Into the Black Range

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Sunrise a few miles west of Hatch

Rio Grande

Leaving Hatch, I headed up the Rio Grande to turn west again and into the Black range of mountains.  Crossing them would be the high point of the entire cross-country venture—high in sensation of accomplishment and high in elevation.

Arrey Cafe

Arrey Cafe

On the way, I rested for breakfast at the café in Arrey and ordered my all-time favorite—huevos rancheros green.  I tasted chile as it should be—hot and tasty.  The Hispanic waitress knows much about doing a lot of work in a short time, and her ten-year-old daughter, stepping in efficient footprints will soon fit right into a way of life I miss in the city.  She moves at an easy pace without hurry and serves all the twenty-some customers gracefully, without hurry.  

Arrey Cafe

Arrey Cafe

She wastes no time socializing, maybe only feigning not to speak much English with her English-speaking customers.  It’s the way they build adobe houses and stone walls, tasks too tedious for normal Americans.  She defies the American adage: work fast, get more done.  I’ve wondered in recent years if it’s all that good an adage.  She confirmed my suspicion as her actions say: steady and easy gets more done.  After stacking adobes to build our house in Santa Fe those many years ago, and now watching the way this waitress gets the work done, I think I might make a good Hispanic.  But I don’t see many of them riding bicycles, except to work.  They probably find no purpose in it.  

Soon, I turned due west into the relentless wind on Highway 152, heading for the distant Black Range.  Something about riding uphill and into the wind is like having a tooth extracted without anesthetic—it feel good when it’s done.  

Hillsboro

Hillsboro

I made it to what might be called the base camp for Emory Pass.  Hillsboro at elevation 5,300 is a good place to rest for the steep climb in the morning.  In the 1880’s, Hillsboro was a boisterous mining boomtown, but today, old-timers in the only remaining café talk of the two filling stations that aren’t here anymore, and the bars gone out of business.  There’s no store here, just a café and a motel where I spent the night.  

I like the feeling of being the first one awake in the morning; it makes you daring somehow.  And it usually means a few hours of riding without much wind.  So it was that I started up to Emory Pass at first light.  I climbed up through desert rocks and into mountain forest, always and steadily climbing for seventeen miles. 

Emory Pass

Looking back from Emory Pass

At ten in the morning, I was there, the top at 8, 228 feet, or so I thought.  Green forest of ponderosa pine, cool air, and almost no traffic, I felt that my day’s work was done. 

But there were more mountains to climb in my lowest gear, though not as high as Emory Pass, more hills to descend at rollercoaster spends, in the forty miles before finding rest.  I made a stop at the Santa Rita open pit copper mine, which I won’t bore you with here, but will come up in some picture talk that do on return.  The little computer on my bicycle says that I climbed 5,240 feet today.  

Bullard Street, Silver City

Silver City and Motel6 was the most welcome rest stop of the trip so far.  I walked about town this morning, and will post again later about what I find here.  Suffice it for now to say that it’s a good place to take a day or two off, an artsy and crafty place, and that’s what I’m doing.