Luna and I just returned from a few hours of hiking up Dog Canyon just outside of Alamogordo, NM. When I say up, I mean UP. The trail rose over 2,000 feet in 3.5 miles. I earned those sweeping views of White Sands, the Tularosa Basin, and the Organ and San Andreas Mountains. And at last, having weathered the final weeks of winter, I also earned the views of wildflowers beginning to show their colorful blooms. Cacti draw attention to themselves with flaming red flowers and vibrant yellow new growth. Thorny shrubs wear hats of orange. I don’t know the names of the desert flora surrounding me, but I can tell that traveling to southern New Mexico has brought us into spring.

One of our more unusual “campsites” – a gravel clearing on BLM land outside of Carlsbad, NM

We are camped at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, which sits just outside the entrance to Dog Canyon. The landscape around us is surprisingly lush, the mountains above striated and golden in the splotchy afternoon sunlight. We are reminded of Iceland’s moss-covered mountains, although New Mexico’s mountains don’t have streams of water cascading down their sides. About fifty yards beyond us, away from the slopes, the greenery gives way to brown. Several miles beyond that, we can see the glimmering gypsum of White Sands National Monument, a stark expanse of dunes we are looking forward to seeing tomorrow.

Crazy rock formations

The Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns

Descending into Carlsbad Caverns

And just like the rapid transition from green to brown to white, New Mexico is a state consisting entirely of abrupt contrasts. In the space of 200 miles of driving, our route yesterday took us from the damp and otherworldly rock formations of Carlsbad Caverns, through barren and sandy oil fields complete with blowing tumbleweed, over foothills pocketed with orchards and green fields of grazing cattle, past the scenic alpine town of Cloudcroft (where it snowed on us briefly), and down a steep mountain road with desert views. We passed through towns of every variety: Artesia with its ugly oil and natural gas industry, Mayhill with a gleaming church and very little else, Cloudcroft with its thick evergreens and charming downtown area, and Alamogordo with its heavy barrage of too many bright signs for every fast food chain you can imagine. The weather started warm and dry in the desert, got windy enough to make us grip the wheel tightly while driving, threatened rain, delivered some light snow, and finally left us with a drizzly spring night. We thought we heard thunder several times, but we were actually hearing the rumbling roar of jets flying over from nearby Holloman AFB. We are either mesmerized or dizzied by the huge changes we see and feel on days like yesterday. New Mexico is a potent drug for one addicted to seeing and experiencing new things. We only have about a week here before heading west to Arizona, and I am already feeling sad about leaving this enchanting state.

Weather over the San Andreas Mountains

Our campsite at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park