Every summer, when certain conditions are met, like when the asphalt on the highways softens to pudding or the Carmex on my dashboard boils out of its container and runs into my defrost vents, I migrate. It's an urge as instinctual and unavoidable as the great honkers' return to Canada or the gray whales' exodus from Baja. I go to New Mexico along with thousands of other cranky, sweaty, belligerent Texans -- the human equivalent of grackles -- to annoy the natives and criticize Santa Fe. I like to fancy myself part New Mexican, if for no other reason than to distinguish myself from the onerous herd with which I travel. I have a great-great grandfather buried in Socorro. When my mother was a teenager, she and her mother lived on a ranch outside Sapillo. My mom and dad met and married in beautiful Hobbs. Does this excuse my proprietary attitude about our neighboring state? If this doesn't qualify me for temporary stateship, can I at least get some brownie points for visiting areas besides The City of the Howling Coyote and Ruidoso?
A few years ago, I dragged a couple of friends along on one of my summer jaunts to the land of cool. Celia and Mary Leigh pleaded for a trip to Florida or Telluride, Colorado, but I convinced them we'd have more fun in Glenwood, New Mexico. I am hopelessly gullible when it comes to guidebook hype, and on the advice of one such bullshit booklet, I booked three nights at a guest "ranch" whose "lodge and restaurant are considered best in town," lured by Fodor's promise of "friendly hosts." Well, it's not hard to be number one when there's only one of you. And perhaps the hosts were friendly -- to people wearing big, FODOR-TRAVEL-GUIDE name tags. But evidently, three women traveling alone touched off unpleasant childhood memories for our "hosts," because I've been treated better by harried department store workers at Christmas, loan officers, and folks at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
In an attempt to spend as much time away from Vampira and Lurch Innkeeper as possible, we headed out into the mountains early one morning (after a delightful breakfast of Eggbeaters, frozen hash browns, and gum bread toast which no amount of jam or catsup could redeem) to find Frisco Box Canyon Hot Springs, touted by Tim Cahill in the New Mexico Hot Springs Guide as "outstanding among New Mexico's watering places."
Cahill warned his readers that this spring was tricky to locate and the river had to be forded seven times along the trail, but after an evening spent at the Glenwood Reformatory, we were steeled for the challenge. We thought.
Little did we know that our innocent hike would become a journey into self-discovery and a chance to confront our deepest fears -- Mary Leigh: snakes; Celia: cows; me: having my heart explode in my chest trying to keep up with two athletes on a mountain trail.
We had one hell of a time even finding the trailhead. Driving around like idiots, we forded creeks, manhandled barbed-wire gates that were strung as tight as ukuleles, and raced up and down soggy roads with mud up to our axles, sliding sideways and covering Mary Leigh's rental car with clods of clay. After four hours of this, things began to take on a surreal quality. At one point we passed two cowboys on horseback who were being followed by a couple of cats. A coyote stopped in the road and stared in our faces. We stumbled onto an abandoned farm house filled with bees. When we finally acknowledged defeat and were headed back to Camp Whyareyouhere in defeat, we passed an old man pulling a trailer lettered with the ominous warning: CAUTION. DANGER. SHEEP.
We flagged him down and asked him if he knew where the springs were. Of course he did. Why, his grandfather had gone up there for a picnic in 1894 and in the middle of the festivities a big thunderstorm broke and a huge flash flood came racing through the canyon and his grandmother-to-be would have drowned if she hadn't got hold of the horse's tail, but the picnic was pretty much ruined. He hadn't been up to the springs since 1933, but he could tell us how to get there if we promised to hightail it out of that canyon if we heard a thunderstorm brewing.
We looked around. Not a cloud in the sky. Okay.
With his directions, we finally found the trailhead and started off on foot. We had to cross a stream-that-thought-it-was-a-river about 10 times, carefully removing our boots and socks each time. We lost the trail time after time and hiked in circles trying to get back on course. At our lowest point, morale collapsed and Celia and Mary Leigh stood at a fork in the creek pointing in opposite directions, their voices rising steadily above their normally friendly tone. It took a long time to go three miles, but I kept quoting the guidebook's praise. "No, really," I'd tell my friends as they stomped off ahead of me, "it's `the most beautiful, pristine spot in all of New Mexico.' And Cahill says `the beauty of the area makes every step a joy.'" They didn't even look around after the first couple of hours, despite my forced enthusiasm that bordered on desperation.
We eventually found the spring. You may have already guessed that it wouldn't live up to the book's glowing description, but even the most cynical among you probably didn't envision a cement bathtub filled with tepid gray water, iridescent scum floating on the surface.
My new ex-friends had just grabbed the guidebook and were beginning to shred it, when all of a sudden rumble, rumble -- CRACK!
A thunderstorm. The biblical kind. The kind that makes your hair stand up and shout. The kind that rattles your ribcage. The kind that makes you run like hell, through creeks, up steep canyons, down gravelly slopes, like the hounds of hell are nipping at your ankles. We ran those three miles back to the car like Tarahumaras on caffeine and steroids.
Adventure is merely misfortune in hindsight. And since we were starved for adventure (and short on time), we only had to sit around our bleak cabin for a couple of hours consuming alcohol before we had transformed our miserable excursion into a grand caper, a wild journey, a glorious anecdote, and a reason to migrate to New Mexico the next summer. n When Suzy Banks can't get out of the heat, she consoles herself by reading guidebooks.