February 11, 2024
by David Ryan
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Wandering in the Clear Light of New Mexico

For the better part of the last two years the dogs and I have been wandering to places that make New Mexico special. Most of them several times. These are places that you’ll only find in New Mexico and are important enough or compelling enough to warrant a trip across the country, or over the ocean, to check out.

To begin, the nation only has 25 UNESCO-Designated World Heritage Sites. Three of them (Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco Canyon, and Taos Pueblo) are in New Mexico. This is more than any other state. And when you throw in the state’s incredible landforms and sense of place, you have an amazing state to explore. I doubt if any other state has as much to discover.

Through this effort, Wandering in the Clear Light of New Mexico is now available. In many ways the new book continues the theme of discovery described within 60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Albuquerque and The Gentle Art of Wandering. Both of those books stress all that is waiting for you to experience when you get out and allow yourself to see all wonders around you. Wonders and gifts that are already there and waiting for you to discover.

Wandering in the Clear Light of New Mexico features:

  • 30 Gold Star locations – these are the special locations worth a drive across the country to check out.
  • 18 Silver Star locations – these locations may not warrant a drive across the country, but are still very cool and worth checking out while you’re in the area.
  • 7 Bronze Star locations – these too are very cool and worth checking out while in the area if you have an interest in them.
  • 5 Sidebar locations – these are locations of special historical or cultural interest and are unique to the state.

Many other extraordinary and interesting places are also described within the context of traveling to the primary locations.

In addition to the three World Heritage Sites, you’ll discover:

  • Landscapes and landforms that will knock your socks off.
  • Locations that have inspired great works of art.
  • Amazing archaeological sites.
  • Native communities.
  • The World’s First Designated Wilderness Area.
  • The nation’s most remote and beautiful monastery.
  • The site of the very first atomic bomb explosion and many other locations of scientific, historical, and cultural achievement.

The book is already available at several retail outlets and several talks are already scheduled. With the rollout just starting, more will be coming. Please return to this website for updates.

The book has 320 pages, over 200 color photos, and detailed driving directions. The book retails for $21.95 and is available at retailers and this website.

Click on CLEAR LIGHT on the MENU bar for upcoming talks and retail outlets.

February 2, 2024
by David Ryan
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Wandering to the Picket Wire Canyon Dinosaur Tracks

Last weekend my dog Sparky and I finally made it to the nation’s (and perhaps the world’s) largest concentration of dinosaur tracks located at the bottom of Picket Wire Canyon in southeast Colorado. I learned about Picket Wire Canyon while researching the very impressive and accessible dinosaur tracks near Clayton, New Mexico for my upcoming book Wandering in the Clear Light of New Mexico.

This is only a small portion of the trackway. All of those holes are dinosaur tracks.

The Clayton and Picket Wire trackways are only 50 miles or so apart, as the crow flies, from each other, and both of them date back to around 100 million years ago or so during the Cretaceous geologic period. At that time much of the nation’s interior was covered by an inland sea. And dinosaur trackways are found in intermittent locations along what was the western edge of the sea all the way from Texas to Colorado.

This is the extent of the Inland Sea. Map courtesy of the National Park Service.

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December 28, 2023
by David Ryan
8 Comments

Wandering Through an Amazing Transformation in Globe, Arizona

Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post about looking for and climbing public stairways in the Globe and Miami, Arizona area. The two copper mining towns have hilly terrain that is perfect for stairways. (Here’s the link to that post.) But you’ll see in that post that the stairways were not in the best of shape and rarely used.

About a year and a half ago I learned of a local initiative in Globe to freshen up their stairs and to feature them in a local walk. In my email exchanges with Regina Ortega-Leonardi and Thea Wilshire (the women behind the initiative), I learned that there were concerns from the city of Globe about ADA compliance and liability and assumed that the initiative would die on the vine.

But I was curious enough to put the proposed walk route on my radar scope and planned to follow it the next time I drove through Globe. And with my book project now in the hands of the designer, my dog Sparky and I drove down to Globe earlier this month to walk the route and climb whatever stairways came along.

This is map that was developed when the walk was proposed. We opted to follow the longer Purple Route and started in the center of Globe.

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