Pinball continued

... There was a lesson on tamale- and tortilla-making. Rosa, our teacher, hails from Michoacán, and is the wife of the overseer out here. She is so lovely and her chile sauce is out of this world regarding its depth of flavor. We made so many tamales and a small mountain of tortillas, and I plan to source some great masa back home so that I can practice and make my own. Rosa plucked these corn husks from her own garden.

Here was dinner, which included a spectacularly delicious salad of dandelion greens, roasted sweet potatoes and beets, candied pecans, fennel, orange segments, dried cherries, pecorino and an incredible vinaigrette crafted from reduced balsamic, Prosecco, fresh orange juice and a million herbs.

Our main was a short rib ragù atop fettuccine. I told y'all we'd eat well!

This morning there were petroglyphs, dating from the 1400s or later and assumed to have been crafted by Comanche tribe members. Most were of animals, presumably those they hunted. To get to these, we drove to a part of the ranch we'd not yet explored -part of the Llano Estacado- forded a shallow river and hightailed it by enormous slabs of layered rock under and between which rattlesnakes could definitely be staying cool. I'm sure I looked like a prancing ninny, but having been told two days ago of a six-footer having been seen recently and just this morning hearing about it being tarantula season, I'd have walked to those glyphs on stilts if I'd had some. Can y'all imagine an effing six-foot rattlesnake?! Jesus h. I am not an overly fearful gal, but snakes and spiders are not creatures I wish to encounter at any time.

I made four small apple-pear pies -one for Rosa, one for the ranch owners who have been so generous in showing us around, two for us- and played with my adopted passel of kittens, deeply wishing I could bring them all home. I finally got to talk to the boys who begged me to return today. Tomorrow, boys, I promise! And so I'm off now, to shower and pack. There are tamales to be eaten, chile to be made, kittens to snuggle.

Remote ranch adventures, days 2-3

To adequately cover all we have done since yesterday morning would take time and bandwidth I do not have. We are whirling dervishes spinning across a remote ranch as if it's a giant pinball game: Here is a century-old cemetery in which a family of crytpo-Jews are buried. Their ancestors came from Spain via Mexico and these generations lived and died on the land that is now this ranch. Their gravestones still rest within a beautiful dry-stack, rock-wall rectangle, some turned topsy by time, shifting land, roots and wind; a cross placed snugly in the top peak of a Star of David adorning one, tells us what their residents wouldn't or couldn't have.

There is Fort Hatch, surrounded by land still turning up the treasures it's held for decades: arrow heads; bullets; wagon bolts; hand-forged nails. The arrow heads are crafted from rock not native to this part of the country; once you know what to look for, the colors stand out against the more muted hues indigenous to this land. Fort Hatch was once considered as a Civil War outpost but was ultimately thought to be too far from Texas and so was abandoned for War purposes. These walls, also dry-stack, remain.

Here a clearing full of petrified wood, trees-now-rocks nestled among prickly pear cacti and their scrubby and succulent friends. You can make prickly pear jelly, if you're willing to pluck the spiny magenta barrels from the more aggressively spiky paddles, boil and then scrape them clean, juice and cook them down. Not me, friends.

There is the bed of what was once the inland sea, a body of water that covered most of what is now New Mexico. We walk across it, marveling at the passage of 75 million years.

There is the surreal Star Axis, brainchild of the eccentric mathematician-artist Charles Ross, soaring out of a Ross-made chasm in the mesa. Nearly forty years in the making, the steps leading to the star hole sit parallel with Earth's axis and lead you to spot Polaris in perfectly due-North fashion. Each stair, when completed, will be marked with the point in time, both past and future, at which you can see Polaris from that vantage. The stairs climb eleven stories, and the views are breathtaking. Don't ask me for additional explanation. It's all entirely too-mathy for me to really understand, but it's very cool. You can read more via the Star Axis link above.

To be continued because I am SO pooped.

Off to BlogHer '14

San Jose, here I come. After the very rude awakening that tomorrow's 3:45am alarm will be, I'll hop my cab to the airport and head west to Cali. I have a maternal health event sponsored by Merck to attend a couple hours after I arrive and then get to have dinner with one of my best college friends, Trisha, and the fabulous Paige, who I met when we both served as bridesmaids in T's wedding. I cannot wait to see those two women! Yee-howdy for gal-pals! And then it's off to the races of BlogHer. If this year's conference even matches, much less exceeds, last year's experience, I'm in for another big, inspiring treat. Will blog from the road. Today's lunch salad atop the gorgeous(!) hand-crafted wood board my friend, Suzanne, sent me. I received it today- what a beautiful surprise!