Deming New Mexico
When we got off the train in Deming, we had no real concept of where we were going. We knew that Daniel and Juniper, our hosts and creators of Living Art Studio, didn’t live in Deming. Our neighbor Barbara always referred to where they lived in relation to Silver City. And the address for the venue was Mimbres, NM. One unexpected consequence of not driving is that we are not carrying map of any greater granularity than the Amtrak system, so I can’t immediately place where we are into the context of regional biases I developed last time I was (or wasn’t) in the area. Next time we are definitely bringing an atlas.
We have several bags and a couple instruments to travel with and it takes a minute to get it all on and off the Superliner. I try to have the accordion and merch. case (I see now why that luggage shape is called a “train case”) strapped to their dolly and just lift the entire thing on and off, but didn’t get downstairs in time, and all the pieces were separate. As I stepped off the train into the 100+ degree heat, I saw no station at all only an empty gravel parking lot. I laid my horn in the shadow of the signal control box, and went back for more bags.
There is something about the train door that is prone to traffic jams. The luggage storage racks and stairs are all very close on one side, and the bathrooms are on the other side of the doors, so people can get paralyzed in place waiting for numerous actions to happen before its their turn to move. My family and baggage can clog up the works for a good five minutes if its just us and the attendant, and it only gets worse with the other passengers who are dis-embarking, peeing, looking for a book in their other bag, or just rubber necking wondering if they could sneak out for a puff.
So it wasn’t until my third trip out that I noticed that there was a station. Of sorts. It was a metal shed with corrugated walls the color of an old office computer, on a slab with two vinyl-dipped benches. It was so new, or perhaps just invisible in its sheddy construction, that the single graffito was in pencil. This thing was so small that it couldn’t have sheltered any of the pickup trucks, old American sedans, or access road truckers looking for I-10 that drove by us as we looked around in a daze at our parched surroundings.
By the time everything was off the train and in the shadow, and I had resolved to move everything from the shadow of the switch box to the shadow of the shed, Dan and Raven rolled up in the van. Ah, a van. We piled all the stuff in, and head out to the local branch of a national chain store, to get some food supplies for our stay. Once back in the transport, we pulled out of Deming and Dan pointed us toward the foot hills of the Black Mountains we could see in the distance.
There is something about a harsh environment that dominates the mind for a while. We could talk of nothing but the weather. How hot it was, how hot it could get, when it was going to rain, when it last rained, how much it rains, how it floods when it does rain, how cold it gets when it isn’t hot, how hot it gets when it isn’t cold, when and where gets what rain snow heat and cold, etc. You see looking out the window that the environment that surrounds you utterly dominates your activities. Imagining the hard core people who first chunked a path out of the hillsides gives you a sense of wonder and amazement at the resilience of the human and social organism. Of course now with machines and compressors, some of the mystery of it all has waned, but people on the ground are still dominated by the weather, and plan their hours accordingly.
We go up to their house, and are cooled by the evening breezes. The sky is spectacular, the first really clear sky I’d seen in a long while. Humidity may be good for your skin, but it sucks for star gazing. We sleep in the trailer out back of the house.
The next day they take us to the hot springs. These were very different from the hot springs in Hot Springs. We drive out a dirt road past a horse farm and other houses, and end up in a gravel parking lot next surrounded by low trees. The springs are part of an old Tuberculosis spa, where back in the day people would come out by horse and carriage to heal their scarred lungs in the dry air and hot water. There was a pond the size of big room with a floating dock. It was littered with cotton from the cottonwood trees on the banks and the water was pleasingly cool. We dove in and refreshed, then back out into the hot. The hot was a large tile tub built by the pond, with a couple of spigots.The HOT was straight from the hot springs, the COOL passed through a coil of pipe submerged in the pond to cool it some. The Cool was plenty hot enough. Sitting in the sun, the tub was HOT, and the heat and water quickly turned you into jelly. But a bracing dip into the pond would set you right again. So back and forth for a while until we all were clean, relaxed, warmed, and cooled. It was a very nice spring.
That night we played at Dan and Junipers building in Mimbres. They bought an old garage several years ago and have spent a while renovating the place. It looks great now, with a beautiful hard maple floor, and a bucket of roller skates and scooters (and a rip-stik, a very fun toy). Dan was the pizza God, and whipped out pie after pie of yummy home made pizza goodness, from pepperoni and cheese for the kiddies to the full garden treatment for the biggies. It was a Sunday night, and people showed up slowly, chatting and catching up in this small community. We played a long set, and got a great reception. There was plenty of room to dance and people did, whirling around the skaters and having a good time. Dan even joined in on drums. The crowd wasn’t huge, but we left feeling well received, and I think a good time was had by most.
The next couple days are a blur. We did laundry, we went to the springs again, we watched each others’ family movies, and Fast Heart Mart in NZ, Dan went to work, we ate some and drank a lot of water. Juniper kept talking about the monsoons, and how it all changes when the rains set in. But we were a month early, and though one afternoon the clouds built and got dark and we could see the virga always over some other hills, the only relief we got from the heat was morning and dusk. And the swamp cooler.
Dan took us back down the mountain to catch our train. He had some work to do, so dropped us off under the shed once it became obvious the Amtrak would be late. We waited for an hour, and finally called 1-800-USA-RAIL from the pay phone at the corner. The computer told me the train was delayed by an unknown interval, would I like to speak to an agent, I did and that person cheerfully told me that the train was on time and would be in Deming at 6:15. I pointed out that it was 7:15 and no train, so with some other prodding (what time did the 421 leave El Paso?) told me it would be there at 7:34. And magically, it was. We loaded up, and rode on to Tucson.