Turtleback Mountain Diary 5

Picnicking on the dead shores of Elephant Butte Lake in the winter is not as depressing as it sounds. At least it never really got cold.  Warmth for achy bones is why a lot of people come here. 

Looking on the bright side of the drought, there's a lot more lake shore. Big dog and I enjoy hikes down to the water and back, a considerable distance in some places.  We were spooked by rustling in the bushes near the water a few weeks ago. Wild pigs are making inroads locally - snagging habitat and being opportunistic with water holes.  Big could smell tasty piglet.

There are plenty of reasons to be watchful beyond big pig tusks. Spooked even. David Parker Ray disposed of the bodies in Elephant Butte Lake. Who knows if he had help. And those bones are decidedly not why I came here. (I never should of read that book.)

There used to be a ferry across the Rio before the lake.  It's demise was the subject of a poem, Engle Ferry, by Eugene Manlove Rhodes published in the Saturday Evening Post August 10, 1929 and excerpted in Keleher's Fabulous Frontier.

The ferry is narrow and deep... the current is strong and the banks are steep ... a winding road up either hand, between black lava and yellow sand, between red water and close blue sky...angry echoes from hill to hill mutter and clamor and threaten still... Engle ferry is gone... never again shall moon or star kiss the hill where their camp-fires are... the passionless waters are deep and still on golden mesas and dreaming hill.

Maybe not as deep anymore.

When a proposal was made to change the name of nearby Engle to Engel, U.S. then Senator Bronson Cutting intervened at Rhodes's request and the proposal was nixed. There's a connection!