Fall Colors in the High Country

As soon as I got back from my recent trip, I checked the weather forecast.  The aspen leaves had been turning before I left and I wanted to see if there was any color left for me to see.  As we were having some rain coming in in a few days, I headed up to the high country the next day.  Wow, was I surprised!  I have never seen the aspens turn such vibrant shades of red and orange as they did this fall.  With our recent drought conditions, I expected that most of the leaves would just dry up and fall off early.  Not so.  Enjoy!

 

White Sands National Park

On the last afternoon of the conference, instead of participating in a group activity at the Lodge, I chose instead to drive back down to Alamogordo and west of there to see if I could get into the park. As you can probably tell by now, I really enjoy doing my own thing, and I certainly enjoy my adventures.

White Sands National Park is located in the largest gypsum dune field in the world, and is also surrounded by military bases.  I had been there once before, and one of the reasons why I signed up for the IRVA conference was so that I could go there again.  The plan was to go there first thing in the morning the day before the conference started while the temps were still cool, but because of the government shut down, that didn’t happen. The park was closed.

That is why I was thrilled when I found out a way to sneak into the park!  I drove a bit down the highway from the visitor’s center where the dunes were close to the road, climbed up the dune and under a barbed wire fence.  Quite a few people had the same idea, as there were a fair number of cars parked there on the highway. 

What a magical place this is!  The dunes stretch for miles, and are composed of gypsum sand.  They are as white as snow, and can be mistaken as such in photos.  You can read up on the park on your own as I won’t go into the details here. 

One of the varieties of gypsum is selenite.  In fact, I have sometimes seen the description of the sand there as selenite instead of gypsum.  Selenite is a mineral known for its ability to cleanse and raise the vibration of its environment.  In fact, I have pieces of selenite placed around my house for that purpose.  Imagine standing in a dune field that is pristine and vibrationally elevated! 

I would have hiked further and stayed longer if it hadn’t been for the 87° temps that afternoon.  Here are some photos of that magical place.

If you ever get the chance to visit White Sands National Park, I highly recommend it.  It is quite out of the way, and can be dangerous in the hot weather, but at least a drive through can be done at any time.  

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

The day before the IRVA conference officially started, when quite a few of the attendees took a field trip to the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, I headed north to visit the petroglyphs at the Three Rivers site.  This place is located off of highway 54 north of Tularosa.  It is a BLM site, but because of the government shut down, the cute little visitor’s center was not open.  In spite of that, the hiking trail through the lava outcroppings where the rock art was located was clearly marked and easy to follow.  You just had to look out for the rattlesnakes! 

This rock art was created by the Jornada Mogollon people who lived in this area from 200 to 1450 A.D., and there are about 21,000 individual glyphs located there.  The area had more water available back then, and some habitation sites have been excavated.  I found the rock art interesting because of the detailed designs of a variety of birds and animals, abstract geometric patterns, and also the masks.

Here are views of the surrounding landscape.

The white stripe far in the distance of this photo was actually the northern part of the White Sands National Park.

Fascinating rock art.

Here are a few of the many masks there, many pecked on the edge of a boulder.

I often get asked if I get any energetic impressions when visiting rock art sites.  The answer in general is "no".  My sense is that most of these sites are located where they are because of their alignment with the sun, or because they are gathering places.  This is totally different for ancient megalithic sites that are located on energetically active locations, which can be quite active long after the original builders of these sites have left the area.  

Life is an Adventure

 

A few days ago, I returned from the annual IRVA (International Remote Viewing Association) conference in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.   I have attended past conferences on line, and this was the first one that I attended in person.  Cloudcroft is situated at 8676’ elevation near the Lincoln National Forest NW of Alamogordo, and is listed as the highest town in the state.  Alamogordo is at 4336’.   So I flew through Phoenix to El Paso and rented a car to go north to the conference location, the Lodge at Cloudcroft. 

 Most days, especially if something notable will be happening, I pull a card from my Osho Zen Tarot deck.  The morning I left for this trip, I pulled the card “Adventure”.  Wow, was that on target. 

The adventure started right off the bat at the St. George airport.  The flight to Phoenix left about an hour late.  I literally walked off of that flight, across the hall, and on to my flight to El Paso.  One of the gate personnel shouted “We have a runner” as I went past!  Luckily, they were holding that flight for me. 

In El Paso, I rented a car and drove the 90 miles north to Alamogordo.  White Sands National Park is just west of town, so I went there first to see if it was open in spite of the government shut down.   The gate was locked and no one was around. 

After doing some shopping, I headed up the mountain to Cloudcroft to check into the Lodge.  My room was on the 3^rd floor, so I did a lot of climbing up and down during my stay there.

The next day, a lot of the conference attendees were going back down to Alamogordo to visit the New Mexico Museum of Space history.  Not quite my thing, so I drove north about an hour to the 3 Rivers Petroglyph site.   More about that later.

The next 3 days were for the conference.  The speakers were excellent, and I had a chance to make new friends and reacquaint with people whom I had only seen on line.  The down side was the sub standard food, and having to drive to another location several times a day for the conference, as the lodge was not big enough for our group.  Add to that the climb up to the 3^rd floor of the lodge several times a day.  I was exhausted by the end.  In retrospect, I think that there was something energetically off with the hotel. 

I did get a tip from one of the attendees about getting into White Sands.  She told me to drive past the entrance about a mile where there was a dune that had spilled over to the highway.  One could climb the dune and go under a barbed wire fence and then hike wherever one wanted.  So that is what I did on my last afternoon there.  As the temperature was 87°, I only lasted about a half hour on the dunes.  More about that later, too.

That in itself was another adventure.  Unfortunately, I had tire trouble with my rental car and had to call AAA after hiking the dunes.   I then had to drive back up the mountain to meet my remote viewing instructor Paul Smith for dinner with a group of his students.  Thanks to prompt service by AAA, I made it just in time. 

The next day I could hardly wait to get back to the airport.  I am still thinking about a possible toxic energy at the lodge, as I felt better immediately upon leaving there.  Today, my pendulum tested positive for an energetic toxin.  What it was, I do not know.  All of the driving back and forth, and the long lines for food did not help either. 

In the next posts, I will share photos from my off site excursions.  Those side trips made the whole thing worthwhile!