lately i've taken to walking out the back side of our land into the national forest, and going out there to where people tear around in four-wheelers and go hunting. there is an elk skeleton out there, near a place where four or five creek beds come together, and it's a kind of magical spot, this creek junction, because i know that long ago it was where the creeks came together that things happened. i'm not sure if they had water back then - we sure don't, now - but the shape of the land tells me that, even in dry times, you might want to be where creeks come together just because that's where you'd come looking if you were out there looking.

so out there where these creeks come together, you can cross the big creek and be at the base of a mountain that divides our valley from the apache reservation to the north. a road snakes around that mountain and goes up north to the reservation; i followed it, walking, today for only a couple of miles before i got nervous and turned around. i didn't want to go on the reservationw without permission, and i'd come to an unfamiliar place, a place where the footpath goes down and crosses the rocky creekbed before going back up on the other side.

when i got home i looked at google earth and noticed that i was still maybe a quarter mile from the reservation, so i still don't know what's there - is there a fence, and a sign that asks you to stay off? or is it simply unmarked, as it often is, in many places, and you have to just know where you are and when you should just turn around?

i did hear shots in the distance, probably my neighbors practicing hunting or actually hunting. it is the season, and hunters are out there, and i think i need to wear bright enough clothes that i'm clearly a walker not a deer.

i did also see a roundup - about a dozen cows, coming from back in the hinterlands, being led on a rope, or being pulled by a fourwheeler, with a couple of horsemen nearby making sure they didn't bolt off the path. i do believe mr. walker, the rancher, is rounding them up to take them down to tularosa for the winter. i do believe they will be happier down there, where it's 5000 feet lower and it just doens't get as cold as it gets here. those cows have been back in the forest pooping, and eating the grasses, and that's all well and good since they look healthy and they didn't really mind being led around on a rope, it was the most attention they'd got all summer.

our dogs, of course, don't like them at all. i let them come in, and i use their poop actively to make better soil, but i have a hard time with the dogs barking because i'm losing my hearing and i just don't need that kind of loud high-pitched stuff. but you can't tell a dog not to bark. it's programmed right into them.

well anyway to make a long story short i'm spending some time out back, out in the national forest, noticing things i hadn't seen, namely roads and paths that go places. there are holding tanks that have water, and the animals use them, and presumably the people do to - they maintain them, or they make sure the animals don't die and fall into them. i'm not sure how the system works - i know i'm not the only one out there, but i also know that once hunting season dies down, and the cows are down in tulie, there will be very little reason for anyone out there at all. which means that if i'm going to break my ankle or anything, i'd better have my communications systems in order, or be able to yell real loud. so far i haven't gone too far out of human hearing range, but i'm getting curious, and one thing that will mean is that i might put into practice my plan to walk overland to cloudcroft, about seventeen miles west. it's really not that far, and it's high mountain paths all the way. or at least i think there are paths. there's a good chance there will be nothing.