Tag: Books

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Fly Fishing the Driftless, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, September 26-29, 2021

I had breakfast in Houston yesterday with a lawyer from Minneapolis, a compliance officer for a securities dealer. He had grown up in Norfthfield, about 120 miles from where we stayed near Spring Grove, and went to law school at the University of Minnesota. I mentioned that we’d been to an area near Austin and Rochester, in the Driftless region, and said how much I liked it. He’d never heard of the Driftless.

We drove 2,122 miles. We fished in three states, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. We fished in five streams, and caught wild brown trout and native brookies. I finally cast a bamboo fly rod. We saw lots of corn.

It’s two days from Houston, Texas, to Spring Grove, Minnesota, which is only 22 miles from Houston, Minnesota. I’d like to tell you that Houston, Minnesota, and Houston, Texas, are similar, but they’re not. Houston, Texas, is located on a flat coastal plain in Southeast Texas, and has 2.31 million residents. Houston, Minnesota, is located in the relatively hilly Driftless region of Southeast Minnesota, and has 979 residents.

They were both named after Sam Houston. Houston, Minnesota, has a wider selection of farm implements.

According to our Minnesota guide, Tim Carver of The Driftless Fly Fishing Company, a lot of his clients are from Chicago. From Chicago, the Driftless holds the closest native trout. I guess that if we lived in Chicago we’d only be five hours from Houston, Minnesota. From here it’s 19 hours. We’d have to be Cubs fans though, so it’s not worth it.

* * *

Gretchen, the Houston Orvis fishing manager, asked where we’d been lately and I told her about the Driftless, how pretty it was, how different from the rest of the Midwest. Gretchen is from New Hampshire, and I told her how it reminded me of New England. She’d never heard of the Driftless.

I hadn’t planned to fish in Minnesota on this trip. In Minnesota I had imagined that one day we would visit the far north, the Boundary Waters, but after I rented a farmhouse near Decorah, Iowa, I figured out it was actually in Minnesota. It was a sign.

Let’s get this out of the way now: each of the streams we fished in the Driftless was a bit different, but I suspect that if I found a place I liked in Iowa, I could find a similar place in Wisconsin, or in Minnesota. None of the water was big, the largest stream was maybe 40 feet across, and each was a mix of pools, slow water, bends, and riffles. What was remarkable was not the variation, but the amount. Minnesota claims more than 700 miles of fishable trout water, Iowa 2,500, and Wisconsin more than 13,000. If I fished a mile of stream each day, I’d be tottering around in a walker and still not out of Iowa.

Our guide Tim was a youngish man, at least to my old eyes, and I suspect that guiding and fly fishing are his anchors. I couldn’t imagine what Tim would do if there wasn’t water to fish, and nothing seemed more important to him than our having a good day. I liked Tim a lot.

We fished the morning on the South Fork Root River. There is also a South Branch of the Root, and a North and a Middle Branch, plus each has tributaries of its own. After they all join together the Root joins the Mississippi near La Crescent, Minnesota, across the Mississippi from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Even with all that joining the Root never seemed like a big river.

On the South Fork we crossed a public easement at the edge of a bit of pasture, and Tim placed Kris at the base of a long pool banked on one side by the pasture and on the other by a sandstone bluff. It was pretty characteristic Driftless karst topology. Kris spent the rest of the morning fishing that pool. Every time she thought about moving she caught another fish.

We started out fishing dry dropper rigs; at first I fished a pheasant tail nymph under a parachute Adams but later switched to a brace of dries, a spinner and a dun. I started downstream below Kris, and then moved around her and upstream.

The fish were spooky, and I was making, for me, long casts. I know all this modern stuff about keeping casts short and relying on stealthy approaches, but there are few things more thrilling than taking a trout on a dry fly after a long perfect cast, or even a pretty good cast, or even a good enough cast. It is such a joy.

* * *

To meet Tim, we came into Preston down a long hill onto the main street. It was a handsome street, lined with houses and shops that seemed to pre-date World War I. A lot of the buildings sported American flags. It reminded me of a record cover I’d once owned, or maybe that I imagined, of Charles Ives’ New England Holiday Symphony, an Impressionistic cover that I recall as a mishmash of American flags and New England town. Likely as not I was making it up to fit the moment.

At the shop, there was a ridiculously good-looking young couple from Rochester, also meeting their guide. He was handsome and tall and dark and she was tall and red-headed and movie-star pretty. I fantasized that they were young doctors or some such from the Mayo Clinic–it’s what Rochester is best known for–learning to fly fish (they were being fitted for rented waders, so I think that I was right they were learning. I was certainly right about them being ridiculously good looking).

We talked about where they were from, and I mentioned that Preston reminded me more of New England than of the Midwest–I was still pondering the memory of that probably mis-remembered record cover–and she said that was good to know, because she’d never been to New England. I suppose that some day she’ll drive into a New England town and think to herself that it looks absolutely nothing like Preston, Minnesota.

In Decorah, Iowa, we fished with Liz Siepker, of Driftless Fishers LLC. I had googled guides in Decorah, and picked Liz first because I realized that after 20-odd states I had yet to hire a woman guide. Unfortunately Liz was only available for an afternoon, and I wanted to fish a full day. I emailed another guide who never answered, and a third who responded that on a Monday in October both he and his guiding partner had to work their real jobs. We booked the afternoon with Liz.

When I met Liz I accused her of having a Midwestern accent, but it turned out she was from Pennsylvania. Her masters was in one or another kind of fishology, and she got to Iowa via a fisheries job in Missouri and an Iowa-born husband. I still swear I heard her say you betcha.

At least theoretically, fishing in Iowa differs from the other Driftless states in a couple of ways, neither of which affected us. There is a trout season in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, and with a few exceptions in both states, trout fishing in the Minnesota and Wisconsin Driftless mostly stops on October 15. Iowa has no season, fishing is year ’round, and our guides in Minnesota and Wisconsin admitted that in late fall and winter they would cross into Iowa for their own off-season fishing.

Iowa also stocks rainbow trout in some places, though where we fished we only caught wild browns–I think Wisconsin has stopped all stocking in the Driftless. There is natural reproduction in Iowa, both among brown trout and brook trout and I’d guess the general population, and at least one Iowa creek is set aside for naturally reproducing native brook trout.

Liz suggested that we fish Trout Run, in a county park on the edge of urban Decorah. To be honest, compared to Houston, Texas, Decorah is never particularly urban, though it is multiples larger than Houston, Minnesota. It’s still fewer than 10,000 people. Urban or no, on Trout Run we were isolated enough to forget that the town was nearby, and the only other angler we saw was back at the parking lot; us going, him arriving.

Even if Liz wasn’t from Iowa, you betcha she knew the water like a native. She even took us on a jungle adventure into deepest, darkest Iowa.

With Liz we fished nymphs under a foam indicator with no added split shot. Like Kris the morning before in Minnesota, I caught all of my fish, maybe a dozen, fishing one deep pool. Nothing we caught in the Driftless was particularly large, but all of the guides assured us that there were 22-inch browns right there, right where we were fishing, and that nighttime fishing with mouse patterns was great for big browns. I’m sure it is, and I hope they enjoy it.

* * *

I am a superstitious baseball fan, which is redundant, and one of my longest running superstitions is Frito pie. Do you know Frito pie? If you’re not from New Mexico or Texas you probably don’t. It is great stuff: spicy, unctuous chile mixed into a bed of crisp salty Fritos, then topped with onions and cheese and whatever else comes to hand. Sometimes a small Fritos bag is split down the side and the chili–at Texas high school football games it’s likely Wolf Brand from the can–the chili is mixed straight into the bag. It’s our version of a hot dog.

Frito pie is my comfort food for baseball superstitions. I’m constantly finding new sources of Frito pie in Houston, Texas (though not Houston, Minnesota), from ice houses to upscale, and if the Astros are losing, I eat Frito pie and know that I’ve done all that I can to help turn things around.

Anyway, we were in the Driftless in the final week of the baseball season and the Astros were stalled. After our afternoon fishing with Liz, Kris and I stopped at the Decorah Fareway grocery. There was no Wolf Brand in the canned soup aisle (which was also the Miracle Whip aisle–this was Iowa). I thought maybe the store stocked some kind of frozen chili, and found the store manager on the frozen food aisle. “Do ya’ll have frozen chili?”

I said those four words; I really did. It may have been the most Texas thing I’ve ever said. The guy just stared at me. After a bit he said I’ve never heard of anything like that and walked away. We found a chili spice mix where the Wolf Brand should have been, added it to some ground beef, and the Astros won the division. It was pretty good, too.

Liz had recommended the Root River Rod Company in Lanesboro, so on Tuesday on our way out of \Minnesota for Wisconsin we stopped there. Kris bought some stuff, and then bought some more stuff–she was jealous of Liz’s wading boots, so it was a pretty good day for the Root River Rod Company. Liz was right, it was a good shop, but best of all the owner, Steve Sobieniak, let me cast one of his bamboo rods; he both builds and restores bamboo. I cast one of his builds, and it was a lovely thing, casting soft and true. If I fished the Driftless day to day, season to season, that’s what I would own. The Driftless is bamboo rod water.

* * *

I’ve read that there are more certified organic farms in Driftless Wisconsin than in any other area in the States. The first night in Viroqua we ate at the farm-to-table Driftless Cafe. At the table next to us were guys passing around fish photos on their phones. I didn’t have the Frito pie, but it was wonderful. The second night at the Driftless Cafe (we went back the second night), we had the pizza, and not only were guys at the table next to us declaiming how they ate there every time they came to Viroqua to fish, our guide Matt was there for his Dad’s birthday. The third night (we made night three) we ate appetizers and a salad at the bar (which was inlaid with a swimming trout), and we saw their framed James Beard semi-finalist certificate. I reckon you don’t get a lot of James Beard semi-finalists in cafes in towns of fewer than 5,000, even if the cafe is pretty upscale. If I was still in Viroqua I’d be back for night four. They also have good martinis.

On Wednesday we fished a half-day with Matt Bethke of Driftless Angler. I figured we’d fish with Matt in the morning, then explore in the afternoon. Matt grew up in the area, moved around the country some, and came home to Westby, just up the road from Viroqua.

Agriculture almost killed the Driftless streams before World War II, sort of like agriculture almost killed the southern plains with the Dust Bowl. Trees were clear cut, everything was plowed for planting, and streams filled with silt from erosion. It was the damaged Wisconsin of A Sand County Almanac. What had been spring-fed coldwater wild-trout streams was choked with silt. The states have largely reversed the damage, and private groups like Trout Unlimited have also invested heavily in stream restoration.

Matt took us to Weister Creek, in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. The Reserve was originally land accumulated by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s for a since-abandoned dam project. After the proposed dam project was finally abandoned, a chunk of the Corps-owned land in the Reserve, about 8600 acres including part of Weister Creek, was given to the State of Wisconsin or held in trust for the Ho-Chunk Nation. The land has been undeveloped and reclaimed by nature since the 60s. I don’t think it’s an accident that Weister was the most deeply incised water we fished; I suspect that the Weister was as close as we came to what the streams were like before the Driftless was farmed.

We fished a nymph under a foam beetle, and the fish were spooky. We cast a lot from the banks, though I couldn’t stay out of the water–since Pennsylvania I’m a convert to the notion that my best drifts are straight towards my rod tip, and that can be hard to manage from a bank. Most of our casts were pretty short–there wasn’t sufficient space between cut banks on a winding small stream to make long casts or take long drifts.

That morning we fished about a half-mile of river and caught wild brown trout. We didn’t see anybody else.

* * *

The van’s change oil light came on, so Thursday I spent part of the morning at the Viroqua Chrysler dealer. I waited on the sales floor for the oil change, and passed some of the time talking to a salesman. We talked a lot about the Brewers winning their division. He asked what we were doing there, so I told him we were fishing. He asked what for? Walleye?

I’d like to catch a walleye. I’ve never seen a walleye.

Following Matt back from Weister Creek to Viroqua, he showed us a bit of isolated stream where the state had eradicated the European browns and reestablished the native strain brook trout. That evening Kris and I went back to the brook trout stream and fished a quarter mile up the easement until dark. We didn’t catch anything.

The next day after the oil change I worked at lawyering through the afternoon, and then in the evening, before our third dinner at the Viroqua Diner, we went back to the little creek. At first nothing, but after a while I figured that maybe we were too close to the road, that maybe that portion of the water got fished too hard and too often. I walked further upstream, maybe a half mile from the road, and watched trout rising in a long pool. I was fishing dry flies, and I caught a brookie, went back and got Kris to show her where I had fished and how, and on my example cast caught another brookie on a long just-good-enough cast with a Royal Wulff. She had lost her fly, so we traded rods and I headed back to the car. I’d caught a perfect fish.

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Georgia

In 1733, George II established Georgia, and it was the last of the original 13 Colonies. It was the brainchild of James Oglethorpe, a British parliamentarian, as a means to help the English poor. Georgia would give them a new start. It would also be a buffer between the Spanish colony in Florida and the British Carolinas.

It succeeded pretty well as a buffer. As philanthropy, not so much.

Under Oglethorpe, individual land holdings were limited to 500 acres, and charity settlers couldn’t sell their land. Rum was prohibited. Slavery was prohibited. It was gonna be a moral utopia.

William Vereist, James William Oglethorpe, 1735-1736, oil on panel, National Portrait Gallery, London.

It was a bust. Instead of giving immigrants a clean slate, the poor brought their debt with them. The land along the coast, the land settled first, was lousy for farming, and the English poor didn’t know how to farm anyway. For passage, immigrants, including children, were often indentured for long periods, some for decades. Planters from other colonies, particularly South Carolina, began to encroach, while the immigrants began to sneak off to other colonies where they could at least get a drink.

The Colonial Georgia poor were probably worse off than they’d been in England, though at least they didn’t have student loans.

In 1742, Oglethorpe left Georgia in a huff, never to return. In 1750, African slavery was legalized–it was already widespread. As a bastion of redemption and the hope of the poor, Colonial Georgia failed.

With that sterling beginning, Georgia was on a roll. Many Georgians would have been perfectly happy remaining British, and it was the last colony occupied by the British. Early Georgian government land grants were rife with fraud that lined the pockets of Georgia officials, and multiples of the same available land was sold to different buyers at rigged prices.

Georgia was ground zero for the Trail of Tears.

The Civil War? Georgia seceded based on what was probably a fixed election, and the war remained unpopular, particularly in mountainous North Georgia. Then there was the Siege of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. During Reconstruction, Georgia was the only rebel state to be admitted to the Union, only to be kicked out again after it immediately kicked out all African American members of the Georgia legislature.

Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia, and its portrayal of the South is a deservedly difficult subject. Woodrow Wilson was from Georgia, and his overt racism has sparked his reappraisal. After its demise at the end of Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan was revived in Atlanta in 1915. There were 593 recorded lynchings in Georgia.  While he was out jogging, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was shot to death in 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia.

Ty Cobb was from Georgia. Much of his bad reputation is based on Al Stump’s erroneous and slanderous biography, but still . . . Ty Cobb.

Ty Cobb, 1910, Library of Congress.

Jimmy Carter is Georgian though, and Martin Luther King was from Atlanta. After the 2020 presidential election, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State may have saved our democracy. Still, if you were going to pick a state where the 2020 election kerfuffle would center, ten’d get you twenty that the center would be Georgia.

American Tobacco Company, Hugh Jennings and Ty Cobb baseball card, 1912, Library of Congress.

I would have loved to have seen Ty Cobb play:

AB 11,440/H 4,189/HR 117/BA .366/R 2,245/RBI 1,944/SB 897/OBP .433/SLG .512

Over a 23-year career, Cobb was on base for 43% of his 11,440 at-bats.

As of 2019, Georgia remains a growing state, its population having increased every year since 1930. In 1990, its population was 6,478,216. In 2019 its population was estimated at 10,617,423. It’s the New South, whatever that may be.

About 55% of Georgians are Anglo, 10% Hispanic, 32.6% Black, 4.4% Asian, and 2.2% multiracial.

in 2016, Donald Trump carried Georgia in a landslide, by 50.3% of the 3,967,067 votes cast for President. In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden carried Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes, or .23% of the 4,935,487 total votes cast for President. It was a surprise, I think, and the aftermath was as important to our democracy as Sherman’s March. If you look at it though, how Georgia actually voted has few surprises, and is consistent with the rest of the country. Turnout was up by 6% over 2016, but turnout was down in 2016 over 2012. By region, there’s the obvious blue vote centering in Atlanta, which is expected. Then there’s Baldwin County in middle Georgia. It’s a county with a population of 45,000, about 55% white. Biden carried the county by 50.5%. That’s a surprise, but it’s a surprise without much effect.

Macon, Marietta, and Savannah, all smaller cities, voted blue. Athens and the surrounding area, home of the University of Georgia, went blue, but that’s pretty standard for college towns, whether in Georgia or Idaho. Then there is a scattering of small population counties, remnants of a cotton belt, where the population remains majority African American. Those counties voted blue.

No statewide officeholders in Georgia are Democrats, but both U.S. senators are. The Georgia Senate and its House of Representatives are Republican majorities.

Geographically Georgia is similar to the other Atlantic states, but on a horizontal slant. The southeast is a coastal plain, followed by its mid-state foothills, its Piedmont, rising to the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains in the north. I’m still surprised reading accounts of Appalachian Trail hikes, when the hiker starts in Georgia. I guess I should be equally surprised when the hike ends in Maine. The Appalachians go most of the way up the Atlantic Coast

We fish in northeast Georgia for shoal bass, a river bass. Because of Atlanta’s airport, it’s easy to fly in and out of Georgia from Houston. We’ll poke around Atlanta for an afternoon, go to part of a baseball game between the Atlanta Native American Warriors and the first-place San Francisco Giants, then spend the night in Helen, “the Charm of Bavaria in the Heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.” As far as I know, none of the Atlanta Braves are part of Georgia’s .5% Native American population, and having sat through a series of particularly painful Astros losing efforts against the Braves in the 90s, I’m certain that the Tomahawk Chop is the most despicable fan chant in sports. I completely support efforts to ban it, and public pressure to change the Braves’ name. My opinion is not influenced in the least by my hatred of the franchise. Really though, whatever my opinion of the Braves, given Georgia’s particularly tragic expulsion of the Creek and Cherokee, having a baseball team with a Native American mascot is unforgivable. Of course I’d probably still hate the Braves whatever their name.

Meanwhile shoal bass are one of the 13 species of black bass, a river bass, closest genetically to spotted bass. They’re native to Georgia, northern Florida, and northeastern Alabama, but are endangered in Alabama. They’re most common in the Chattahoochee and Flint River drainages. I figure that I’ll deem any bass I catch that isn’t obviously a largemouth as a shoal bass, and I might even fudge on a largemouth.

Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Shoal Bass.

I’m not really sure what a shoal is, but I think it’s a sandbar in a river.

The Flag of the State of Georgia, by the way, is the flag of the Confederate States of America, with the addition of the seal of the state of Georgia and the words “In God We Trust.” It was adopted in 2003, replacing a flag that included the Confederate Battle Flag.

Flag of the State of Georgia
Flag of the Confederate States of America

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New Mexico/Colorado Packing List

Gear

On Latir Creek in New Mexico we fished 8.5 foot 3 weight rods. On the Cimarron, I stuck with the 3 weight and Kris switched to a 4 weight. On both streams we fished 7.5 foot leaders with a 5x tippet. I wet waded the Latir, Kris wore waders. We both wore waders and boots on the Cimarron.

Wading staffs are always helpful.

In Colorado, we used 9 foot 5 weights, which have just a bit more punch. There weren’t any overhanging trees, and the stream and the fish were larger. Leaders were 9 foot 5x.

I dug out a 30-year-old vest to take to New Mexico because I thought I’d be carrying lots of stuff. I’m not sure why I ever quit using it in the first place. It holds lots of stuff.

Where we stayed

The first day we drove from Houston to Tucumcari, which has a great selection of Route 66 motels from the 50s and 60s. We stayed at the Roadrunner Lodge because they advertised as pet-friendly, and they were. It’s a great place to stay with dogs. In Taos we stayed at an AirBNB, and it was outstanding. It had a kitchen and we cooked a lot of green chile sauce.

Where we ate

During the past year, I seem to have migrated to spicier food. Maybe it’s age and declining taste buds, maybe it’s Covid boredom, but a trip to New Mexico seemed timely. I vowed that on this trip I would learn to like green chile sauce–in New Mexico you’re supposed to choose green sauce or red, and in the past I always chose red, under (the mistaken) impression that green was hotter. Here’s what I ate:

  • Green chile sauce cheese enchiladas at the Pow Wow in Tucumcari.
  • Green chile sauce huevos rancheros at Kix on 66 in Tucumcari.
  • Green chile cheeseburger at Santa Fe Bites in Santa Fe.
  • Green chile sauce chile relleno at Rancho de Chimayo in Chimayo.
  • Green chile cheeseburger at the Abiquiu Inn in Abiquiu.
  • Green chile sauce chile relleno at La Cueva in Taos.
  • Green Chile cheeseburger at the Blake’s Lottaburger in Tucumcari. On the way out of town. Just in case.

Plus I had ordered a copy of the Rancho de Chimayo cookbook, and we made two batches of green chile sauce at our AirBnB, one vegan and one con carne. I made green chile cheeseburgers one night and enchiladas another, plus huevos rancheros a couple of mornings. Kris made posole with green chile sauce one night.

I love green chile sauce. The Rancho de Chimayo cookbook has both a vegan and con carne recipe. Both are great. Here’s the Ranco de Chimayo vegan recipe, more or less:

  • 4 C vegetable broth
  • 2 C chopped roasted mild to medium New Mexican green chile. I bought a tub of frozen, and didn’t bother thawing.
  • 2 chopped tomatoes. Or a can of chopped tomatoes would work.
  • 1 T minced onion
  • 1 t garlic salt
  • 2 T cornstarch dissolved in 2 T water

Combine everything but the cornstarch in a large saucepan and bring to a boil for 15 minutes. Add the cornstarch slurry. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes more.

It goes with everything, though I didn’t try any green chile sauce donuts. The con carne sauce basically adds a quarter pound of browned ground beef to the vegan recipe.

Donuts.

Rebel Donut in Albuquerque is decidedly on the “I-learned-my-skills-in-Portland” ledger of the donut world. My son explained that the Blue Sky donut with the blue rock candy is an homage to Breaking Bad, which was filmed in Albuquerque, so civic pride! The strawberry/chocolate donut is high on my list of not-to-be-missed donuts. It’s a great place.

I asked at the counter if they’d fill my thermos with coffee, and it kind of shook them. I asked if they’d sell me the number of large coffees it would take to fill my thermos, and they smiled. They filled my thermos and charged me for three large coffees. I think there were actually four. Friendly folk.

Where we didn’t go.

There are so many things I’ve seen in New Mexico, and so many I haven’t. I hope I get to go again.

We didn’t go south to fish for Gila trout, one of the smallest and most fragile of North American trout populations. Probably best to leave them alone. Still . . .

In Taos, we didn’t visit the Taos Pueblo. I wanted to. I haven’t been since I was a child. The reservation is closed because of Covid. We also didn’t re-visit the Millicent Rogers Museum, or stop at Georgia O’Keefe’s home in Abiquiu. Next time.

Books

I listened to most of the mystery novels by Tony Hillerman, and his daughter Anne Hilleman. I’d read the Tony Hillerman novels before, years ago, and they hold up well.

Hampton Sides’ biography of Kit Carson, Blood and Thunder, is outstanding. All the problems and glories of westward expansion are focused in Kit Carson’s life, and he really was extraordinary.

I re-read Death Comes for the Archbishop. There’s even a vignette about green chile sauce. And Kit Carson.

Playlist

Our Colorado playlist consisted of Rocky Mountain High. Like I said, there wasn’t a lot of preparation for our trip to Colorado.

Our New Mexico playlist was also pretty short. The Shins are from Albuquerque, and I included Michael Martin Murphy because, even if he’s from Dallas, he’s connected in my mind to Red River. The folksinger Anna Egge grew up in a commune near Taos, presumably populated by the kind of near-nuff Buddhists who open their hook gaps. I downloaded a bunch of what I would call Norteño music off of a New Mexico playlist. There’s supposed to be a difference between New Mexico Hispano Norteño and Tejano Norteño, but I’m not that subtle.

We tried to listen to Aaron Copeland’s Billy the Kid, but frankly IMusic sucks and it kept playing the Gun Battle over and over and over.

Around Tucumcari–I really liked Tucumcari–we started listening to (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66. There must be 37 covers, including versions by The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Manhattan Transfer, and Nat King Cole. Then we started listing to versions of Willin‘. Just to be clear, the lyrics to Willin’, which goes from Tucson to Tucumcari, are not “just give me wheat, rice, and wine.” Kris was right, even if she did laugh at me 38 years ago.

I don’t care. “Wheat, rice, and wine” is altogether better than “weed, whites and wine.” That lyric doesn’t even include the Oxford comma.

Guitar

I took the Kohno, and played transcriptions of lute music by John Dowland. I got a new sticker for my guitar case.

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New Mexico, Part Dos

Spanish settlement in New Mexico dates from 1598, nine years before the English settled Jamestown and 22 years before Massachusetts got its Pilgrims. The Spanish had already been in and out of New Mexico for a while. Cabeza de Vaca wandered through about 1536 and Coronado came looking for Cibolo in 1540. Exploration was reasonably frequent after that. 

The Spanish left for a bit too. After the 1680 Pueblo Revolt drove the surviving Spanish out, they stayed out for 12 years, but they came back and picked up where they left off. Permanent European settlement of the 50 States really begins with the Spanish in New Mexico.

Settlers’ arrival in 1598 was two years before the birth of Diego Velasquez in Seville, twelve years after the birth of Cervantes, and the year that Phillip III, King of Spain, ascended as Phillip II to the thrones of Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and to the Dukedom of Milan. The Spanish Armada had failed to invade England only ten years before, but that failure was more an act of God than of man. New Mexico was the furthest settled edge of one of the 16th Century’s most powerful and sophisticated nations.

El Santuario de Chimayo, Chimayo, New Mexico.

The Spanish settlers brought with them Catholicism, government structures, laws, language, and culture, including folkways and a debt peonage system for poor Hispanics and out-and-out slavery for captured Navajos that were every bit as inhumane as chattel slavery. Both outlived adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment by a decade. 

Spanish communities persisted in isolation, preserving a culture with roots not in Pennsylvania or Virginia or Massachusetts, but in Spain and Colonial Mexico. Settlers adopted Pueblan crops–beans, squash, chilis, and corn were as important to the Hispanos as they had been to the Chacoans–but they also developed their own sometimes peculiar offshoots of Spanish culture–Los Penitentes come to mind, as does the possible existence of Crypto-Jews.

Jean Nicolas Du Tralage and Vincenzo Coronelli, Le Nouveau Mexique appelé aussi Nouvelle Grenade et Marata, avec Partie de Californie, 1687, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections

In 1848 the United States took New Mexico from Mexico under the treaty ending the Mexican-American War. If they chose, then-Mexican citizens of New Mexico could either keep their Mexican citizenship or renounce it and become Americans. It was a mess. There were no real records of who renounced and who didn’t, and because Mexican citizens couldn’t vote or serve on juries, there were persistent questions as to whose vote counted. Some things don’t change. Questions of who was and who wasn’t a citizen persisted until statehood was finally granted in 1912, more than 300 years after the founding of Santa Fe. 

The American conquest of New Mexico was deeply distrusted by both Mexicans and Indians. The invading Americans disliked the Hispanos’ language and religion. The Hispanos disliked the Americans’ language and religion. In 1847, the allied Taos Pueblans and Spanish New Mexicans violently revolted. The territorial governor, the trader Charles Bent, was murdered and scalped, along with just about everybody else in Taos holding office under the American government. When troops came to re-secure Taos, the rebels took sanctuary in the Taos Pueblo church, which was promptly leveled. In a strange mis-labeling, 28 of the rebels were hung for the crimes of murder or treason, though strictly speaking they weren’t American citizens and were being hung for committing treason against an invasion.

Ruin of the Taos Pueblo church, 1881.

As an attempt to understand this jumble of cultures and prejudices, I’m particularly fond of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop , and every few years will re-read all or parts of it. I always wonder how Cather arrived at writing about a French Jesuit New Mexican bishop. She was not New Mexican, she was not Catholic, and she was not French. It’s a novel with not so much of a plot as a progression, the fictionalized life of Bishop Lamy recounted in a series of episodes, but Cather’s themes, Catholicism at the church’s margins and the intersection of New Mexican cultures, still hold true, though these days there are fewer donkeys.

In addition to Spanish and Chacoan descendants, Navajo, and Apache, New Mexico also has Anglos. Of the roughly 2.1 million people in New Mexico, 36.8% are white only, 49.3% are Hispanic, 11% are American Indian, 2.6% are Black, and 1.8% are Asian. It’s not a populous state; by population, New Mexico ranks 37th. By population density, it ranks 6th, less dense than South Dakota, but denser than Idaho. It is a Western state.

Eastern New Mexico shares the Llano Estacado with the Texas Panhandle, and driving the 335 miles from Clarendon, Texas, pop. 1,842, elev. 2,733 feet, to roughly Santa Rosa, New Mexico, pop. 2636, elev. 4616 feet, is a lesson in humility, a spur to daydreams, and one of the great challenges to ownership of an electric car. The drive from Fort Worth to Santa Fe is 620 miles, about 12 hours, and, depending on your taste, it is either magnificent or hell, or maybe both. 

Google Maps

It’s a drive I’ve made all or parts of hundreds of times, and I like it. The world changes west of the 90th meridian. Texas sheds more of its Southern heritage and becomes more Western, wet clothes dry faster, all those pesky trees are rarer–and in a lot of it trees just aren’t there. You can see mountains from Albuquerque, and there are mountains south around Cloudcroft and Ruidoso. The gaudiest beauty of New Mexico though is in the northern mountains, surrounding Santa Fe and Taos. Further west things generally flatten again, though it’s high desert, and certainly not flat by Llano Estacado standards. By the time you reach the far west of the state, Farmington’s elevation is 5,394 feet, Gallup’s is 6,468 feet, and even Anthony, just outside of El Paso, is 3,802 feet. Back in the Rockies near Taos, Wheeler Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is 13,167 feet. 

In recent years, New Mexico has tended Democratic, but it switches between Republican and Democratic governors fairly regularly. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the state 48.26%, against Donald Trump’s 40.04%, but Gary Johnson, a home-grown Libertarian, received 9.3% of the 2016 vote (which probably hurt President Trump more than Senator Clinton). In a landslide, Joe Biden received 54% of the vote in 2020, and Trump stayed relatively flat at 43%. Oddly, while rural Eastern New Mexico lines up decidedly Republican, the state is not so clearly split between rural Republican voters and urban Democrats. There’s some of that, but some of New Mexico’s blue counties are decidedly rural. It’s almost as if the high country tends left, both geographically and politically. Maybe the Navajo and the Zuni vote blue. The Zuni are certainly mysterious.

KyleReese64, New Mexico 2020 Presidential Election map, Wikipedia.

Both United States Senators from New Mexico are Democrats, and both houses of the New Mexico legislature are controlled by Democrats.

So what about New Mexico Anglos? For 13,000 years, New Mexico has been a settlement magnet, and Anglo-Americans are just the arrivistes. American traders out of Independence, Missouri, first opened the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 to reach New Mexico silver. That makes Anglos a bit later than the Navajo and the Spanish, but even the Anglos are closing in on two centuries. 

National Park Service, Santa Fe Trail

What do New Mexicans like about Texans? We visit and then get out. We’ve invaded New Mexico twice, once under the Republic of Texas (while New Mexico was controlled by Mexico), and once during the Civil War (while New Mexico was controlled by the Union). Both invasions were disasters. Now Texans just go to New Mexico for vacations, or maybe to retire, which is a kind of extended vacation. 

What do New Mexicans hate about Californians? They come and then they stay. California stuff has proliferated, and now it’s a lot easier to find a good yoga class, or a cute restaurant, or decorative coyotes. Are there still decorative coyotes? I’ll have to check.

Millicent Rogers, 1940s, Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos. This image is almost certainly copyright protected, but is used under the fair use exception. I hope so anyway.

My friend Darrell used to insist that Santa Fe was a town run by rich women. What did he mean? I never knew, exactly, but it’s a statement I’ve pondered–Darrell rarely says things that aren’t worth pondering–and I think I kinda know. The culture of Northern New Mexico was shaped in part by women like Georgia O’Keefe and Millicent Rogers. It’s loaded with museums and opera and of cute and very expensive fine and traditional art galleries in Taos and Santa Fe. Oh sure, there are normal everyday folk in New Mexico. Still, it’s the influx of art beginning in the 1920s that’s so much a part of New Mexico’s appeal, and that gave women space to shape the culture. After New York and Los Angeles, Santa Fe is the States’ third largest art market. Maybe I just made that up, but the notion feels right: New Mexico is one of those places where not just manly industry but feminine high culture has its say.

Maybe that’s what Darrell meant, or maybe he just meant that the Santa Fe city council was stacked with rich woman. Maybe it’s all just sexist drivel. I’m not sure.

Beyond high culture, New Mexico is also poor. It’s per capita annual income, $23,683, ranks 47th among the states. Out there among the decorative coyotes, there’s real poverty. New Mexico’s alcohol-related death rate is the highest in the nation, and is highest among Native Americans. Española, New Mexico, a largely Hispanic town of 10,044 near Santa Fe, is regularly ranked as one of the most violent communities in the nation. In 2017, the violent crime rate in Española was 644.86% higher than the national average.  Traveling the 30 miles to Española from Santa Fe, you can turn right to go to Chimayo, left to Abiquiu and the San Juan, or continue northwest to Taos. You can’t get many places north of Santa Fe without going through Española, and there are plenty of places in the north worth going to. Española, maybe not so much.