The Adventures of Fric and Frac: Adventure 227: Sunny Acres RV Park, Las Cruces, NM/Post B

An entire people lived in the shadow of Sierra Blanca

Well, she's back. Give her a couple of days off, and she up to her old Wylie Cager tricks. This morning it was the old keep five cards in her hand maneuver. When I tried to count my three card crib, she said, "Oh just use anyone of these". Not once did she offer to rescind the points she had just grabbed. It would have been exasperating if I had lost, but thankfully, justice prevailed and I'm ahead 1-zip in the Las Cruces Open. Today, our adventures spanned eons of history. We walked around the old town square of Mesilla in the morning. Our only disappointment was that the church was locked. We just loved the adobe architecture, and it was easy for us to visualize a time long past. We then journeyed even further back when we visited the Three Rivers Petrogylphs, which are located about seventeen miles north of Tularosa (About 100 miles from las Cruces). Imagine, if you can, the native Mogollon people engraving pictures (Over 21,000 of them) into solid rock somewhere between 900 and 1400 A.D. We tramped around over rugged rock outcroppings, the wind whistling around us like the wails of tortured artists. I love to be reminded of both my smallness and my significance in the vast and mysterious flow of human history. Here I was, wearing shoes made in China, scrambling over and around the natural canvas of a forgotten people (I doubt my shoes will last as long). My mind's eye can see groups of men (And maybe women) squatting beside the rocks, tools in hand, heartfelt images conceived, with a very human desire to record the event with permanence. For me to stand there today where others stood a thousand years ago boggles my tiny pointed head. And then to realize that these people disappeared without a known cause, and without a forwarding address amazes me even more. I felt the same mysterious feeling last year when we walked a trail the inhabitants of Mesa Verde had walked some time around 1400 A.D. It was cool. On the way back (Our adventure covered 230 miles today), we took the scenic drive through the White Sands National Monument. Not to be outdone, Mother Nature creates a pretty impressive canvas herself. And then, just as suddenly, we were propelled into the not so comfortable presence of our electronic future. Alamogordo and the white sands are also home to military installations, so we had to pass through a checkpoint that had no less than ten types of cameras trained on us (And our vehicle). I'm guessing infrared, X-ray, sunray, Zenon, and mind reading Republicans were hidden inside the space age looking things. A human being (An armed border guard) waved us through just after he glanced at the screen of a laptop, which I assume judged us as harmless. The cameras whizzed, whirled, twirled, and clicked. They took pictures of us coming and going. I felt a little undressed, and the juxtaposition of technology and archeology stuns me. Humans using rocks to carve on other rocks to communicate a world view seems more innocent than sophisticated government spy-ware evaluating the threat potential of its citizens. The good news, I guess, is that Stumpy and Grumpy (That's my left wing moniker) pose little threat to the missile operations in the New Mexico desert, and we don't smuggle guns, drugs, or people. It's somewhat sad that these concerns exist because for us, we're just looking at the scenery, and boy is it magnificent. We put Fric away wet, like a tired pony, and we decided that life is good, especially since we weren't arrested today.