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.

The staff were friendly and helpful, and the exhibits inside the building were well-designed and interesting, covering the geology, flora, fauna, and human cultures of the region. We especially enjoyed the long table with animal horns, antlers, fossils, rocks, and other items to touch and feel. We also learned that the Ocotillo Hills, like the Guadalupe Mountains to the west, were once limestone reefs in the Permian Basin, the ancient sea whose millions of tiny creatures were transformed into the deposits of oil and gas that have enriched West Texans.

The 1.3-mile paved trail winds through the various ecosystems of the Chihuahuan Desert. This desert stretches from southeast Arizona across southern New Mexico into Texas and far south into Mexico. The largest desert in North America, it covers 200,000 square miles.

The trail winds first through the Sand Dunes habitat, with sagebrush, prickly pear, mimosa, and mesquite. Next is the Riparian habitat, an area where a spring or other water makes it possible for trees to grow. (Riparian comes from the Latin ripa, “river bank.”) The trees here include pines,  junipers, oaks, and maples. The Riparian habitat, naturally, features  the bird aviary with owls, hawks, eagles, and turkeys. Like the other animal displays in the park, the aviary features natural habitat but allows you to get quite close to the birds. I never tire of seeing these magnificent creatures, such as the bald eagle, up close.

Next is the Gypsum Hills habitat–full of “gypsophiles,” or plants that love gypsum. The Desert Arroyo habitat features apache plume, desert willow, and mesquite. It also has an arroyo, or dry streambed, which is home to the zoo’s javelina, or collared peccaries. Wild cousins of the pig but native to the Americas, javelina have sharp tusks and feast on agave and prickly pear. They live in packs, and family members nestle together in cool, shaded mud during the heat of the day.

The Piñon-Juniper-Oak habitat is home to the bear and wolf exhibits and the nocturnal creatures exhibit (salamander, bats, ringtail cats, and kangaroo rats). The bear exhibit was under construction, so we did not get to see Maggie Oso, a black bear famous for her paintings. A volunteer inside described how they place the paints out in shallow containers, and she goes back and forth to different colors, then walks on the paper or swipes it. Apparently, they thought it would be therapeutic for the young bear, who lost her mother and sister.

All the animals at the zoo are native to the area and were orphaned or injured by traps, cars, or bullets. When possible, rehabilitated animals are returned to the wild. The Mexican gray wolves at Living Desert are part of an international effort to revive the endangered species in the Southwest.

Past the bear and wolf areas, a side trail leads downhill and out onto a ridge. My partner refused to enter the Reptile House, which features snakes, lizards, and a Gila monster. On the slopes below the trail we had a good view of the “hoofstock”—the bison, pronghorn, mule deer, and elk. This trail also leads to the waterfowl pond and prairie dog exhibit (fun to watch, especially for kids) as well as spectacular vistas of the Pecos River Valley.

Back up on the main trail is my personal favorite, the mountain lion and bobcat exhibit. The enclosures were small but well designed, so we were only a few feet from the big cats, yet they seemed less stressed than at many zoos. The mountain lion rolled lazily onto his (or her?) back, ignoring me and my camera.

After passing the mescal pit (see article on the annual Mescal Roast), the path leads up to a large greenhouse with Succulents of the World. This exhibit displays hundreds of succulents, many of which would not survive in the Chihuahuan desert environment. I learned that all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. Succulents include all plants that store water in their leaves, stems, or roots. The display included some of Arizona’s giant saguaros. The final exhibit is a lovely pond, complete with blooming water lilies, surrounded by native plants.

I highly recommend the Living Desert for all ages. It was considerably more interesting than we expected. Early morning and evening are good times for viewing the animals (and less hot for humans), and the park is open until 8 in the summer, so you can go there after the caverns close.

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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 Mescal Roast is truly a special event,” said Ken Britt, Park Superintendent. “The sharing by the Mescalero Apache people is a genuine gift that brings all participants closer together as well as closer to our natural surroundings.”

The Mescal Roast provides a better understanding of the Mescalero Apache people and the importance of protecting the Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem upon which the Apache once totally depended.

The mescal plant, also known as agave, was a staple for the Apache who once populated the Pecos River Valley and Guadalupe Mountains of Southeastern New Mexico. Nearly all parts of the mescal plant could be utilized including the leaves, flower stalks, blossoms and seeds. The leaves and stalks were traditionally roasted in large cooking pits and eaten or pounded into cakes and dried in the sun for later consumption. Agave fibers were used to make bowstrings, brushes, sandals and rope.

The Mescalero Apache were eventually forced to relocate following the arrival of U.S. military expeditions and “Buffalo Soldiers” in the 1800’s.

The event commences on Thursday as spiritual leaders bless the roasting pit in which the mescal is placed to prepare for tasting the following Sunday. The ceremony is not a reenactment but an actual ritual observance.

Visitors will be treated to a feast dinner on Friday and Saturday, followed by an interpretive lecture and performance of traditional Apache War/Mountain Spirit dances both nights. The dinner is modeled after traditional feasts served during coming-of-age ceremonies for young women on the reservation. The Mescal Roast draws an average of 2,500 visitors annually.

A schedule of events is as follows:

Thursday, May 10

10:00 a.m. – Prayer ceremony and Mescal pit blessing

Friday, May 11 & Saturday, May 12

All Day – Sales of native American crafts
2:00 p.m. – Mescal Roast and interpretive presentation
6:00 p.m. – Feast dinner
7:00 p.m. – Apache War dance
8:30 p.m. – Mountain Spirit dance

Sunday, May 13

11:00 a.m. – Mescal Pit reopening, Mescal tasting, Closing ceremony and giveaway

Admittance to special daytime activities during the Mescal Roast, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., is free of charge with the park’s normal day-use/admission fee of $5 for adults, $3 for children between 7 and 12 years and free to children under 6 years.

Tickets for Mescal feast dinner on either Friday or Saturday are $15 each, and include all evening activities from 6:00 p.m. until closing. Advanced ticket purchase is recommended, as tickets are limited. Tickets are on sale at the park, by phone or mail.

Living Desert Zoo and Gardens (LDZG) recently received accreditation from the association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)’s independent Accreditation Commission. LDZG is dedicated to the conservation of the plants and animals of Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem. The park conducts extensive public education programs and actively participates in species conservation efforts.

For more information on LDZG or to purchase tickets to the Mescal Roast, contact the park at (505) 887-5516. Visit State Parks website at www.nmparks.com.

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Trail to Slaughter Cave Photo by Terry Marshall

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.

Spider Cave? Did I say Spider Cave?

Yes, indeed, and misnamed for the tens of thousands of daddy-longlegs who coated this passage like an undulating tapestry when cavers discovered it in 1933. They’ve scurried away, those first inhabitants, to God knows where. I’ve yet to see one and this is my second trip into Spider.

The passage broadens. I crawl. No, it’s more a skittery crab walk. I pop free. I’m the sixth one into the “auditorium.” My wife and a National Park Service Ranger follow. One by one they pop into view, then scramble out to rest and breathe deeply of the sudden spaciousness. We eight fill this auditorium.

Spider is a horizontal cave – no need for ropes; there’s no rappelling. The danger here is in getting lost. We step single file as if hiking a narrow mountain trail – a trail with a rock ceiling. We negotiate ledges, clamber up and down slippery wet flow stone, often crawl. This is a wild cave – no paved trail, no electric lights. Here tourism becomes adventure. Here I’m eye-to-eye with the earth’s inner secrets.

Spider Cave challenges us up front: We descend into a stone man-hole, then slither into the heart of the hillside. In Spider Cave, we squeeze through narrow by-ways between intimate rooms – it’s chamber music compared to the grand arias of the famous Carlsbad Cavern. Spider showcases a gallery of bleached-bone-white calcite formations, extruded into misshapen, interwoven murals. It adds the intrigue of squirming belly flat through muddy passages.

This is New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park, but this intimate cave doesn’t fit the image. Most visitors remember this park from the huge Big Room – that 14-football-fields cavern – or from the oft-photographed glittering twin columns known as the Temple of the Sun.

Spider is one of five off-trail tours led by National Park Service rangers. This tour is limited to eight people, and offered only once weekly. In 1997, 540,797 visitors came to Carlsbad Caverns National Park; only 341 crawled into Spider Cave.

Lower Cave formations Photo courtesy National Park Service

Dale Pate leads an expedition of five into Lower Cave, three other rangers and me. As the park’s cave specialist, Dale’s job is to protect these caves.

We pause at the bottom of three stainless steel ladders that lead from the Big Room into Lower Cave. Dale points out the shiny, worn nodules that pit the clay trail. “This was solid clay when I first arrived,” Dale says. He’s been here seven years. Hundreds of boots have tramped this narrow trail. Nearly 2,500 people a year tour Lower Cave, up to 12 at a time, five days a week.

We follow a dirt trail flagged with two lines of orange plastic tape. The trail levels out, and becomes dry as dust. We hike on. The air becomes moist, and the trail wet. It leads to a pool. We cross by leaping from stepping stone to stepping stone. The Park Service plans to build a low bridge across this pond; too many visitors dip a heel, or toe, or full boot into the water. There’s no current; the mud doesn’t wash away.

We pause at “the Rookery,” a watery moon-scape writ small. It’s a field of tiny “craters,” each three inches in diameter, many with nests of cave pearls. The “pearls” are round, like small marbles, each built drip-by-drip around a single fleck of dirt. Many nests are empty, as if they had held cave birds that had hatched, grown, and flown away. The pearls were long ago gathered up by hoards of pre-conservation visitors and, we assume, by park staff who plucked them up and carried them away as souvenirs. Many that lie here now are replacements – found in jars and cans in other parts of the cave or on shelves in the headquarters building, and returned to their origin.

Volunteers are cleaning up the mud in this area; not today, but on weekends. They clean painstakingly with sponges, a millimeter at a time, and their patience has restored much of the Rookery floor from a muddy brown to a milky-white. Volunteers clean away mud and lint on formations throughout the cavern. They come from all over the U.S., some from abroad. Last year, an estimated 200 cavers volunteered some 12,000 hours to restoration work, Dale says. He estimates that about a dozen of the core body of volunteers live in Carlsbad.

The Park Service has a test area here, a 4-foot by 3-foot section adjacent to the trail. It’s milky white, except for a jagged mud seepage six inches to a foot-wide along the trail-side. It’s not that visitors tromp through the test area. It’s that their footsteps slosh water, and thus mud, off the trail and onto the delicate formation.

Within the next year, the Park Service will build a 3-inch-high walkway of 3/4-inch polyethylene on stainless steel rods through here, high enough to keep boots out of the seeping water. Without it, wet boots will continue to create mud, continue to track it along the trail, continue to contribute to the muddying of the cavern floor.

Ann Marshall slithers into Spider Cave Photo by Terry Marshall

The passageway broadens as we enter the main chamber of Lower Cave. Faint paths branch out in all directions, like rabbit trails in the desert. The flagging directs visitors along a single trail. The earlier paths will never disappear; this cave cannot regenerate itself like a forest or a prairie. At best, all future wear and tear will be confined to this flagged trail.

We discover a charred flare handle on a slope beside the trail. The slope looks like the site of a miniature city that’s been leveled, and the rubble removed; what’s left is pummeled soil and slivers of cave formations, like shards of miniature sidewalks or concrete floors. The damage was done years ago, probably in the 1920s and 1930s when conservation hadn’t yet entered the caving lexicon.

This flare handle – a relic at least 60 years old – wasn’t here a month ago, Dale says. He is visibly irritated, but calm. It’s a continuing struggle to change old attitudes, he says. Not everyone is as yet attuned to his “minimum impact” philosophy – you stay on designated trails, you leave things as they are, you add nothing to the environment but a memory of your passing.

Dale brings new hires and expert cavers here to orient them to caving in the Guadalupes. Here’s what results when you’re not vigilant, he tells them. Even in Lechuguilla they find damage – not vandalized decorations, that doesn’t happen anymore – but signs that cavers have dropped their backpacks or plopped down to rest off the flagged trail. They’ve even found human feces in Lechuguilla, a cave open only to expert cavers on approved scientific or cave-mapping missions. Cave etiquette demands that you deposit it in a zip-lock bag, wrap it in foil, and carry it out.

Dale points out a bat embedded in a stalagmite. It’s completely encased by the drip-drip of water that keeps this stalagmite growing. We find others, and I study one perched atop a stalagmite. It seems poised to awake at any moment and fly sleepy-eyed off into the darkness.

A bank of popcorn-covered stalactites line the back wall. They’re more or less flat on the bottom – like trays suspended from barnacle-encrusted ropes. We’re not sure what makes them form this way, Dale says. He suspects it’s wind currents. The decorations are a potpourri of design – bulbous formations of calcite, feathery aragonite, shiny white “moon milk,” or hydromagnasite. All have the same mineral composition, but they are as different in appearance as popcorn, Irish lace, and iridescent powdered sugar.

Dale leads us to the Col. Boles formation, a pair of twin columns in the back section of Lower Cave, where Boles, the first park superintendent, led honored guests. The park’s archives attest to the trips – photographs of Boles with Amelia Earhart, Clark Gable, governors and senators and other big-wigs. Boles loved to remove a foot-long section from one of the columns to impress his visitors. We no longer do that, Dale says.

The Boles columns gleam from an internal luminescence. They have been cleaned millimeter by millimeter by volunteers. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been told – they appear exactly right, exactly natural. They’re strikingly more impressive than the dull, muddy decorations nearby.

We stand quietly in the gigantic ballroom that is Lower Cave. Two finger-size silhouettes appear in the dim light of the overlook from the Big Room above. They disappear. A shard of muted voice falls over us. No one gives an order, but one-by-one we flick off our head lamps. This is a grand room, nearly barren in contrast to the past we can only imagine, like Grand Central Station stripped, but its very vastness, deep within the earth, overwhelms us. Barren? Yes, but it’s like the great Chihuahuan Desert above us – if you know where to look, and when to look, you find pockets of exquisite beauty. That’s the mystery of Lower Cave.

On our way out, cave specialist Jason Richards stops to inspect his epsomite study. He has flagged as off-limits a 3-foot section in the heart of a low-hanging passage. He points out flecks of luminescent white. Under certain conditions the flecks become a delicate white growth as fine as cotton candy, and as intricate as coral. You’d never know, not today. Without this flagging, you’d stomp through this patch of brown clay, crushing these embryos without ever noticing. He checks the humidity; it’s 95 percent. When it falls to 88, this mineral deposit will grow as if it were alive, as much as six inches a week. I’m lucky: on my first trip into Lower Cave, this very spot presented a fine eight-inch-diameter epsomite beard like a ring of fluffy hoarfrost.

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Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park Entrance Photo by Phyllis Eileen Banks

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.

There is a 1.3 mile self-guided tour for visitors that takes approximately 1 1/2 hours. You can soar with eagles at the beginning of the tour. The park’s aviary is a peaceful screened-in area full of trees. Several species of birds reside there, including the raven and the owl. Birds fly freely around the visitors who are asked to remain quiet in order not to frighten them.

Informational signs are visible throughout the park to give visitors science lessons. The natural exhibits feature native plants of the desert’s ecosystem, including the sand hills, gypsum hills, desert uplands and pinion-juniper zones. Shade structures and picnic tables are available near the park’s pond, home to dozens of ducks, geese and native turtles. Among the park’s residents are rattlesnakes, kit foxes, rare Mexican wolves, a prairie dog town, deer, bobcats, black bear, elk or buffalo.

The park provides environmental education for young and old, story-telling, guided tours and a zoo camp. The Visitors Center features interpretive exhibits on the Capitan Reef and Permian Basin as well as on animal and plant communities. The Greenhouse, at the end of the tour, has a special exhibit, Succulents of the World, that houses hundreds of cacti and related plants that can’t survive out-of-doors. Plants grown on-site are available for purchase in the gift shop.

A national award-winning Mescal Roast, sponsored by Friends of the Living Desert, is held during mid-May each year. Members of the Mescalero Apache tribe visit the Living Desert to harvest and prepare their traditional food, the Mescal or Century Plant (agave neomexicana). The public may attend the roasting and tasting of the mescal, feast dinners, traditional Mescalero ceremonial dances, art exhibit and sales. Contact the Living Desert for ticket prices and more information.

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Lower Cave formations Photo courtesy National Park Service

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.

Left-hand Tunnel is a ranger-led, lantern-lit stroll into what seems the dusty old storeroom of a grand palace. The trail is hard-packed earth, not the black emery-chip trail of the Cavern. I expected stored bundles of stalactites and stalagmites, old benches, discarded displays. There are none, of course – the cave is natural. We skirt shallow pools. We step cautiously through a hoary grotto etched with eerie formations, half-expecting Icabod Crane to burst screeching from the black depths. We marvel at the scores of “Lion’s Tails,” slender stalactites decorated at their tips by clusters of “popcorn,” that adorn one chamber. Left-hand tunnel is an easy stroll.

Hall of the White Giant, like Spider Cave, approximates real caving. Wearing hardhat and headlamp, we slip off the paved trail inside the Cavern and worm our way into a maze of helter-skelter holes in the jumbled rock. Inside it’s breezeless, dry, warm. Then comes subterranean mountain-climbing: hiking narrow, winding trails; inching along a cliff side; negotiating crevices; clambering over man-sized rocks, up slippery chutes and slopes; crawling through tight fissures, then snake-like, squirming through tiny openings. The adventure climaxes at a scenic overlook of a mountain valley of upside down ghost trees, guarded by the White Giant, a huge stalagmite. The trek leaves us puffing. It’s not for the claustrophobic.

Slaughter Canyon Cave is the unheralded, closeted step-sister of Carlsbad Cavern. Hidden on a mountainside beyond Rattlesnake Springs, ten miles from Carlsbad Cavern, it’s a 30-45 minute uphill hike through the desert before the tour ever begins. In summer, this trek is a scorcher. Flashlight in hand, we seek refuge in Slaughter. It’s huge! Evidence of mining dominates the cave’s mouth: scarred walls; carved deposits of ancient guano, the youngest carbon-14 dated to 28,000 years ago; “historic trash” - rusted cans, electrical wires; even preserved jeep tracks. Slaughter turns us into Gulliver: Like giants, we clomp past a meandering three-inch high “Great Wall of China”; like Lilliputians, we cower beneath “The Monarch,” an 89-foot-high giant. Our ranger guide says its the third largest cave column in the world. Our final treat: the intimate “Christmas Tree” room, its shimmering white namesake crowned in a white bell canopy as delicate as glazed frosting.

These five off-trail tours offer an intriguing glimpse into Carlsbad’s world of caving, but there’s more to the Caverns than meets even the adventurous tourist’s eye. Carlsbad Caverns contains 30.9 miles of explored routes – the formal tours take us through only about three miles.

What are these hidden rooms like? I asked Dale Pate. He organized an expedition with three other rangers into “Mystery Room,” a closed area off the Queen’s Chamber, part of the King’s Palace guided tour.

We plan our departure carefully – we don’t want a tour group catching us stepping off the trail. We scoot quickly over a small rise, out of sight of the paved path. The flagged route leads upward like a mountain trail through a cluster of stalagmites. We cross a short, steel-mesh bridge – I expect a troll, but none appears – and hike on. We work our way down the face of a cliff using hand and toe holds; there’s not a ledge here, nor a visible trail. The face is scabbed with “popcorn,” nice to look at, but with the promise that if we fall, we’ll be skinless before we hit the pool at the bottom.

Suddenly, we’re there, Mystery Room, but there’s no door, no formal entry. It’s not really “a room” at all; it’s more a mountain buried in a gigantic underground vault.

This is no virgin passage. The flagged trail has been crushed flat by countless boots, and off-limits trails snake out periodically to follow some promising fissure, or to disappear over the edge of a cliff. The trails date from the early days of exploration, the 1920s and 1930s. These days, Mystery Room is reserved for staff orientation, scientific excursions, or, like today, management-related trips.

Alongside one cavern wall, wild helictites like twisted fingers jut up from premature graves. Some are like dancing snakes, poised on their tails, their wriggling bodies frozen in time. A glistening two-foot-high Santo, one black eye glimmering in my head lamp, appears along the trail. Its slim shoulders are shrouded in a length of trail-marking tape.

Matlocks’ Pinch in the Hall of White Giant tour
Photo courtesy National Park Service

We enter a field of stalagmites like human limbs – arms and legs protruding from the stone. I spot a dinosaur leg bone, bleached white, corroded, dusty from centuries of neglect. No, it’s not a dinosaur leg at all, it’s a buried giant. Six feet of his right leg protrude from the rock, caught at the knee. Clearly there is his heel; his big toe, complete with toenail; the Achilles tendon. His full body lies beneath us, caught forever in a futile attempt to extract himself from a buried trap.

We hike to the end of the flagged trail. Our official task for today is to loop the flagging around, make a clearly delineated ending to the Mystery Room excursion. In the future, those few who enter the room will confine their footsteps to the flagged trails.

Some of us wander over to a gorge overlook. The bottom is invisible. Jason says its 180 feet deep. Our headlamps reach the far side, but they’re not powerful enough to show detail. We skirt a gaping hole in the cave floor. Years ago someone wedged a 30-foot-long, 2-inch iron pipe lengthwise through the gap, then hung pulleys on it and ran electrical lines through Mystery into Lower Cave below. The wire has been removed, but the pipe is an intriguing bit of man’s history, like mine rubbish in the Colorado high country.

Jason points out a cluster of dog-toothed spar inside a vug, or miniature cave. They’re like three-inch brown diamonds, arranged in a grid, jutting from the vug ceiling. I could slither into this, but it would be head first, and pretty much straight down. Another grid of dog-toothed spar covers the bottom. The truth hits me: it’s a trap designed by Edgar Allen Poe! If I went in, someone would push a button, the walls would grind inward, the spar would pin me forever in this graveyard. I don’t tell the rangers what I’ve realized; I assume they all know.

As the rangers lay their flagging, we instinctively confine our footsteps to the newly defined trail. I’m standing in the middle of the path and Jason wants to pass. I squeeze aside; he inches past. Neither of us step outside the new artificial boundary.

For some long moment, everyone is occupied. No one speaks. One ranger sits on a ledge overlooking the gorge. If, like Lot’s wife, God were to turn him to stone, he would fit here. He would be the perpetual thinker, caught forever in this hidden, silent ghost room.

The rangers finish their loop, 800 feet of orange plastic tape. We hike out single file, commenting on decorations. There’s damage here, too, in this room locked away from visitors. Along the trail, several stalagmites have been snapped off, parts scattered like broken icicles. A ranger matches a broken piece to a stalagmite. Perfect fit. He will contact a volunteer who specializes in reconstructing decorations. The volunteer will reassemble the pieces.

The hike out seems half as long as the walk in. The cliff beside the pool is no challenge. The rangers inspect the steel-mesh bridge, talk about replacing it. We pause before we emerge from the rough trail to the paved trail – the electric lights are on; a ranger-led tour must be in process. We make it out without being seen.

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Matlocks’ Pinch in the Hall of White Giant tour
Photo courtesy National Park Service

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.

In this room are those who control access to the park’s great caves – including world-class Lechuguilla, the park’s 85 other wild caves, the ornate off-limits rooms that lie beyond the paved visitors’ trail in the Cavern – and who approve or deny academic research in the park. Caves are not renewable resources; once damaged, they are damaged for eternity. Every staffer is committed to preservation, but all are remarkably supportive of visitation. Their thrust is to make each visitor’s experience as awe-inspiring and educational as they believe their own time spent in the caverns has been.

One morning we spend an hour brain-storming ways to better reach school children. By and large, park staff define tourists and school children – not general Carlsbad residents – as the park’s primary constituents. During a break, I bring up the park’s relationship to its gateway city.

I’m deluged with a torrent of comments: mostly, “they” (Carlsbad) don’t take advantage of the park; Carlsbad businessmen and political leaders support the park only because they’re after the tourist dollar; they don’t respond to our appeal for volunteers. Oh, sure, the town harbors a core of dedicated cavers, staffers admit, but by and large, Carlsbad doesn’t really appreciate this place. Almost to a man – and woman – the rangers do appreciate it. Each work day brings a wonderful experience. Some rangers spend their days off caving.

I point out that local leaders have been an effective political force in fighting for the caverns. In 1968, for instance, the Interior Department ordered all national parks to close two days a week to save money. Carlsbad fought the order. We lobbied Congress. We raised local funds to pay park personnel. Interior reversed its decision.

In December 1995, the Caverns got caught in the budget tussle between Congress and the White House. Interior closed all national parks. Carlsbad rallied. Again we raised money to pay park staff salaries. We gathered federal and state officials and hammered out an agreement. The park reopened before Washington resolved its stalemate.

A park service division manager counters with the cry that the city’s interest is only economic, to keep the tourist dollars flowing.

He does have evidence. For years the Park Service has wanted to remove the Cavern’s 70-year-old underground lunch room, run by a local businessman. They argue it’s neither “necessary nor appropriate.” Each year our congressman attaches a rider to the NPS authorization bill that prohibits them from closing it.

A week later I sit in on a Chamber of Commerce task force seeking ways to reverse declining park visitation. We had 857,276 visitors in 1976. Visitation was up and down through the 1980s, but since 1976 has dropped 38 percent. It has fallen for seven years running. Chamber staff and tourist-dependent members, primarily motel people, want Park Service help in stemming the tide.

No one knows the reason. We think American recreational habits have changed, that families prefer theme parks to national parks. We have read somewhere that with more disposable income, people vacation at more costly destinations; they would rather fly to Disney World than hike into Carlsbad Caverns. “OK, then, let’s raise park entry fees,” one of the group jokingly suggests.

Our answers: We suggest better brochures, advertising campaigns, studies of those who don’t come to find out why. One guy wants to tap the Japanese and Mexican markets. Another pooh-poohs that idea. We try to figure out ways to woo bus tour companies.

The talk is of tourist dollars, plain and simple. The park service reps don’t mention their goals to beef up education, or preserve the park’s precious cave formations. Those concerns would be deemed irrelevant here. In 90 minutes, little gets resolved. We do nothing to solve the problem, nor to bring tourism promoters and caverns management together.

Later, I’m rethinking the relationship between town and park. One of the rangers had expounded on how much more the residents of Estes Park, Colorado, use their park, Rocky Mountain National Park, than Carlsbad does its Cavern. My brother and nephew visited Carlsbad recently. We sent them to the Caverns for a day. Two weeks later, my wife’s Rotary club sponsored a weekend retreat for 50 foreign exchange students. They sent them to the caverns. No local Rotary Club members went with them.

There’s something of perception here, and definition. We define Carlsbad Caverns as a passive experience – we come, we look, we ooh and aah, and after we’ve taken the main trail, we check this site off our list of things we want to do in life.

We return to Rocky Mountain National Park because we want to experience again the joy of the outdoors, to hike, climb, ride horses.

We have a park like that near here, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Guadalupe is harsher than Rocky Mountain, less forested. Yet, Guadalupe’s McKittrick Canyon draws us again and again.

McKittrick cannot be seen from a car window. You have to hike in. From the visitors’ center, the canyon seems foreboding and barren. A rocky path strikes out through scrubby rabbit bush, cholla and prickly pear. It crosses a rock-strewn stream bed, dry as bone. The path climbs. Scrub oak, bent iron-wood, and red-berry juniper crowd the trail. Then we cross the desert rarity that makes McKittrick unique: a perpetually flowing stream. Here we understand oasis. McKittrick is lush with foliage: clumps of bear grass, bigtooth maple, little walnut, velvet ash. In November, she blazes in reds, oranges, yellows, maroons – not blaring and omnipresent like the hardwood forests out east, but intense bursts of brilliant color like an orchestrated Fourth of July.

McKittrick provides year-round refuge. She bursts to life in spring. She offers life-saving shade on scorching summer days. In winter, she’s a hideaway best left to the hearty. In November, we of Carlsbad flock to her multi-colored splendor in a pilgrimage of Thanksgiving. Each season is a new experience in McKittrick. We go year after year to admire each new coat of colors.

Not so with Carlsbad Caverns. The changes are too minute, too subtle – the ever-growing length of steel guard rail being installed to keep visitors on the trail; here and there a formation meticulously cleaned of lint by park volunteers; the absence of coins tossed into a natural pool; a stalagmite, once perfect, now scarred by a careless passerby.

But our recruitment packages also tout our “Quality of Life.” Our virtues? Clean air, abundant water, good schools, little crime, a great place to raise kids.

Some of it is hype, but I wonder if we aren’t missing a point: why don’t we put the caverns in the “Quality of Life” section? It’s not that we of Carlsbad spend every weekend at the park. We don’t. In fact, the primary relationship – after the first couple of trips – seems to be to send our visitors out to the park. The park isn’t always on our minds, not really. It doesn’t dominate our city, like Pike’s Peak or the Matterhorn. It’s more that it’s just there, that famous location in the nearby foothills.

But there’s something compelling about the underground that’s part of our town’s psyche. Carlsbad used to be a mining town. For 80 years we were the nation’s primary supplier of potash, a key ingredient of fertilizer. Potash jobs have fallen from 4,000 in the 1950s to 1,295 today, and potash no longer dominates the local economy.

We also have a small core of miners at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, known as WIPP, the world’s first underground disposal facility for transuranic nuclear waste. Here, 50 miners spend their days 2,100 feet underground, scraping at the creeping rock salt tombs they have carved for the eventual disposal of radioactive trash.

Potash and WIPP are practical operations. These mines have no delicate speleothems, no pristine pools, no awe-inspiring vistas. They are marvels of engineering, perhaps – especially the potash mines’ 12,000 miles of tunnels big enough to drive in – or key pillars of the economy, but they’re neither paeans to beauty, nor awe-inspiring monuments to time. They are underground warehouses and work rooms and tunnels for busy workmen. No one pauses in a potash mine or the WIPP underground to admire the crystals.

The main cavern, the Carlsbad Cavern that tourists visit, delivers an awe-inspiring sense of what the word cavernous really means. The King’s Palace tour introduces us to the delicateness of its speleothems. They’re awesome, as today’s kids say, but they’re also safe, with their paved and lighted trails, their hand rails. If we get tired, or bored, or anxious about making it to Phoenix by nightfall, we have only to walk to the elevator and be whisked up and out in 59 seconds.

It is the off-trail tours that bring us face to face with nature. We walk and crawl and slither in the dirt. We touch and smell and taste the earth’s insides, not just look at them.

Have the Caverns enhanced my life since my family moved from Denver to Carlsbad? Is this national park really part of our local development agency’s “quality-of-life” package?

I’ve been with rangers on other excursions – beyond the Hall of the White Giant to the Guadalupe Room; into the Big Room to photograph the cave after visitor hours when the only sound is our own footsteps; on the ropes course to learn rappelling and, most intriguing of all, how to extract oneself from a vertical cave. Yes, you can literally walk up a hanging rope.

There are precious memories here: the haunting silence; the dark – no, it’s beyond dark, it’s the overpowering thought of perpetual blackness; the entombing enclosure of tiny cave passages; the grandeur of an underground Taj Mahal; the clarity of pristine pools. There’s a fantasy world, too, twisted, shimmering decorations that kindle wild imagination.

But more importantly, for me the caverns create dreams for the future – are there other passages, more ornate, more challenging, more beautiful, but as yet unexplored?

Of course there are, just as there are planets yet undiscovered, and life forms as yet unknown. The possibilities expand my mind and challenge my soul.

I’ve answered my own question: we haven’t packaged this yet, this notion of Carlsbad Caverns as a key component of Carlsbad’s quality of life pitch. I don’t think we can, not in the way the Chamber and the Development Department would want. And not in a manner that Caverns staff would support. Beyond the Natural Entrance and the Big Room, the caves are too fragile, and probably too claustrophobic, for mega-hoards of tourists.

For some of us, though, the Caverns add immeasurably to life’s meaning. The off-trail tours crack open a door to that enhancement.

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Christmas on the Pecos Photo by Armando Martinez.

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.

Picture the setting:  The night is clear and cool. The river is calm and still. You are bundled and warm except for the pleasant tingle of a chill on your cheeks. The only light visible is the moon. The boat crosses under a bridge and suddenly you are traveling through a fairyland of twinkling lights that radiate the warmth of the holidays in Carlsbad.

This magical vista is created by over 100 homeowners who spend hours decorating with care. Each house is unique. From the Christmas in the Desert Southwest theme at one home to Santa’s Playland at another, Carlsbad residents show their creativity as much as their community pride. Each year Christmas wraps itself around the riverfront, illuminating backyards, boat docks and islands with millions of lights. The Pecos River shimmers with color. Wise men and angels glow on sloping lawns. Giant margarita glasses and bright stars reflect on the water.

Everyone in Carlsbad gets involved too, not just homeowners. Carlsbad Navy officers navigate each of the three pontoon boats through this spectacular show of lights along the Pecos River. Each officer is a volunteer and Chamber of Commerce member who has been specially trained in boating safety and operations.

The first "Christmas on the Pecos River" boat tour took place in 1992, aboard the "Princess," a pontoon boat that seated 10 people. The "Pecos Queen," a 42-foot pontoon boat seating 45 people, was added to the fleet in 1993. The "Pecos King," which seats 50 people and is equipped to serve hot meals, was purchased in 1995.

Christmas on the Pecos River is a 50-minute tour that sets sail 12-15 times per night between 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. from Thanksgiving night to New Year’s Eve. Tours depart from the Pecos River Village, a quaint, turn-of-the-century park that is transformed into a wonderland of sparkling lights and delights. Wander through a gallery full of gifts created by local artists and enjoy holiday refreshments at the Pecos River Village before and after your tour.

Traditionally tours sell out quickly, especially on Thanksgiving Weekend, Fridays and Saturdays in December, and Christmas Day. (Tours are not offered on Christmas Eve.) The event has grown steadily over the years with participation increasing from 7,500 guests in 1994 to 10,500 guests in 1995 and over 14,000 in 1997.

Tickets are sold in advance only. Complimentary "lap" tickets are available for children under 3 years of age. Special catering is available for groups. Be sure to wear warm clothing (layers are best), and bring a blanket since the night air on the open river can be brisk at times.

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Offbeat trails lead to scenic wonderlands inside Carlsbad Caverns. Photo by Carla DeMarco

Like Dorothy’s yellow-brick road, the shiny black trail through New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns leads to a mystical journey in a spectacular underworld.

The emery-chip trail, lighted and guarded with steel hand rails, ushers us underground, into a room big enough to hold 14 football fields, through the ornate King’s Palace. Yet, this scenic wonderland merely previews an elaborate maze of passages and hidden treasures that lie beyond the trails.

Care for a taste of more adventurous caving? Join us on the off-trail park tours, trips available even to the casual visitor to Carlsbad Caverns.

Rangers keep the off-trail tour groups small – some are limited to eight. All take unlit, unpaved routes to sights well removed from the commonly trod routes. All require reservations, and all run year-around. For an introduction to caving beyond the paved trail, try these:

Left-hand Tunnel: A ranger-led, lantern-lit 90-minute stroll into what seems the dusty old storeroom of a grand palace. You follow a trail of hard-packed earth, not black macadam, and expect stored bundles of stalactites and stalagmites, old benches, discarded displays here. You find none, of course – the cave is natural. You skirt shallow pools. You step cautiously through a hoary grotto etched with eerie formations, half-expecting Icabod Crane to burst screeching from the black depths. You marvel at the scores of "Lion’s Tails,"slender stalactites decorated at their tips by clusters of "popcorn," that adorn one chamber. The tour is an easy stroll, and is limited to 15 participants.

Lower Cave: If Left-Hand Tunnel is the Caverns’ storeroom, Lower Cave is back stage. Decked out in a caver’s hard hat and headlamp, you descend steel ladders, negotiate slippery flowstone, cross a pool, clamber over rocks, slip through narrow passages. Lower Cave presents a host of unique decorations: the "rookery" with nests of cave pearls; a delicate epsomite beard like thinning cotton-candy; an intricate aragonite fissure like a living reef; floury moon-milk on the cave wall. In Lower Cave’s huge central hall, you skirt light fixtures oddly out-of-place on the broad expanse of floor. They are not there to light your path, but to illuminate features for those looking down from above. You hear muted voices and gaze up at tiny silhouetted figures at the Big Room overlook. You discover the bottom of a rickety ladder from the 1923 National Geographic expedition that brought world fame to the Caverns. Lower Cave is a 2-3 hour trip, and is limited to 12 participants.

Hall of the White Giant: Wearing hard hat and headlamp, you step off the paved trail and worm your way through a maze of helter-skelter holes in the jumbled rock. Inside it’s breezeless, dry, warm. Then comes subterranean mountain-climbing: hiking narrow, winding trails; inching along a cliff side, negotiating crevices; clambering over man-sized rocks, up slippery chutes and slopes; crawling through tight fissures, then snake-like, squirming through tiny openings. The adventure climaxes at a scenic overlook of a mountain valley of upside down ghost trees, guarded by the White Giant, a huge stalagmite. Then you retrace your steps, hoping to find your way back out. The trek leaves you puffing. It’s not for the claustrophobic. Hall of the White Giant takes 3-4 hours, and is limited to 8 participants.

Slaughter Canyon Cave is the unheralded, closeted step-sister of Carlsbad Cavern. Hidden beyond Rattlesnake Springs, it’s a 30-45 minute uphill hike through the desert to the entrance. In summer, this trek is a scorcher; bring a water bottle. Flashlight in hand, you seek refuge in Slaughter. It’s huge! Evidence of mining dominates the cave’s mouth: scarred walls; carved deposits of ancient guano, the youngest carbon-14 dated to 18,000 years ago; "historic trash"- rusted cans, electrical wires; even preserved jeep tracks. Slaughter turns you into Gulliver: Like a giant, you clomp past a meandering three-inch high "Great Wall of China"; like a Lilliputian, you cower beneath "The Monarch," an 89-foot-high giant, one of the largest cave columns in the world. Your final treat: the intimate "Christmas Tree" room, its shimmering white namesake crowned in a white bell canopy as delicate as glazed frosting. Slaughter Canyon is a 2-3 hour tour, and is limited to 25 participants.

Spider Cave challenges you up front: You descend into a stone man-hole, then crawl and slither into the heart of the hillside. Like a cork in a bottle, you squeeze through a tiny slipway into "The Auditorium," a chamber that barely holds ten people. In Spider Cave, you navigate narrow by-ways between intimate rooms – chamber music compared to the grand arias of Carlsbad Cavern or Slaughter Canyon Cave. Spider offers a gallery of bleached-bone-white calcite formations, extruded by time through mineraled walls into misshapen, interwoven murals. It adds the intrigue of squirming belly flat through muddy passages, the beauty of delicate formations reflected in pristine pools. Spider Cave is limited to 8 participants. The trip takes 3-4 hours.

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.

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Spectacular formations are subtly illuminated along paved trails inside Carlsbad Caverns.
Photo by Carla DeMarco

Three miles of lighted and paved trails take visitors into the heart of the Capitan reef. Subtle lighting illuminates unique formations in the cavernous walls. Simple markers identify major formations. Wayside exhibits explain the history, formation, and development of the cavern.

Much of the main cave tour is self-guided. You stroll at your own pace, guided by modern high-tech assistance – a portable CD ROM unit chock full of historical and factual tidbits.

A full trip takes 3-4 hours, including the ranger-led tour of the King’s Palace – its delicate chambers now closed to unsupervised visitors to prevent damage to the intricate formations.

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.

An hour and a half later, we’re in the bowels of the Cavern. We’ve come a mile and a half. It’s 56 degrees – not cold, but cool enough to wear a jacket. The temperature remains the same year around.

We join a ranger-led tour of the King’s Palace, meandering through a lode of priceless formations. Some imitate household names – draperies, soda straws, popcorn. Others we remember from school - stalagmites, stalactites (ah, yes, "the mites go up; the tights come down"), helictites, twisted and writhing like anguished beasties. A ranger clicks off the lights. We can see nothing, not a shadow, not a glimmer. The depth of the blackness overwhelms us.

One cavern landmark is the 70-year-old underground lunchroom, a throwback to the days when intrepid visitors hiked down the 75 stories on 216 wooden steps. At day’s end, they trudged back up. Today’s visitors zip to the surface by elevator in 59 seconds.

We sip coffee and eat microwaved chicken strips in this dim, cool vault, and pretend we are explorers, resting. This is no gourmet meal; rather, it’s sustenance. The food is secondary. We reflect on what we have seen, anticipate what is to come. Then we’re off, fueled for a leisurely stroll through the Big Room.

The Big Room, reached by elevator or the natural entrance trail, teaches us the meaning of the word cavernous. Found here are the spectacular formations of the picture post cards:  Temple of the Sun, Twin Domes, the glistening Crystal Spring Dome, Rock of Ages, Mirror Lake. Simply put, every visitor must hike The Big Room loop. It’s a leisurely 1.2 miles, approximately an hour and a half. Much of the route is wheel chair accessible.

A good summer’s visit to the caverns ends with the bat flight. Nightly, June through September, visitors gather in the stone amphitheater overlooking the natural entrance. At dusk, the first darting shadows signal the bats’ departure on their nightly search for food. The trickle grows into a steady stream. Darkness falls. We disperse. Bats continue to spill out well into the night.

The bats return at sunrise, usually without human observers, except for one August morning each year when Carlsbad gathers before dawn for the annual bat flight breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, and steaming coffee. We cluster in the amphitheater, shivering, and listen as the bats swish by, returning from their night’s sojourn. In October, they will be off to winter in Mexico, having raised a new generation of young. You’ll see no bats during the winter season.

First explored extensively by modern man in 1901, Carlsbad Caverns became a national monument in 1923, a national park in 1930. Amenities followed:  elevator, paved road, bathrooms, lighting, paved underground trails, interpretive displays. In 1995, the park was named a World Heritage Site, an endowment of international significance.

While the Carlsbad Caverns – Natural Entrance, Big Room, and King’s Palace – is most advertised, and most known, the Park also conducts five "off-trail" tours – ranger-guided small-group excursions off the beaten path. The tours are given on different days, at different times, and each costs an additional fee.

In addition to the Caverns, the park’s visitors’ center features free exhibits, periodic ranger-led talks and slide shows, and other special events. It has an extensive bookstore, featuring caverns’ materials, but also books on the national parks and other outdoor fare.

An above-ground cafe offers sandwiches and other fast food.

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Carlsbad Caverns. Photo by Carla DeMarco

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.

Western Texas cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving in 1866 drove herds of cattle to sell in New Mexico and Colorado. They followed the Pecos River and forded it to go north at what is now Guadalupe Street in Carlsbad. The drovers observed the good cow country, began building adobe cabins and became pioneer ranchers.

Eddy was made the county seat in 1889, and farming activity flourished in the early 1890s. It collapsed, however, when the Pecos River flooded, ruining irrigation ditches, railroad tracks and dams. Pioneer ranchers began to move away. The next to arrive were hundreds of tubucular patients who lived in tents in this semi-arid climate.

The Eddy House, one of the first in Eddy, (Carlsbad). Photo by Phyllis Eileen Banks.

In 1899 the name Eddy was changed to Carlsbad to emphasize the water flowing from a mineral spring, already called Carlsbad Springs. An aqueduct, "The Flume," originally built of wood but rebuilt of concrete following the 1902 flood, is an elaborate irrigation system that carries Pecos River water from Lake Avalon across the river.

With the arrival of the railroad in 1891, the sheep and cattle market opened. Cotton and alfalfa were soon major crops. Potash was discovered in 1928 and drilling began in 1929. Soon production increased to hundreds of thousands of tons annually. That has tapered in recent years, and Carlsbad has become a major retirement area.

The city’s fame is associated with Carlsbad Caverns, 20 miles south of Carlsbad. Discovered by James L. White in 1902, it did not flourish as a tourist attraction until 1920 when Carlsbad Caverns was designated a National Monument.

At an elevation of 3,100 feet, with only 15 1/2 inches of rain and 350 days of sunshine, Carlsbad is both fertile valley and desert. The Pecos River provides an oasis for the 25,000 people who live here. Flowing through the center of town and flanking the river’s banks is a 4.5 mile Riverwalk. Fishers, boat docks and water skiing abound. A paddlewheel boat, the George Washington, plies the river for a 40 minute ride.

During the Christmas season, homes on both sides of the river are elaborately decorated and viewable by boat tours via the tourist attraction, "Christmas on the Pecos."

There are 28 parks plus swimming pools, lakes, golf courses, tennis courts, library, museums and art galleries for leisure and culture. Almost within city limits is Living Desert State Park just off U. S. Highway 285. Farther north on the same highway is Brantley Lake with a turnoff to the southwest on State Highway 137 leading to Sitting Bull Falls and the Guadalupe Mountains.

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