The North Star Road (Forest Route 150 on the Gila National Forest map), an unpaved road connecting New Mexico's Mimbres Valley with Wall Lake, has an undeserved bad reputation. On checking with the Mimbres Ranger Station, I was cautioned to use a high clearance vehicle. I have driven the entire route several times, only once with a high clearance vehicle. I cross-examined the Forest Service person about creek crossings and they all seemed to be fine, so I gassed up my Subaru wagon. We loaded it with a picnic supper and took off

In the realm of travel, nothing can approach a successful river run on good water, with the opportunity for some gamefish along the way. Okay, maybe if we could work some hunting into that river run, too. That should be next.

For most of us, Labor Day fills a primitive need for a special day to mark the change of seasons, the end of summer and the beginning of fall. In New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains on Labor Day, summer still held the land in her dark green grip. Only the sunflowers and asters crowding the highway hinted that fall was squeezing in.

One of the great outdoor joys of my life is to simply meander through the countryside. That means to hike along with no particular place in mind as my destination, and to do it in a very slow manner. I do my best meandering while hunting. A good example of what I'm talking about happened during my last elk hunt.

For those who like to avoid the Interstates and travel the narrower, more quiet highways, New Mexico Route 28 is a lovely, relaxing trip. Begin your trek on this highway at Old Mesilla southwest of Las Cruces. The highway is east of the Rio Grande at this point, but a few miles south it crosses the great river and you are on the west side of it . . . Designated as the Oñate Trail, it is part of the route Don Juan de Oñate took into New Mexico 400 years ago.

In 1878, Billy the Kid was capturing headlines across the American West. Three years later he was dead, shot down by lawman Pat Garrett. Even before his brief life played out, the Kid had become legendary, as either brutish murderer or daring avenger. To this day, the controversy continues. Was Billy the Kid simply living up to the code of the frontier? Or was he a lethal hot-head embellishing his own legend?

Travel photography, like many other aspects of the art, requires a special mindset, a philosophical approach that demands images that reflect only what film records. For many of us, our pictures remind us of the whole fabulous day; one shot brings back a host of memories we might cherish for years. It is difficult to remember that, for your audience, this does not happen. For them, the photograph must stand on its own merits. If you can recall this when framing the shot, you've mastered the hard part of travel photography.

Throughout the Southwest's history, few topics have generated more passion than water. Today battles are fought by lawyers with briefcases rather than farmers with six-guns. The issues are many and certainly changes will come. The chief agreement seems to be is that there are no simple solutions.

Separate from the crowd. Exit Interstate 25 and find yourself on New Mexico's own Highway One, a slower, quieter route. The road hugs the topography, its narrow, low bridges and sweeping ridgetop climbs reward those taking the alternate route from Elephant Butte to Socorro.

Did you know New Mexico had prisoner of war camps during World War II? This column has talked about ones at Santa Fe and Lordsburg that held U.S. residents of Japanese descent. The camp at Lordsburg also held captured German and Italian soldiers. Another camp at Roswell held almost exclusively German prisoners, most of them from Gen. Rommel's elite Afrika Korps, until late in the war.

In 1959, the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report carried the story of strange mirages seen near Yuma, Arizona. On hot, unusually still days, a clear image of a city appeared in the desert to the west of Yuma. It was no phantom either - the shimmering image was unmistakably that of San Diego, California, 150 miles west on the Pacific Coast, beyond several mountain ranges.

As I drive, twisting through mountains and leaning around curves, having turned westward at Hatchita towards Animas on N.M. 9, which then leads to Rodeo and to Portal, Arizona, I bask in the warmth of an autumn day. I am taking a one-day vacation to leisurely revisit the sites of Old West tales in the boot heel of New Mexico.

Museums are history lessons for those who have lived through that history and those who are too young to have experienced it. When you see how our ancestors lived it doesn't give credence to the term "the good ole days." It is, however, a window through which we can view the past. The Roswell Museum and Art Center provides that window in the Rogers Aston Gallery of American Indian and Western Art. That art includes clothing worn, implements, tools and other artifacts used during that era.

Would you like to go to a place where people know your name, where you can visit with friends and neighbors while keeping in touch with what’s happening around the world and down the street?

The Seven Cities of Gold has been a New Mexico fable since before Fray Marcos de Niza claimed to have seen them in 1539. As soon as Cortes and crew finished conquering the Aztec Empire in the early 1520s, they set out to find the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, said to have been established by seven bishops who fled Spain after the Moorish conquest to hide gold, gems, and religious articles in the New World.