left me to dabble with the problems in the fading light and went off to shoot some beautiful sunset photos.
As night settled in I finished off a handful of problems-- just enough to whet my appetite for the place --and wandered back into camp where Katie waited with a bottle of wine and expectations of veggie chili. I was more than happy to oblige.
When we settled into the crashpad in front of the fire happily clutching our dinners and libations the first, cold stars had begun to pierce the fabric of night. The only sound other than the crackling of our fire came from a lonesome coyote somewhere out on the plain.
And then, from nowhere, a great, rumbling green behemoth lurched out of the darkness and into the campsite just adjacent to us. It smelled of fried potatoes, pot and patchouli and when it opened its maw it disgorged as ragged a bunch of hillbilly hippies as has been seen since Willie Nelson's last picnic in Lukenbach, TX. Their first move was to find the singular, dead oak tree up amongst the boulders and stomp it brutally to the ground before dragging it, in its entirety, back to their fire pit. They carried on loudly in a overly-gregarious way like people going through the motions of having a raucously good time for the benefit of outside observers. I recognized the paces because I have been through them before, myself.
The wine and the fire and pleasant warmth of Katie beside me on the crashpad as we gazed up at the stars kept the edge of irritation I might have felt from creeping to far up on me. The band of modern-day Merry Pranksters lit up their oak tree and produced a guitar and several drums and commenced to hammer out every David Allen Coe tune that the grizzled old bastard ever turned out. In a display, too perfectly apt for words everyone joined in on a rousing, howl-at-the-moon sing-a-long of "My Long Hair Just Can't Cover up My Redneck."
"Maybe we should wander over and introduce ourselves," I mused to Katie, but she remained unconvinced, sensing the slight undercurrent of discord that the wine had made me forget. A girl in the group whose voiced stood out amongst the din had popped up several times over the campfire bacchanal to snipe at one or another of the menagerie. They covered it well, but there lingered, like an aftertaste, the sense that life on the road might be unraveling a little bit.
We went to sleep, though, on the ground under the stars and the hippies quieted down to a low murmur of voices behind a wall of rocks from us. Falling stars scored the night's sky and we drifted off as a layer of frost began to descend on us.
When the girl began to yell she sounded like a fourteen-year-old boy-- quivering, voice cracking, and enraged.
"I hate this f@#$ing bulls#$@!" She screamed. "F@#% you! Just get me the F@#$ out of here!"
Owls hooted from the rocks when she yelled. Other owls answered from far away.
"Shut up you evil f@#$%@g c@#t! Get back in your bed!" The man had a voice like a hibernating bear being dragged from his cave by the balls.
They did their verbal sparring right there in front of the stars and coyotes and everyone. Sixty megaton F-bombs detonating in the atmosphere burned up all the oxygen even in that cold air and the only things left to breathe for those of us in the blast zone were hate and vitriol.
"You're an evil f@#$%#g bastard! I hate this f@&#$*g crap!" she wailed. There came a scuffling sound and then the man roared.
"Why would you do that? That's my f@#$%&g life! My f@#$%&g is in that backpack! You evil f@#$%&g b@#$h!"
Still interred in my mummy bag, like a blind grub searching for food, I lifted my torso and craned my neck to peer around the boulders that separated us. The man danced around their fire that was now burning with a strange color and intensity. His hand snaked out into the flames several times but came back empty until finally he snatched the flaming backpack from the fire. He stomped it out and, strangely, that seemed to be the end of it. He climbed back into the school bus where, presumably, the whole band huddled together for warmth.
The girl stayed outside weeping in the night. I settled back onto my sleeping pad and gazed up at the stars hoping for sleep to return. Then she began to puke-- long hard, retching horks that sounded like they rent her body completely apart. The splash of her guts on the rock was the last sound I heard that night.
In the morning, I made every effort to create as much racket as possible slamming doors, bouncing loudly in the bed of my truck. No one seemed to notice from the school bus, which in the daylight I could see had been painted green and from which hung all sorts of hippie adornments and bicycles. It had been converted to run on vegetable oil and painted above the windshield in black lettering it said: "The Green Team." I resisted the urge to walk over and a put a few pistol rounds through the engine block while they slept off all their David Allen Coe-inspired good cheer. It seemed a moot point, anyway, I didn't think the Green Team, in its current incarnation, would be rolling on too much longer.
Instead, I treated Katie to a grand-slam breakfast at Denny's with lots of extra coffee and bacon. And then I drove us to Texas.
The City of Rocks at Sunrise
The City of Rocks at Sunset
The campsite where F-Bombs cauterized our sleep synapses.
