Day 91: September 2nd 2009, High Rolls to Alamagordo (about 12 miles)

Not too much to say today. It was a beautiful nonetheless. I walked myself down the mountain, still freaked out about yesterday's incident. I really didn't want to push my luck and get killed today. As much as I hate walking, this was one special walk. Its so beautiful walking down this mountain. At the same time it was pretty weird. In a matter of hours going down the mountain I saw all the ecology I have been in, in the past 6 months. Pine and conifer forests, to seasonal forests, to small desert trees to flat desert. Temperatures at the top were in the low 60's at 8 this morning and in the 70's at the bottom during the same time period. It must be pretty cool living in New Mexico, when you want to escape the heat drive up, when you want to escape the snow or the cold drive down to the desert. Still, there was no ocean.

One cool thing though, was as I was walking down, I saw a tarantula hawk, which are pretty big wasps that are parasitoids of tarantulas, meaning that the mother hunts tarantulas, paralyzes them, then lays her eggs in them. The eggs hatch into larvae inside and they feed on the insides of the spider until they are down, where they molt into adults. Anyway, this tarantula hawk was being attacked by a swarm of ants and he was helpless. This was the male. The female it seems had already been killed. They kept biting his leg and would pull away but they wouldn't give up. It was a pretty cool sight to witness knowing that tarantula hawks have the most painful sting of any wasp, I would never fuck with one, but these tiny little ants didn't care. It was a matter of survival.

At the end of the day I took shelter behind some mesquite trees, the only source of shade in the desert. I really begin to feel the heat at this elevation and it hits hard. I'll let the pictures to the rest of the talking.