We complete the northern portion of the route and arrive back in Las Cruces. This is a dangerous moment, returning to warmth and beer and streetlights, having to weather seductive comforts. Tomorrow we’ll set out on the southern lobe in the company of Matt Mason—the route maker himself—and a posse of his local riding friends.
Matt is a hero. He has made something, shared something that so many have found meaningful. The community has embraced bikepacking in the area, dirtbag pedalers who are there fore the purpose of stopping ordinary time for a little while. Matt rides us through the singletracked flats right up against the cresting ridge. He’s kindness and clarity and looks you in the eye and says that he just wanted to show people something positive.
Through the morning of desert rollercoastering, then the locals turn back. Emily, MIles, Willie and I descending into a valley to slalom easily through farmland and irrigation trails. This ends up being one of the best relaxed days on bike lately. A brewery with pizza, then another hour of riding to a winery where we’ll camp, but not after a tasting and jolly back and forth with other visitors to the vineyard.
I don’t know this at the time, but it’ll be the last cold night and we make a steady mesquite fire in a ring by the winery, I stand and rotate myself to distribute the warmth as we talk into the pitch dark night, that fluent wobbling meander of two glasses of a vintage varietal on top of the beers, flames low, laughing guffaws, tales finding finally a looking up introspection everyone else goes to sleep.
Upwards, then. Bouldery tracks, smooth bearings along power lines, barbed wire, scrub, scree, heat shimmer mirage.
I’m thinking about a few days ago when we passed through Hatch, self-proclaimed chili capital of NM, the eponymous fruit really is distinctly wonderful and we consumed it in as many was as we could. Slightly ramshackle chili stands that line the boulevard. The unselfconscious and not ironic piñatas for sale at the grocery store that flood to mind my childhood birthday parties, associated as they may be with Mexico but also a tradition among Puerto Ricans.
The UFO iconography, cashing in on proximity to infamous Area 51, oscillating layers of kitsch and statement of alienation and how the landscape lofts and defies like planets in science fiction, and just wanting to be part of a secret more immense story.
A briefest excursion into Texas and it does seem different beyond the license plates. My emotions are thoroughly harmonic to New Mexico right now, so I can’t quite see this Texas sliver, only the fractures, figureless ground, hearing disonant semitones and I don’t mind crossing back into over.
Again, days of pedal pressing leaning into the desert, rock cuts where we skitter and gain, pinballing from rare shadow to shadow.
