Just wander
Wandering around Albuquerque
Not all outdoor activities involve gobs of gear and high intensity
In a world increasingly fascinated with extreme sports, and in a city that’s embracing mountain unicycling, ultrarunning, and parkour, it’s easy to forget that there’s a lot to do outdoors that doesn’t involve helmets, pads, plunging down a mountain on one wheel, or blow-by-blow web videos.
Albuquerque has its share of lowintensity endeavors — walking, hiking, cross country skiing, horseback riding. And, with a new book by area resident and long-distance hiker David Ryan, you can add “wandering” to the list.
Wandering is “all about seeing,” Ryan tells me as we prepare to head out for a day in the Ojito Wilderness, (on Bureau of Land Management land near San Ysidro).
Too often, he explains, we’re focused on getting to wherever we’re going and we miss all the interesting stuff along the way. Ryan’s book is both a meditation on the advantages of slowing down and really looking around you, and a practical guide on how to spot all that
interesting stuff.
At its most basic, wandering is exploring without an agenda. It’s not about walking from point A to point B, but rather creating the conditions where the mind’s natural sense of curiosity leads to discovery. Practically, it means paying attention to the world around you, noticing those things that look odd or out of place, and then trying to make sense of them.
“It helps to know something about where you’re going, so your mind is attuned to particular things, but it’s not necessary,” Ryan says. “If you slow down and really look, your commonsense is pretty good at telling you when something is interesting.”
Ryan and his three dogs are joined by local author and veteran backcountry wanderer Bob Julyan as we head off to wander the mesas and canyons west of San Ysidro.
“There is stuff to see almost everywhere,” Ryan says as we drive over roads in desperate need of regrading. “Almost all of these mesas – either at the top, or at their bases – have something interesting.” Over his years wandering New Mexico, he has found pottery, masonry, Pueblo and Hispanic art, bomb fragments, pieces of aircraft, and lots of prehistoric and protohistoric tools.
As we park and start walking, conversation quiets and the day warms. Before long, we start to climb a low mesa that winds towards the north. The valley floor of cacti and mesquite gives way to juniper and pine. The sandy wash we’re navigating shows little traffic, and soon we’re standing on the rock outcroppings that edge the mesa. Ryan smiles and points. At his feet, and stretching on both sides along the basalt boulders are petroglyphs. Lots of them. We take some pictures and then work our way around the mesa-top looking for others. Rock art is easier to notice than chert shards discarded during the shaping of arrow points, but the idea is the same: look carefully, and where you see a break in the natural pattern of things, look even more closely. The dogs are used to all of this, and wag appreciatively every time we pause to survey the landscape.
As we descend the mesa towards the car, Julyan points out that, “everything you find is a sort of discovery. It might just be something that you’ve never seen before, or it might be something that no one has seen before.”
And, indeed, in the very area we’re walking through, the largest dinosaur ever found in New Mexico was discovered by a couple of people looking for rock art. Something caught their eye, something that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the picture. The result is now in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.
Because wandering, according to Ryan, “can happen anywhere you’re likely to find something interesting,” within a hundred miles of Albuquerque the opportunities are vast. For instance, the canals that cut through the city, the foothills, the backcountry, mountain and mesa tops, and even the streets of the city itself offer places to get out and explore. Wandering around central New Mexico can reveal archaeological sites, abandoned homesteads, fossils, the remains of military training exercises and incredible geological formations.
In encouraging others to wander, and to get started, Ryan says “wandering allows you just to be in the present, to connect with the world that is more than just you.” That world can be pretty amazing. When a quiet walk turns into an adventure of discovery, when a mesa top suddenly becomes a place of sacred art, or a bump on the trail is the long arc of a WWII bombing target, wandering seems as vital and as exciting as any extreme sport.