Carlsbad Caverns

This part of west Texas is called the Permian or Delaware Basin, it was surrounded by a coral reef when everything was a warm sea. The sea went away, the reef rose up and left a ring of limestone mountains. The Guadeloupe Mountains, the Franklin Mountains, Glass Mountain, all the remains of this reef, and tucked under the Guadeloupe Mountains are the enormous caverns called Carlsbad.

There are tours, some strenuous, but I took the standard walkway tour, through the Hall of the Giants, Fairyland, the Big House. The interior space is like a Gothic cathedral, sound carries in that cathedral way, and it is dimly lit as though by candles, and everywhere the limestone comes down in drips and sheets. Tiny apses filled with stalactites and straws, and huge columns like cauliflower or the Hindu temple columns that are covered with figures and animals.

Since it is off season now, there were very few people down there, 800 feet below the surface, and it was wonderfully quiet. The recent rains had percolated down through the rock and there were drips everywhere. Starting new columns, filling up the pools with limestone lily pads around the edges, and trying to start cave growths on the tarred walkway. It was most excellent.

After that I drove a loop over this ridge and down into the canyon. The rocks are crumbly, eroded and cracked and lots and lots of cactus and yucca and succulents cover the walls. Desert, dry, prickly, the greens soft and pale, the rocks weathered in browns and umbers.

I would like to come back here and explore more, when it’s not so cold.

Back down to Pecos, I’m still fascinated by the nodding pumps:

“Pump Jack also known as 'nodding donkey, oil derrick, pumping unit, horsehead pump, beam pump, sucker rod pump (SRP), grasshopper pump, thirsty bird and jack pump) is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump installed in an oil well. “(Wikipedia)

They are a version of a beam engine, often used for pumping, often run by steam in the old days, and the counterweight, flopping at its feet, extends the power, usually from electricity. I think I remember that they are set to sense when the oil below has seeped back into their shaft, so they can start sucking it up through the complicated system of tubes and valves.

Truthfully, I secretly think they are alive in some somnolent, ancient way. The metal of their bones, cables and tubes distilled from spirits lodged in the ore, and they sip away at the oil that was grasses and seaweeds and ferns long ago. They are the only moving thing in this vast flat place inside the ancient coral reef.

Back at the campground in Pecos, I am getting antsy. I want to be building stuff, to have something to do. I’m heading for NM, one more night and then I pull into the Habitat for Humanity lot and get to work.