The Gila Wilderness

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 Cactus Kathy Gregory from Albuquerque highly recommended this book to Sandy and me.

PROLOGUE

She was posted in the middle of the Gila National Forest, 

on the edge of the world’s first designated wilderness, 

130 miles north of the border with Mexico. 

On Loco Mountain, she  said, NOT A SINGLE 

MAN-MADE LIGHT COULD BE SEEN AFTER DARK. 

She lived in her lookout tower, 

a twelve -by-twelve-foot room on stilts. 

The nearest grocery store was five miles by pack trail 

and eighty-five MORE by mountain road. 

Over the course of four months 

she had fewer than twenty visitors--

hunters on horseback, mainly, and a few adventures hikers.

Sandy has read it, and by the time I post this blog, I will have read it too. We were up at Brant Lake, New York in August, and we go to the Gila (say “hee lah”) Wilderness in western New Mexico, in September into October, with Kathy and Charles. It is Billy the Kid and Geronimo territory. I read Fire Season at the lake. Can you think of a better place to read it?

At the Gila Wilderness, we plan on hiking to pueblo ruins and ghost towns and to the many hot springs. One of the highlights will be the hike to where the Apaches Geronimo, Victorio and Cochise watered their horses. We start in Albuquerque right out of the aeropuerto with dinner at El Bruno's. We first ate at Hazel and Bruno's in Cuba New Mexico near the east portal to The Chaco years ago. Santa Fe by rail with lunch at Tia Sophia’s is next. The gourmet ending will be dinner at La Posada in Winslow Arizona. Reservations needed for the Turqoise Room. Sandy and Kathy. will be wearing all of theirs. Originally this hotel was a train station designed by the famous architect Mary Coulter to resemble a Spanish patron's hacienda.  She designed the hotels at the Grand Canyon including the Tower. The train track side is the most beautiful and is in the rear of the hacienda not on the street side. Travelers go out of their way to dine here in the middle of the desert in Winslow Arizona.

If the trip is successful, we will have reached forty-five years of marriage. Easy for me -- not so easy for Sandy.

One of our hotels is in Silver City The Palace,  costs $50 per night but we are going for it. Just north of there is where the American runner, Caballo Blanco (White Horse), died near a spring while on a twelve mile training run. He was the famous Ultra guy who lived for a while with the Taramuhar Indians down in the bottom of Mexico's Copper Canyon. He first met the famous Ultra running Indians while he was a pacer at the Leadville 100 Trail Run at the top of a mountain in Colorado.  The starting line is at 14,000 feet. Doc Holiday from Tombstone legend worked for a while as a professional gambler in Leadville. Years ago coming back from hiking Arches and Canyonland National Parks, my amigo Tomaso Egan and I saddled up to the bar and had a few there in Leadville in honor of Doc before finishing the trip at Denver. Caballo Blanco was the main subject in the recently published book called "Born To Run." If you are or were a runner, you certainly should read this book. It was on the best seller list here in Boston for quite a while.



We fly back to Providence for a sleep at the airport and then in the morning drive to mid New Jersey for a wedding of one of my Seabee friends daughters. The next day we drive further south to Wildwood and Cape May to spend quality time with Tom and Jeannette Egan at the shore.

Sweet at the beginning and end, with a little adventure in the middle.  Exactly like our lives together over these 50 some years. Sandy says " nothing is perfect except our marriage."