Pot Creek: The Ruins of the Interpretation of the Ruins

Back in 2017, a columnist for the Taos News wrote about Pot Creek, the area's "best-kept secret archaeological site." It was not until earlier this summer, a mere seven years later, that I thought to check that out.

I had seen the entrance signage many times,  but I did not know that "For 25 years or so this little gem has been closed to visitors. But while still officially closed, the Forest Service turns a blind eye to eager curiosity seekers." (Yes, grammarians, that is a "dangling modifier." Evidently no one edited "Backpackerbill.") 

This is a site that was re-discovered by Luria Vickery in the early 1970s while doing work on an advanced degree in archaeology. In 1992 a Forest Service team, under the cultural guidance of a Picuris Pueblo representative Richard Mermejo, and a representative of Taos Pueblo, spent a considerable sum shoring up the remains of an ancient Pot Creek pueblo dwelling and kiva, making it available to the public.

It included a dozen interpretive signs spaced out along a hardened pathway with benches for contemplation at rest stops. The signs and benches are still there in surprisingly good condition after 25 years of neglect.

Back then, the Forest Service also developed a paved parking area with rest rooms, which sadly deteriorated beyond repair. A docent lived on the site at the time, providing information and guided tours. Of course, there is none today. Since then, the site has gone into serious neglect and has been closed for the past few decades.

Aggressive signage that the locals ignore.

Part of the problem may be a joint ownership of the site between the US Forest Service and Southern Methodist University, whose Fort Burgwin satellite site is nearby. 

I pulled in there, seeing one other vehicle (never met its occupant) and a barbed wire fence. It was easy to find the path along the fence that led to a break and to step through.

There was a map of the interpretive trail. It felt like something left by the Ancient Ones, although I could read it.

Marco the dog and I followed the trail. We walked through today's piñon-juniper forest through land that at one time was cornfield and dwellings and kivas. Few if any trees, most likely.

There are other Ancestral Puebloan sites like that in the hills south of Taos along NM 518. I was once walking one of the many "social trails" and came across a complete kiva, boarded over, with a very rickety modern ladder leading down into it.

A similar boarded-up kiva at Pot Creek itself.

I thought for a moment about exploring that other kiva, but then considered that if the ladder broke, I would be down there alone, and expecting a Chesapeake Bay retriever to punch 911 into a cell phone is expecting a bit too much.

But all was not static at Pot Creek. Forestry crews had been on-site quite recently, thinning the timber. Piles of juniper logs were everywhere — great firewood for somebody. Here they are paired with signage. Yeah, the "magic of juniper" would be in my wood-burner. Unfortunately, it is more than a hundred miles away

So clearly there is no money in the public-education archaeology budget, but there is money in the wildland fire-mitigation budget, and someone decided to spend some of that at Pot Creek, perhaps as a gesture toward preserving the site.

Finally the trail led to this parking lot, with vegetation slowly cracking the asphalt. Room for fifty or more vehicles, but none on that day. And the handrails were overdue to be repainted. 

The Ancestral Pueblo people who lived at Pot Creek abandoned it centuries ago. Maybe they were too vulnerable to incursions by mounted Comanche raiders and moved to either Taos or Picuris pueblos. 

Perhaps someday, someone will re-interpret the interpretive site: "This flat area, now thickly covered with pine duff, was once a gathering place for pilgrims who came to visit these more ancient sites. Excavations have revealed a layer of pebbles mixed with bitumen, possibly a ceremonial site or a site of athletic contests."

Or maybe the clash of bureaucracies can be resolved.

Six Years After the Spring Creek Fire

The Spring Creek Fire ripped through big parts of Costilla and Huerfano counties in southern Colorado in June-July 2018. Periodically I drive through one area because it's on my route to New Mexico.

A lot of (mostly summer) homes in this area survived — clearly because they benefited from retardant drops all around them. It sure changes the view from the old picture window though.

This photo is published in accordance with the Colorado Photography Act of 1964 (familiarly called the "Ektachrome Act"), which requires that all professional and semi-professional photographers in the state—essentially anyone who has ever sold a photo—shoot at least one full roll of slide film on scenic shots featuring golden aspen groves

How Moose Came to Colorado and How They Expanded

A bull moose in Colorado (Photo: Backcountry Hunters and Anglers)

I personally never saw a Colorado moose until 2019 -- in North Park, of course -- although I had looked for them before, both there and around Lake City in southwestern Colorado.

Since their introduction in the late 1970s, they have spread out from North Park both on their own and with human help. 

Here is an interesting long read about that process, "Of Moose and Men."  I had not idea that Marlin Perkins' Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was still being broadcast in 1978 and that the old nature-faker managed to insert himself into the moose transfers.

Gear Review: Pocket Binoculars

 

 

From All About Birds, Cornell University's great birding site (I rely on it a lot), comes a review of pocket binoculars: "Our Search for the Best Tiny Binoculars."

The review covers a price range of $100 to $1,000, in both double-hinge or one-hinge design, which, as you can see, I prefer.  In the photo (not reviewed) -- Wind River 8 x 25. Made in Japan for Leupold; they have given good service for their low-end price. Or there is always Swarovski, which are always top-rated, have great service -- and you pay for that.

 

Reviewing binoculars is inherently subjective, and what works well for one viewer may not work for another. Individual aspects of a person’s body geometry such as eye width, eye depth, hand size, and overall size can affect how well a binocular model fits.  

Do you carry "binoculars" or a 'binocular"? Industry types seem to prefer the latter usege, as do these writers.

Of course, to put pocket binoculars in your shirts, you need capacious pockets. Some designers of outdoor clothing just don't get that.

Our Southern Rockies Desert is Amazingly Young

The northern border of the Chihuahan Desert in is (very roughly) US 50 and the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado. It forms an "embayment" in eastern Frémont County, and otherwise it laps against the various ranges of the Southern Rockies, extending southward into the Mexican state for which it is named.

One of its iconic critters will be celebrated September 27–28 in and around La Junta, Colorado, during the annual Tarantula Fest.

In this video from New Mexico State University,

Intrepid host Kevin Von Finger guides you through the fascinating arid environment of the Chihuahuan Desert, our North American Outback. Visit ancient caves with revealing clues that indicate this desert is surprisingly young. See gigantic skeletons from animals that roamed the area in the last Ice Age-mammoths, giant sloths, and prehistoric camels. Learn about the phenomenal changes that this land has seen since the beginning of earth. Our North American Outback provides a unique journey to North America's largest desert.

And climate change? Honey, you ain't seeing nothing like the High Plains Altithermal.

Identifying a Bird's Nest

I was out crawling around in the scrub oaks looking for mushrooms earlier, and I found this nest.  (As for mushrooms, a few elderly Shaggy Parasols were all there were.)

I checked with a more knowledgeable birder, who said, "Building a nest hanging in the fork of a tree branch like that is consistent with several vireo species."

And I had seen and heard some Plumbeous Vireos (the common ones here) nearby earlier in the summer.

I'll call that an ID.

Until 1997, Plumbeous, Cassin's, and Blue-headed Vireos were all lumped as "Solitary Vireos." Such edicts from the Big Bird Cabal help support the field guide-publishing industry.

Some Mushroom Guides Are Good — and Some Might Kill You

Two reliable guidebooks — and some elderly Shaggy Parasols

A post on X-formerly-Twitter two days ago linked to another post on Reddit that claimed,

My entire family was in hospital last week after accidentally consuming poisonous mushrooms.

My wife purchased a book from a major online retailer for my birthday. The book is entitled something similar to "Mushrooms UK: A Guide to Harvesting Safe and Edible Mushrooms."

I don't know if this incident is true or not, but ones like it have been predicted. A year ago there was a rush of articles about mushroom field guides. created by artificial intelligence networks (chatbots) that are for sale on Amazon ("makor online retailer"?) and other places.

Other AI-written books are flooding in too, some bearing the names of real authors. Amazon claims to be dealing with this issue, but don't hold your breath.

Meanwhile, if you want good Southern Rockies mushroom guides, there are some written by real people who know their fungi.

PPMS president James Chelin
talking mushrooms in the field.

For years, Vera Stucky Evenson's Mushrooms of Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountains was my guide. That 1997 edition is now out of print, and used copies on Amazon go for more than $100.

A revised version, Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountain Region, is more reasonably priced.

Local is always best, and now I supplement "Saint Vera" with Foraging Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountains, written by several people within the Colorado Mycological Society and the Pikes Peak Mycological Society.

 It is is not as broad, because it focuses on (a) edible wild mushrooms and (b) look-alikes that might not be so edible. Plus it includes some recipes, including one for hawk's wing pickles that I have already tried. 

It's the go-to field guide right now, as far as I am concerned, if edible mushrooms are the goal. Maybe I will have to go for Evenson's second book eventually. After all, she has an underground laboratory at the Denver Botanic Gardens — how perfect is that?

 

Every Colorado Wildfire from 2009 — Until Last Week

The 2011 Sand Gulch Fire on the San Isabel NF just before it blew up to 2500 acres.

 If you wonder where wildfires ignite in Colorado, follow this link and scroll down to a compex interactive map.

It was created by journalists at the Colorado Sun online publication (and a good for statewide -- although inevitably Denver-centric) news. Authors John Ingold and Danika Worthington write:

As fires explode around the Front Range, we wanted to map out where they were in relation to each other. But taking it further, we stepped away from the minute-by-minute updates to take a historical view of fires and where they burn. 

We looked through the National Interagency Fire Center’s records on fires since 2009 and plotted them on a map — all 10,849 of them. What resulted was a galaxy of blazes, but one with a clear message: Reported fires tend to happen most often where people live.

One caution: This data comes from the National Interagency Fire Center's database. That means it favors fires that burn on or adjacent to public lands.

There are in fact many wildfires in eastern Colorado that don't show up here. And while I live where there is a mix of public and private land, I can see that some fires in my area are missing, which I think is due to falling through the cracks in federal reporting and cataloging.

Travels: The Great Dismal Swamp and a Rebellion

Last April, while visiting the Virginia coast for my wife's family reunion (more on that below), I held out for the one thing that I wanted to do — to see at least some of the The Great Dismal Swamp.

Despite the name, no Goths were spotted.

How could I resist that name? I have been reading about it for years. I kind of half expected that it would summon the Goth kids to drift through the cypress swamps, but evidently they prefer urban graveyards.

Even though the  112,000-acre Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and the adjacent Dismal Swamp State Park in North Carolina (14,432 acres) cover the heart of it, much is gone, drained for agriculture and logging. Part of that draining started in 1763, directed by one George Washington, who had enormous land holdings in Virginia, at least on paper. Canals and railroads were built to bring out timber.

The refuge was established in the mid-1970s on land donated by timber companies, and restoration work has been underway since then. North Carolina's park was created about the same time, with assistance from The Nature Conservancy.

M. and I tossed our day packs in the rented Prius and set out. Disappointment: the visitor center was closed, on a weekday. So no trail maps, natural history exhibits, or whatever the USFWS was hiding in there. No explanation was given online or by a sign posted on the door — just  closed.

Instead, we strolled a level path through a grove of loblolly pines. If I remember right, these were planted in the 1970s, so they have done well in fifty years. They are known for fast growth.

But the swamp! So we studied the signage at the parking lot and set out on a road toward the center. There is a large, fishable lake there, Lake Drummond, but since we were staying adjacent to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, we were not looking for big water.

This was more like it: a boardwalk. While a few old cypressess remained -- they had been heavily logged -- most of what we saw were younger trees planted in the 1980s in wetland reshaped with heavy equipment. But they are doing well.

Early April was a good time to visit. The temperatures were mild (in the 50s F.), the sun shone, and there were no mosquitoes.

More loblolly pines on a nature trail.

The center tree is one of few old-growth cypress.

 

Cypress marsh.

Another walk took us down a straight-line former railroad beside a drainage canal.

Can't have a swamp without basking turtles.

Red maple is also common in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Mostly zebra swallowtails, I think.

We could have done more, but it was time to head back to the coast and rendezvous with the siblings-in-law for a seafood dinner in Norfolk, and since I came all this way, I was ready for more softshell crab.

Two of M.'s siblings have moved to Virgina over the years, but whose ancestors got off the boat somewhere along the James River? Mine. 

So I detoured another day through Surry County, on the more rural south bank, to take in the sights and snack on local peanuts, whose packaging indirectly commemorates Bacon's Rebellion (1676–77).

Go back and read it about it, and the rhetoric may ring a bell: "The coastal elites don't care about us and our problems! We're fed up! We're marching on the capital!" 

And so they did, torching the House of Burgesses in Jamestown, which was still the colonial capital.

You call January 6, 2021 an "insurrection"? That was an insurrection — and it was eventually suppressed with bloodshed.

The "Bacon's Castle" on the package was not Nathaniel Bacon's own house, but another manor that was occupied and looted by his supporters. It's not far away.

Now I Know Why Mosquitoes Love Me

 

'"Type O — yes!"

One day a few years ago, my wife and I were walking one summer's afternoon along the Riverwalk in Cañon City.  Unfortunately, various ditches and sloughs were providing excellent habitat for mosquitoes, insects created by the evil anti-god to plague us mammals.

Having forgotten to apply bug spray, I was being hammered while she walked along without much concern. Eventually, I had to tell her that I was going to back to the car, thus spoiling an otherwise pleasant stroll.

But there's a reason! Maybe it's because they like my smell:

That doesn’t mean someone who’s particularly fragrant to humans will always be a mosquito target — mosquitoes are sensitive to different types of smells, even ones humans can’t detect, Dr. [Lindy] McBride said. For instance, “mosquitoes love forearm odor,” she said. “No one ever thinks of their arms as being smelly.”

Or it's my blood type. I have Type O+, like 38 percent of the population.( But it's O- that makes you a "universal donor.") Both O types together make up 43 percent of the population.

Blood type may also matter, said Dr. Christopher Bazzoli, an emergency medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic who specializes in wilderness medicine. Mosquitoes seem to gravitate toward people with Type O blood, he said, for reasons researchers haven’t confirmed.

Now this would be more interesting if M. knew her blood type. But she has never donated and never has been hospitalized, so she does not.

Clearly, mosquitos are optimized for the most common type.

Memo: pack the bug spray.

Milkweed with a Visitor

I leaned my spinning rod against a milkweed and then saw that someone was already there. It's a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, but I am not enough of an expert to say if is is Eastern or Western.  Chaffee County, so on the Eastern Slope. Does that count as "west of the Rockies"? Or is it just "west of the Mississippi" that counts. Confusing.

The experts at What's that Bug? would seem to lean toward Western.  Butterflies and Moths of North America  (I am bookmarking that site) seems to agree.

OK, so Western. And Showy Milkweed. (There is no Shy, Retiring Milkweed, but there are Wallflowers. Around here, they tend to have orange blooms.)

Fog Coming over the Dam

 Fishing on Sunday evening at Lake Isabel far-west Pueblo County, Colorado. An upslope flow pushes fog up the St. Charles River — a reverse-spillway effect.

Bobcats Released in SE Colorado

Our friends at Wet Mountain Wildlife received these bobcat cubs last year, and in May they were released near where they (or at least one) were found, at the Army's Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) northeast of Trinidad.

PCMS was created in the late 1970s (officially opened in 1983) when the Army wanted more area for mechanized-warfare training than was available at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs.

Fort Carson itself was created by expropriating some ranches south of town during World War II. The "city fathers" of Colorado Springs wanted to bring military spending to their quiet town of 35,000 or so population -- and they got it.

The founding of PCMS was a more bitter process. Various areas were considered, including South Park. In the end, several large ranches near the Purgatory River were taken by eminent domain despite some landowners' efforts to fight the takings in court. Others just took the money.

The Army has sponsored some goodwill tours for politicians, journalists, etc. but I have visited PCMS as a hunter. There are some hoops to be jumped through, but it is possible to hunt there (and on Fort Carson itself).

With an older friend (a rancher/retired schoolteacher) I made several trips to PCMS in the 1990s, before his passing. We signed up to hunt quail, but mainly we were visiting some of the archaeological sites, the ruined stage station from the Barlow and Sanderson line, and more recent ruins like the 1920s–1930s Colorado Interstate Gas pipeline-construction camp, which has played new roles during Army training.

On one trip we drove up to an empty ranch house. A lot of equipment had been left there in a barn. 

The back door of the house was unlocked, so we walked in. There was furniture in place, kids' toys on the floor, and a 1975 Sears, Roebuck catalog lying on the kitchen counter, all covered with a light layer of dust and sadness.  Was this the home of a family who fought to stay or one who took the money and walked away? 

We could only turn and go back out the door, kind of creeped out, feeling like intruders.

Hailstorm Leaves Damage, Bad Feelings towards Stormchasers

You can complain about Instagrammers and "influencers" jamming up in pretty places, but now they are ruining hailstorms.

"Stormchasers" have been around for a while, especially since it became possible to download weather radar on the go. Last night's devasting hailstorm in NE Colorado produced not just complaints about broken glass, damaged crops, paint stripped from houses and so, but about the chasers as well

Here are some comments off the popular northern Colorado Facebook weather page that I linked to above, just to save you the scrolling:

Driving west from Kansas yesterday, I was passed by so many storm chasers, I wondered what was up. Probably close to 50 different cars, vans and trucks

The amount of storm chasers out here last night was ridiculous. I understand needing to study storms to better predict and prepare for the future, but last night was over the top. I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying there were probably a thousand “storm chasers”. The amount of cars flying down our dirt roads and highways recklessly was scary. Cars ignoring dead end signs and continuing down trail roads. People live here. The crops growing in the fields and the livestock we are trying to tend to are our livelihoods. Have some respect!

 I seen close to 100 people along side highway 34 and off on the side roads between Brush and Akron! I don't know if they realize that storms can get dangerous real quick!

I couldn’t believe the volume of chasers out there, frankly it’s gotten out of hand. The basic rules of the road and safety come first. Some streamers actually running stop signs and of course speeding at the expense of other drivers, wildlife, and property. I’d be angry if I was one of the impacted residents.

I watched a live yesterday from a storm chaser, I won’t name names. But the convoy was HUGE tons of people…..reckless watching the others in front of them. For sure. 

My family all live near Akron-my two kids and granddaughter‘s family are all south. My daughter and her husband have a cattle ranch with two cattle guards across their property containing mommas and babies. He had to go down and stop the cars from racing through their property and hitting the cattle-some people are crazy these days. Our rural area isn’t meant for a race track so I’m glad someone cares!

Now some people found "chasing" to be genuinely educational:

I got to go storm/tornado chasing with some PhDs from NCAR [National Center for Atmospheric Research] (I started a weather club at my kids' middle school so it was a special opportunity) and had the time of my life! No tornados, but a couple impressive super cells, and breakfast at 3 a.m. after we drove over 800 miles. Good times. Would love to do it again with people who know what they're doing!

Just for grins I went to Instagram and searched "Colorado hailstorm," getting 984 hits, but not all from this year. Maybe there will be more by day's end.

But who gets to decide who is "reckless and irresponsible"? If you are making money, you are exempt?

Hoping for a Mast Crop

Male catkins mix with new leaves on Gambel Oak.

Walking around, I see a pretty good mix of leaves and flowers on the scrub (Gambel) oak. Because it grows in clone clusters, some are already mostly leafed while others are just beginning. 

I suppose that the biologists would claim that there is evolutionary advantage there: if the early bloomers are hit by frost, the late-bloomers might still be safe. 

I just remember last year driving past miles of frost-killed catkins—which meant few if any acorns formed, so many calories of wildlife food were just not there.

When a wildlife biologist refers to "the mast crop," I get warm tingles, because that word goes way way back connectimg our Colorado forests in a sense to the forests where Old English and its predecessors was spoken.

"Fallen nuts or acorns serving as food for animals." Old English mæst, the collective name for the fruit of the beech, oak, chestnut, and other forest trees, especially serving as food for swine, from Proto-Germanic *masto (source also of Dutch, Old High German, German mast "mast;" Old English verb mæsten "to fatten, feed"), perhaps from PIE *mad-sta-, from root *mad- "moist, wet," also used of various qualities of food (source also of Sanskrit madati "it bubbles, gladdens," medah "fat, marrow;" Latin madere "be sodden, be drunk;" Middle Persian mast "drunk;" Old English mete "food," Old High German muos "meal, mush-like food," Gothic mats "food").