Some excursions

After my shift yesterday, I had more energy than the few days prior and decided to trek out to Hueco Tanks. Hueco Tanks is about a half hour outside of El Paso, a big outcropping of volcanic rock that was once covered by limestone but has been exposed through a period of weathering over the last 34-38 million years. Hueco means hollow in Spanish, and the site is marked by the number of holes that allow water to collect during rains and remain long into the dry season.


 

Because Hueco Tanks acts as a sort of oasis, it is sacred to a number of Native American tribes and has a number of petroglyphs, but to be honest, I didn't see any.

As I walked out to my car from the ranger station, along saunters this guy:


He didn't have a care in the world, and when I was a bit too far away to take a picture, he took a squat and peed in the middle of the road!

I arrived at 4 and the sun set at 5:30, so I knew I was losing light and needed to be quick. But it was difficult to give it justice. Every ledge that I scrambled over made me want to scramble over another. There was a diversity of plant life nestled in the rock. People think that the desert is desolate, but this one actually has a lot of life, if you know how to look. A canyon towhee and Pyrrhuloxia rustled in the grasses below me as I balanced across a narrow passageway of rock. A Lincoln's sparrow scolded me from a bush as I made my way up a crevice.





As the sun was setting, I sat at the Hueco Prieta and watched a flock of juncos scratch the grass litter, seemingly oblivious to me. Deciding it was probably time to get to my car before dark and more importantly, before the gate closed, I made my way through a triangular crevice back to the road. It was so cozy, the temperature so perfect, that I almost could have slept there. You know, if it hadn't been for this sign.


The next day, I did some chores around CDR before being sent out to drop a family off at the bus stop and then drop food off at one of Annunciation House's other buildings, Oscar Romero. The building is named after an Archbishop of El Salvador who was killed after speaking out against social injustices, torture, and corruption in that country during civil unrest in the late 70's. He was more recently officially martyred and canonized by the Catholic Church.

This building houses longer term guests, and is right next to the largest Border and Customs Patrol detention center in El Paso. I learned that this location holds upwards of 800 detainees, and was the location that recently had some bad press when some of the people being held there went on a hunger strike and were force fed. It seemed that the guards even eyed me with suspicion as I drove away.

I finished off the day with a hike with a new friend of mine, Alison. It was a challenging, mostly uphill climb on scree, and we cut it close at the end- having to race to make it to the gate before it closed at 5pm sharp. But we did make it to a location of a spring, mostly dried up now, but allowing for more diverse plant life. There were two cotton wood trees that rustled in the wind, a beautiful sound against the silence of the mountain and the view of the valley.