Past the missions

Quarai Mission ruins

Leaving Albuquerque, I aimed southeast instead of north. I had time to burn, and mountains and folds of land beyond the city held a few seldom-seen wonders. 

En route to Albuquerque, I stopped at Pecos National Historic Park to take in the mission and pueblo ruins on high ground near Glorieta Pass. The red stone of the old mission seemed to brighten in the overcast afternoon. I showed the volunteers outside the visitor center some pictures from my last stop, on a snowy March morning when fresh snow coated the mission, the pueblo and everything between the mountains. The volunteers and the rangers marveled at what snow did to Pecos. 

There are missions across New Mexico, remnants of its days as the frontier of Spanish Mexico, where Catholic missionaries would bring their oppressive means of conversion to local populations. From Albuquerque, I skimmed along the Rio Grande, through the small farm towns south. The land would open then close into mountains again. 

First I came upon the Abo pueblo and mission just west of Mountainair, one of the few towns of any size in this open country. I arrived an hour before the national monument opened. With steady rain and no one in sight, I wandered the ruins and the paths freely. 

The mission at Abo still soared above the countryside, leaving little doubt of its colonial Spanish origin. The ruins seemed to include a kiva, the sacred round room seen across the Southwest in other ancestral Puebloan ruins. The rattlesnake warning signs held no sway in this weather. I could have missed a snake in sight of the arroyo, the flowing creek along the ruins that supplied water to the settlement some 350 years ago. The rocky bed held many inches of water, many more than it would in most seasons, when the bed would go dry. 

While pueblos existed for hundreds of years prior to the Spanish arrival, the missions last only a few decades before all three sites were abandoned by natives and Spanish colonists after the Pueblo Rebellion in 1680. The missions had a short life, although the pueblos’ history extend hundreds of years earlier. 

Abo ruins

A flush arroyo

Kiva in the mission?

The national monument visitor center lies in Mountainair, the only sizable town in the region and central to the three sites forming the Salina Pueblo Missions National Monument. While not large, this rainy morning was not the time to wander its streets. I spent a little time in the visitor center, decided two of three pueblo sites would be enough in the autumn rains pummeling New Mexico. 

North of Mountainair, came the tiny town of Punta de Agua. The Manzano Mountains formed the western horizon, part of them protected by a state park barely known beyond New Mexico’s borders. Little towns in New Mexico with a few hundred residents can feel like they sit south of the border. 

An adobe Catholic church with a small graveyard and more adobe houses sat among the short trees outside the Quarai mission The Quarai ruin houses the most complete mission, with the pueblo site largely left unexcavated. 

The grove of trees along a creek bed spoke in the rain. The rain on the trees almost seemed to chatter, uttering a rarely heard language and one of relief to the greenery in this dry country. I spent more time listening to that noise than I did exploring the looming mission. The roof might be gone but the walls are cavernous, almost Medieval. 

In fairness, I skipped the Gran Quivera pueblo, which sat 25 miles south of Mountainair. I couldn’t rationalize an extra 50-mile roundtrip in the sloppy rain on unfamiliar terrain. When it comes to remote missions, two out of three isn’t bad. 

 Instead of returning through Albuquerque, I headed north from Mountainair. I would cross the mountains back toward Colorado on a series of winding roads that passed state parks and passed through villages that seemed plucked out from Mexico. I would hit the interstate east of Glorieta Pass and only four hours from home. 

But I had to cover some lonely miles before that crossing. The pine-covered mountains could not be enjoyed in the rain, not on the slippery road that crested them. When I crossed the mountains, I picked up the Pecos River, swollen and brown after days of heavy rain, winding its way down through Texas and meeting the Rio Grande on the Mexican border. 

Outside the Quarai ruins

The talking grove

Ruins among the grasses

The town of Villenueva had a handful of open businesses, its abode buildings and farmhouses quiet in the downpour. A state park of the same name lied upon the Pecos. Soon I found the interstate and the narrow, winding roads ended. 

What struck me most from the rainy morning were the unexpected lakes that rose from the sprawling ranchland. The roads were empty. The land was empty except for a handful of cattle with no ranch houses in sight. North of Encino I spotted a series of lakes to the west, not anything mentioned on the map. I stopped at a “point of interest” rest stop and got an answer about the unusual lakes. 

This was the domain of Laguna del Perro, a series of small salt lakes I first tabbed as reservoirs. But these lakes are not new; they are remnants of a larger saline lake that filled the basin millions of years ago that ran 150 feet deep. 

For centuries or even longer, Natives have quarried salt on their shores. For a region mostly populated by cattle in the 21st century, the salt lakes give a surprising context to land that might be easily dismissed as empty prairie.

Seldom seen salt lakes