Fall into Winter

I don’t know how it happened, but it’s winter already. It was still summer in September. And then it was briefly fall in October and now, (sigh) it’s winter. It’s almost noon and it’s still 29°f outside. And it snowed in Santa Fe a couple of days ago.

John and I managed to get some last-minute fall activities in while it was still pretty outside. New Mexico fall color isn’t great, but we have some. We have aspen in the mountains that turn yellow, although they hadn’t really started turning yet when we went to the top of the Sandias toward the end of September. (Back when it was still summer!)

Also in the fall, the cottonwoods down by the river turn yellow. Here is the Bosque trail, which I love.

I had wanted to live near this trail, but it’s further for John to commute and we weren’t able to find a house we liked in our price range. The houses right near the river cost millions of dollars, and the ones further out are often either very run down or quite expensive.

Some of the fancy houses you can see from the trail are behind chain link fence topped with razor wire, because even though they are very expensive houses, they are also close to very rough areas. If I had millions of dollars for a fancy house I wouldn’t want to live behind razor wire.

One of the appeals of some of these houses is they have irrigation rights. The bit of water you see in the photo isn’t the river, it’s an acequia, which is an agricultural canal. The river itself is on the other side of the trail and generally can’t be seen through the bosque (the cottonwoods) unless you hike down to it.

On one hand it seems like good environmental practice to have set aside the bosque and not built along the river. Unfortunately the bosque is dying. The cottonwoods can’t grow new saplings without flooding, and the river doesn’t flood anymore. All the cottonwoods are reaching the end of their lifespan and there are no new ones to replace them.

It almost makes me wish the city had gone ahead and built along the river like most riverfront cities do. If we can’t have a healthy natural ecosystem, it would be nice to at least have a beautiful urban park or river walk.

Also over this past weekend we went to see the last of the fall color in the mountains, but we were a couple of weeks past peak. We didn’t mind – fall color isn’t that great in New Mexico even at peak, lol. We still had a nice walk in the chilly, winter New Mexico sunshine.

The locally famous place to go see fall color is the “4th of July” Campground in the Manzano mountains. That’s because there are some scrubby maple that turn red in the fall. It’s nothing spectacular, but we can’t be picky in the high desert. We’re not going to have fall colors like the midwest or northeast parts of the country.

Even though we were a couple of weeks past peak, the “4th of July” trailhead and campground were crowded. So John and I drove about a mile farther and hiked on some dirt roads. Up one road was the remains of an old cabin. The rocks in the foreground are its foundation.

We were surprised how many dirt roads there were with fire pits at the ends of them. It seems like at times there must be a large number of campers in the area, but when we went there was no one. Everyone was a mile down the road at the campground and trailhead. We wondered if the area got a lot of use in the summer, but we doubted it because there was no water – no creek or lake or anything. We decided it must be used by hunters, but we’re not sure when. I think the fall deer season may be over by now, and there might be a spring turkey season, I’m not sure.

We had it to ourselves and it was a nice wandering hike, surprisingly flat for the mountains. Here’s my “fall color” photos. Short, scrubby maple, like little spots of fire in a juniper and ponderosa forest.

We really enjoyed the walk.