got a new pair of shoes, so i set out walking to the back canyons again, and as i walked i became determined to make it to that place i wrote about earlier, the line between the apache reservation and the national forest. i had heard there was a fence back there, but i wasn't sure, and the other day i made it almost there before i turned around, not quite sure if crossing a canyon wash was what i was supposed to be doing.

i've been collecting old deer and elk skulls and bones while i'm out there, in a georgia o'keefe kind of way, noticing that they are symbolic of new mexico's dry, sunny, spacious lands, and they are just sitting around, asking for the taking. other animals picked them over long ago, but now they look a little spooky, and my idea is to line up barbie dolls with them and pose group shots that way, but more about that later.

i stick on the main paths back on the canyon because i'm well aware that i'm sixty-six and capable of falling and needing someone to come after me. it's not so much that the main paths are easier to find - with an electonic device i would probably be easy to find anyway - but i figure if someone has to haul me out of there, having a road transversable by four-wheeler would be easier than making them carry me. but i've been taking it slow - building up my ankles, trying out my new shoes, only going a couple miles a day.

and this place where the reservation and forest come together is not that far away. it is marked by fence, and it's the forest that has put the signs on the fence. the fence is in reasonably good shape, at least there at the path. one thing i liked was that it was a pleasant little valley right there, with rock-filled canyon washes on two sides, so kind of isolated and secure at the same time. mountains rise from most angles. i could not see clearly on the reservation side, whether there was a path, or anything; it looked much like the forest side. all was quiet except for the tinnitus in my ears.

in fact, it was a beautiful, clear, sunny, fresh-air, blue-sky kind of day, stunningly gorgeous, and as far as i could tell i was the only person in the entire canyon, again. what happens is that lots of these rock-filled canyon washes come down and join each other about a half mile behind our house, and there is a stock tank back there, and a number of jeep trails, and one road in particular that goes back toward civilization to the west, along the base of the mountain, to where people actually have access to the place. the canyon (board tree canyon) is used by hunters and by this one rancher who i believe fills the stock tank. the other day i believe it was him, or his people, who had come back to get his cows, who were back by the stock tank chomping away on the lush grasses back there. and in fact, i found lots of grass that had been chomped pretty low.

i also found a very clear horse trail, thin but well worn, that ran more or less parallel to the east-west road (as it was curving ovv to the north, to the reservation), and this horse trail crossed the road very distinctly not far from that stock tank. what was striking about the horse trail was that it was very well worn. the road itself, not so much, as if i were one of the few that used it. but the horse trail, it looked like it got wear regularly.

i didn't see another animal, human, deer or elk, on the whole journey, which couldn't have been more than a couple miles. there was, however, a deer skeleton, up there by the fence, and it was sitting there by itself, so i grabbed it and brought it home. i think after a while you probably get used to them, and you put them on your doors and such, and next thing you know i'll be skinning them and eating them, and knowing how to leave them out so they get picked over by the birds. they're just animals, and a few of them lose out every year, to hunters, or to whatever, and their bones aren't going to walk out of those lands on their own volition. as one who was becoming more familiar with the place, i felt like that was one way i could relate to it. back home, through our broken fence and a little path down through our land, i brought the skeleton and placed it with the others. i'll take the barbies out there as soon as i get the chance.