Meyers Spring – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

Marfa Mondays’ Shiny New Website

Endless cool stuff in Far West Texas!! This is my photo of the tank at Meyers Spring, an important rock art site in the Lower Pecos and the subject of Marfa Mondays Podcast #15.

The Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project–24 podcasts apropos of my book in-progress on Far West Texas –21 podcasts posted to date– has a shiny new website, right here within www.madam-mayo.com. (Up there on the menu, click PODCASTS, et voilà.)

If the Marfa Mondays Podcast is new to you, it covers a region of gobsmackingly gorgeous skies and landscape, and interviews with and profiles of people as varied as artists, rockhounds, scientists, pitmasters, poets, rodeo riders, and so many more. I invite you to listen in anytime on iTunes or Podomatic (see all links listed below).

Why the new website when I already had one? I’ll spare you the snore-worthy story about my PC’s website software, so antique that Tutanhkamen’s grandma’s grandpa would have used it, and which I still use for my now 21-year old (and giwiggynormous) www.cmmayo.com, whence “Marfa Mondays” was parked. Suffice to say, now that I am working on a MacBook Pro, there’s a hippopotamus on my “to do” list; meanwhile, I’ll be better able to keep “Marfa Mondays” updated here on www.madam-mayo.com, which uses WordPress.

My writing assistant, after hearing me yammer on about my condundrums with ye olde Adobe PageMill. (His snoring was rather loud.)

Here’s the line up of Marfa Mondays podcasts so far:

21
Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“There is great power in one. This is what I always want, that one more person should know our story.”
Miss Charles Emily Wilson, quoted in Jeff Guinn’s Our Land Before We Die

20
Raymond Caballero on Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco
and Far West Texas
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“There were a lot of Mexicans very upset over the killing of Pascual Orozco… it was a huge controversy… In El Paso, in San Antonio, in Mexico City even President Carranza was asking for explanations… they wanted an investigation. So what happened was, ‘whoa! We didn’t kill some ordinary horse thief, we killed General Pascual Orozco, the biggest military hero of the early part of the Revolution! And what happens if the Mexicans in El Paso are able to pressure officials and they start a grand jury investigation there?’ As a result of the concern that they had, the Sheriff of Culberson County did something very unusual…”
Raymond Caballero

19
Pitmaster Israel Campos in Pecos
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“Keep it simple. Cook with wood. Can’t beat it. No gas. Just wood. Keep it like the old days.”
Israel Campos

18
Lisa Fernandes at the Pecos Rodeo
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“Everybody wants to win Pecos. I mean, anybody who’s ever rodeoed in the world wants to win the Pecos Rodeo…You can ask anybody who knows anything about rodeo in the world, and they will tell you that Pecos, Texas is special.”
Lisa Fernandes

17
Under Sleeping Lion: Historian Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“Everybody kind of has a stereotype of Marfa either as the cattle town where they filmed ‘Giant’ or a contemporary art center. I like discovering things that don’t fit into that stereotype.”
Lonn Taylor

16
Tremendous Forms:
Paul V. Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“On a list of the world’s largest super volcanoes, the Chinati caldera is near the top of the list, and when the Chinati erupted about 32 million years ago, the force of the eruption was greater than Vesuvius and greater than Krakatoa. To think that that happened just southwest of Marfa is mind-boggling”
Paul V. Chaplo

15
Gifts of the Ancient Ones:
Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“When I drive out here from San Antonio… I love rock and roll. I love old rock and roll music, it’s playing all the way. When I hit the Pecos River, I turn the music off and I usually roll the windows down. I don’t care how hot it is. I turn the air conditioner off and I usually drive way under the speed limit and then I become… at that point it’s not about me. At that point I become the smallest thing here and everything out there is bigger than me, everything out there has something to teach me or to show me”
Greg Williams

14
Over Burro Mesa / The Kickapoo Ambassadors
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“No sign of burros on Burro Mesa. In two hours in this merciless landscape, we had seen no animal tracks, no scat; one lizard; one butterfly; two ravens”

13
Looking at Mexico in New Ways:
An Interview with Historian John Tutino
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“I got to the point where I said, ‘The whole basic big picture of where we thought Mexico fit in the world is somewhere between wrong and mythical.” And you can’t change that by chipping away at the edges and saying, ‘look at this little piece.’”
John Tutino

12
This Precious Place: An Interview with Dallas Baxter,
Founding Editor of Cenizo Journal
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“I really love this place out here, and I love the way it looks. I like the way it smells. I like to go outside at night and just look at the sky and feel the wind, and I think it’s a really precious place, and I think it’s a precious place because of what has come before and because of what’s here now.”
Dallas Baxter

11
Cowboy Songs by Cowboys
and an Interview with Michael Stevens
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“They love the job they do. They love their animals. They appreciate the land. Have you driven around the country and seen cowboy churches? Have you ever seen a farmer church? I never saw anybody sing about their tractor! You know, the sailors sing about their ships, but the cowboys, they love that.“
Michael Stevens

10
A Visit to Swan House
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“When Simone Swan was living in New York, a house with two courtyards came to her in a dream. And it seemed like a dream to me that, less than a year after I’d first glimpsed Swan House from the road, I was sitting with its owner in the Nubian vault that was the living room, the shell high above us aglow with the orange light of morning…”

9
Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“What is this human urge that you want to record what you see? It must go back to prehistoric times when people painted on the cave walls the animals that they saw. So I can’t explain why we do it. You know, nothing is as good as being there and seeing it, just being in the landscape. But there’s this urge to say, ‘I’d like to try to translate this. These colors, or these shapes, or these animals, and this moment, and at this place.”
Mary Baxter

8
A Spell at Chinati Hot Springs
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“I walked down the arroyo through low canyons of limestone, watching out for Nelson, the famously cantankerous wild burro, who never did appear. It was not an easy hike because of the stones— all sizes, shapes, and many colors—and the puddles, and mud, and braids of water still flowing after the past weeks’ rains. In a leisurely, zigzag-y half an hour, I arrived at the Private Art Gallery…”

7
We Have Seen the Lights:
The Marfa Ghost Lights Phenomenon
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“One time, very early in the morning, when he was driving a school bus from Marfa to Presidio, he saw in the rear view mirror that a big orb had appeared on the highway. It followed the bus, and then it came closer… And then it moved inside the bus.”

6
Marfa’s Moonlight Gemstones:
An Interview with Paul Graybeal
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“What got me into a rock shop is collecting agate as a hobby when I first moved out here in the ’80s. Of course, I grew up in the Black Hills and that’s real rich in minerals and of course, fossils in Badlands and all that sort of stuff, so at a very young age I’m sure I was exposed to looking at the ground and looking for treasures on the ground…”
Paul Graybeal

5
Cynthia McAlister with the Buzz on the Bees
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“There are thousands kinds of bees out there… And the one I always like to tell people about first is the bright green iridescent sweat bees… Of course, bumblebees, the big black and yellow fuzzy, black and yellow bees. And then around here, a lot of people, I’m sure, are familiar with the big shiny black carpenter bee that digs a hole out here in agave stalks and yucca stalks and dry sotol stalks… “
Cynthia McAlister

4
Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“When we moved to Alpine, our landlords had about 30 chickens. Patty and Cindy, they’re on the west edge of town…that’s where I had my first experience being around chickens, because until then it was just stuff I’d eat. They’re basically mini-dinosaurs. Every time I go in, I’m always worried if I fall, and they start pecking me to death like in some horror movie… because they see red, they run to it and attack it. They’re very interesting characters, and I think what really made me laugh was Patty and Cindy had named them after characters from ‘The Sopranos.’”
Avram Dumitrescu

3
Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“Julius Woeltz is my favorite… He was really known as a fine muralist. I think he painted well over 30 murals in his lifetime. He was very much was influenced by Rivera and Orozco. He and his very good friend, Xavier González, spent many summers down in Mexico and Mexico City looking at the muralists…”
Mary Bones

2
Charles Angell in the Big Bend
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

“I just love to be in the river. It’s like the best seat in the house for the Big Bend, I think. You can see canyon walls. You see desert. You see riparian zones. There’s more wildlife there than anywhere else, and even if it’s a really, really hot summer day, you can stay cool.”
Charles Angell

1
Introduction and Welcome
Podomatic | iTunes | Transcript

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Meteor, Influences, Ambiance

Waaaay Out to the Big Bend of Far West Texas,
and a Note on El Paso’s Elroy Bode

A Review of Patrick Dearen’s
Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River

Find out more about
C.M. Mayo’s books, articles, podcasts, and more.

August From the Archives: “On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos”

August 2019 finds me on vacation. Nonetheless, each Monday this month I will be offering posts from the archive (as usual, look for a workshop post on the second Monday, Q & A with a fellow writer on the fourth Monday).

On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos

Originally posted on Madam Mayo blog November 3, 2015

Remote as they are, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of the US-Mexico border have a strangely magnetic pull. That may sound like a wild assertion, but the evidence comprises over 200 shamanistic rock art sites, many of them thousands of years old, and the fact that dozens of rock art enthusiasts, including myself, find themselves returning again and again.

It was on a meltingly hot August day in 2014 that I made my first foray into the canyonlands for the Rock Art Foundation’s visit to Meyers Spring. A speck of an oasis tucked into the vast desert just west of the Pecos, Meyers Spring’s limestone overhang is vibrant with petrographs, both ancient, but very faded, and of Plains Indians works including a brave on a galloping horse, an eagle, a sun, and what appears to be a missionary and his church.

MEYERS SPRING, AUGUST 2014

Because I am writing a book about Far West Texas and I must travel all the way from Mexico City via San Antonio, I had figured that this visit, plus an interview with the foundation’s executive director, Greg Williams, would suffice for such a little-known corner of my subject.

I took home the realization that with Meyers Spring I had taken one nibble of the richest of banquets. In addition the rock art of the Plains Indians—Apaches and Comanches— of historic times, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands are filled with prehistoric art, principally Pecos River, Red Linear, and Red Monochrome. Of the three, Pecos River is comparable to the best known Paleolithic rock in the world, the caves of Lascaux in France.

I would have to return to the canyonlands— alas for my book’s time and travel budget! Not that the Rock Art Foundation charges more than a nominal sum for its tours. The individual tour to Meyers Spring, which lasted four hours, cost a mere 30 dollars. Everyone involved, including the guides, works for the foundation for free.

By December of 2014 I was back for another Rock Art Foundation tour, this one down into Eagle Nest Canyon in Langtry. Apart from rock shelters with their ancient and badly faded petrographs, cooking debris, tools, and even a mummy of a woman who—scientists have determined— died of chagas, Eagle Nest Canyon is the site of Bonfire Shelter, the earliest and the second biggest bison jump, after Canada’s Head Bashed-In, in North America. Some 10,000 years ago hunters drove hundreds of prehistoric bison—larger than today’s bison—over the cliff. And in 800 BC, hunters drove a herd of modern bison over the same cliff, so many animals that the decaying mass of unbutchered and partially butchered carcasses spontaneously combusted. In deeper layers dated to 14,000 years, archaeologists have found bones of camel, horse, and mammoth, among other megafauna of the Pleistocene.

DESCENT INTO EAGLE NEST CANYON, DECEMBER 2014

Then in the spring of this year I visited the Lewis Canyon site on the shore of the Pecos, with its mesmerizing petroglyphs of bear claws, atlatls, and stars, and, behind a morass of boulders, an agate mirror of a tinaja encircled by petrographs.

LEWIS CANYON PETROGLYPHS, MAY 2015

LEWIS CANYON TINAJA SITE WITH PETROGRAPHS,
BY THE PECOS RIVER, MAY 2015

Not all but most of the Lower Pecos Canyonland rock art sites— and this includes Meyers Spring, Eagle Nest Canyon and Lewis Canyon— are on private property. Furthermore, visits to Meyers Spring, Lewis Canyon, and many other sites require a high clearance vehicle for a tire-whumping, paint-scraping, bone-jarring drive in. So I was beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the privilege it is to visit these sites. At Lewis Canyon, as I stood on the limestone shore of the sparkling Pecos in utter silence but for the crunch of the boots of my fellow tour members, I learned that less than 50 people a year venture to float down its length.

This October I once again traveled to the Lower Pecos, this time for the Rock Art Foundation’s annual three day Rock Art Rendezvous. Offered this year were the three sites I had already visited, plus a delectable menu that included White Shaman, Fate Bell, and—not for those prone to vertigo— Curly Tail Panther.

WHITE SHAMAN, OCTOBER 2015

Just off Highway 90 near its Pecos River crossing, the White Shaman Preserve serves as the headquarters for Rock Art Rendezvous. After a winding drive on dirt road, I parked near the shade structure. From there, the White Shaman rock art site was a brief but rugged hike down one side of cactus-studded canyon, then up the other. I was glad to have brought a hiking pole and leather gloves. No knee surgery on the horizon, either. When I arrived at White Shaman, named after the central luminous figure, the sun was low in the sky, bathing the shelter’s wall and its reddish drawings in gold and turning the Pecos, far below, where an occasional truck droned by, deep silver.

The next morning, at the Rock Art Foundation’s tour of the Shumla Archaeological and Research Center in nearby Comstock, I heard Dr. Carolyn Boyd’s stunning talk about her book, The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, which is forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press. Dr. Boyd, whose work is based on 25 years of archaeological research in the Lower Pecos and a meticulous study of Mexican anthropology, argues that White Shaman, which is many thousands of years old, may represent the oldest known creation story in North America.

FATE BELL, OCTOBER 2015

From the White Shaman Preserve, Fate Bell is a few minutes down highway 90 in Seminole Canyon State Park. More than any other site, this shelter in the cake-like layers of the limestone walls of a canyon, reminded me of the cave art I had seen in Baja California’s Sierra de San Francisco. Inhabited on and off for some 9,000 years, Fate Bell is the largest site in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. It has various styles of petrograph, including a spectacular group of anthropomorphs with what appear to be antlers and wings.

CURLY TAIL PANTHER, OCTOBER 2015

Curly Tail Panther is a scoop of a cave about the size of a walk-in closet, but as if for Superman to whoosh in, set dizzyingly high on a cliff-side overlooking the Devils River. The back wall has an array of petrographs: red mountain lion, anthropomorphic figures, and geometric designs. The only access to Curly Tail Panther is by way of a narrow ledge. Drop your hiking pole or your sunglasses from here, and you won’t see them again. You might lose a character, too—in the opening of Mary Black’s novel, Peyote Fire, a shaman stumbles to his death from this very ledge. The Rock Art Foundation’s website made it clear, Curly Tail Panther is not for anyone who has a fear of heights. But who doesn’t? My strategy was to take a deep breath and, like the running shoes ad says, Just do it.

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