CARLSBAD, NM - Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Parks in Carlsbad, New Mexico will celebrate its 21st annual “Mescal Roast and Mountain Spirit Dance” from May 10-13. This event, which celebrates the culture and history of the Mescalero Apache people, received a Dorothy Mullins Arts and Humanities Award from the National Recreation and Parks Association. The Mescal Roast is sponsored by the Friends of Living Desert.

The flora and the fauna come together in the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park at the north edge of Carlsbad, New Mexico, on U.S. Highway 285. It takes visitors through the diverse Chihuahuan Desert, the largest in North America, that spans Southeast New Mexico into the rugged terrain of the Guadalupe Mountains and Mexico. The Park is located on top of the Ocotillo Hills overlooking Carlsbad and the Pecos River valley.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park runs five guided off-trail tours. They are so different it’s hard to imagine they are in the same park. Spider Cave delivers an intimate caving experience, wriggling into the hidden underworld, coming face-to-face with earth’s inner secrets. Lower Cave is back stage at the opera.

Recently I wriggled my way, not into a cave, but into a goals-setting retreat of Carlsbad Caverns National Park staff - three long days trying to articulate the park’s mission, renew its vision, turn sweeping desires into measurable goals, tasks, and work assignments. We were 24, nearly a quarter of the park staff, including superintendent, division heads, rangers, maintenance men, administrative aides. We talked much about team building, but the underlying theme is how we balance the contradictory mandates of preserving the park’s fragile caves with that of encouraging tourist visitation.

I’m flat on my belly inching through the crawl space into Spider Cave. My head lamp casts a shadowy glow into this twisting channel, but I can’t raise my head far enough to see where I’m going. The cave ceiling scrapes my back. The cave floor is rocky as a mountain stream, and jagged stones nip into my chest and thighs. I’m dragging myself - there’s not enough room to crawl - trying to follow the soles of the size ten boots ahead of me. The boots disappear around a corner.

These five off-trail tours take you off the beaten path. Plan time for them. They offer an intriguing glimpse into Carlsbad's world of caving.

Winter in Carlsbad isn't about snow, ice or cold. It's about warmth. The warmth of the holiday season. And families coming together. Carlsbad is alive with the ultimate celebration of the season - Christmas on the Pecos River.

The ideal visit to Carlsbad Caverns starts by hiking down the natural entrance: We plunge into the earth; light into darkness, summer heat into cool shadow. We're explorers, wending our way to the center of the earth. The air turns musty; water drips. We imagine the cave's first explorer, Jim White, descending by rope, home-made kerosene lantern in hand. We wonder how, without this trail, without these lights, he managed to find his way out safely.

Carlsbad was originally christened Eddy about 1888 with a bottle of champagne. Long before that, around 25,000 B.C., its occupants were representatives of Sandia Man. Other nomadic hunters, including the Apache, followed hunting buffalo. Spanish explorers were next until the conquest by the United States which resulted in the Territory of New Mexico about 1850.

What is a flume, you may ask? According to the dictionary, it is a narrow gorge with a stream flowing through it, usually, or an artificial channel or chute for a stream of water. The latter describes the Flume at Carlsbad, New Mexico. Irrigation was a necessity for the arid Southwest as it couldn't depend on rainfall and snow for moisture to grow crops. For centuries Native Americans and Hispanic peoples regularly watered small fields with canal networks, acequias and brush diversion dams.

If you are planning a trip to Carlsbad, New Mexico, don't miss the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. This gem in the rough offers a chance to get up close and personal with some fascinating creatures and plants. And it is all easily accessible from a short walk (or roll, for those in wheelchairs or strollers).

We visited in May, when the desert was truly alive, especially once we turned into the park gates just off Highway 285 north of town. After driving through stark scrub desert to the north, we were greeted on the park road by tall, snaking ocotillo with fiery red tips and prickly pear cacti covered with large yellow blossoms and furled pink buds. Perhaps because of an unusually rainy spring, the blossoms were budding not only on the edges of the spiked pads but even in the centers of the pads.

The road wound up to a low building on a ridge overlooking the Pecos River valley and town of Carlsbad. We would soon learn we were at 3,200 feet, atop the Ocotillo Hills, named for the bright cactus that had greeted us. Around the large parking lot were large soaptree yucca, also covered in enormous, spiky white blooms, and many species of agave, or century plant. These giants grow close to the ground, storing energy for about twenty years before sending up a single blossoming stalk to reproduce, after which the plants die. Those twenty years must have seemed like a century to whoever gave the agave their common name.