Roswell and the Guadalupe Mountains

  Roswell, New Mexico, United States
Sunday, October 5, 2008

One of the fabulous things about America - a great bi-product of the otherwise horrific fact of it being such a car-oriented society - is that as soon as you get out of you car for a wander about anywhere, other than a shopping mall perhaps, they call it "hiking". This just sounds to wonderfully butch and impressive, even if we are really only going for a 2km stroll through some woodlands or to see a waterfall.

Guadalupe Mountains

When we got the the visitor's centre of Guadalupe Mountains National Park we were handed a pamphlet with all of the "hiking trails" and were not scoffed at for one moment when we said that we just wanted to go on a short walk. Brilliant. We picked the Smith Spring Loop Walk since this would allow us to see some of the different habitats of the Chihuahua desert without having to go on a serious trek.

The 2.3 mile loop trail starts out on the flat, walking along a sandy, pebbly path through some scrawny shrubs with crickets jumping here, there and everywhere in front of you. Then it climbs, nice and slowly, up the side of one of the hills of the Guadalupe range.

Smith Spring Trail

Smith Spring

Not heading steeply for the top, but clinging to the side of the hill and ascending at only a slight angle. Around a few bends, still climbing, just enough to make you catch your breath - also because of the hot sun beating down and the fact that you are already at quite an altitude so the air is thinner - and you see the landscape around you start to change. Up ahead is a thicket of tall, green trees - pines and oaks. That is a clear clue as to where Smith Spring is. And sure enough, another 15 minutes of "hiking" and you reach the treeline. Here, you can hear the stream. Soon, you can see it, tinkling away just below you, off the path. The tree canopy, although thin, provides welcome relief from the burning sun. At every snap of a twig or rustle of leaves you swing round, scanning the undergrowth. Torn between hoping to see a mountain lion or a black bear and hoping NOT to see a mountain lion or a black bear. But it is (thankfully?) just a small gust of wind or another harmless squirrel or chipmunk. Time to cross the stream using the handy stepping-stones. Now you come to the Spring itself, the point where the water bubbles out of the rock behind which it flows as an underground river, forming a deep, clear pool, just large enough to bathe in. No bathing here though, this is a protected wildlife area and the gleaming water is for admiring, not for splashing around in. So after a period of admiring, you turn to head downhill, following the other bank of the stream for some way, still enjoying the cover of the trees, until the sun hits you again and the trees recede. The stream has dipped back underground, letting the more traditional desert-flora return. Cacti, agave plants and some annoying little dry shrubs that scratch your shins as you walk past.

Nipple Hill

Lake at the end of Smith Spring trail

You are slowly descending now, every now and then having to take care to step down some stair-like rocks. The view is fabulous, the mountains behind with their strong, imposing rock-faces at their peaks, the desert plains before you. And, just to add a little humour to your "hike", a single, stand-alone hillock just ahead of you, called - quite aptly - nipple hill. As you get to the home stretch, the landscape changes again, this time overtaken by tall grasses and some shorter trees. The stream has resurfaced and you meet it at a round little lake. "A good place for spotting wildlife" the trail guide explains, so again you are hoping and dreading encountering something large and ferocious. But again, there is no sign of anything scary, just a few patches of flattened grass where something big - perhaps a dear or an elk - has clearly made its way to drink from the lake at a time when it could do so undisturbed by any rugged "hikers". A very short stroll along a now paved track leads back to the trailhead and you are back at your car a happy hour and a half after setting out.


Having got this close to it, we simply cannot help being tempted to carry on north to Roswell. We have no idea what to expect. Lots of people dressed up as little green men? Lots of people standing around with signs saying that "the end is near" or that they have been "abducted by aliens"? In reality, it is another sprawling, American country town.

UFO Museum Roswell

But it is one with an undeniable claim to fame. As the Roswell UFO Museum and Research Centre (!!) explained: in 1947 there was a UFO sighting on a ranch just outside of Roswell. A man collected a bunch of debris from what he thought was a crashed flying saucer. "Man finds stuff in field" - here ends what people agree about. When he took these things into town to show the sherif, the rancher set off a series of unexplained or unexplainable events whereby the materials were confiscated; various people were told to keep things to themselves and threatened with violent retribution; the army got involved in investigating the materials; the government denied anything had been found at all; the government declared that it was a weather balloon that had been discovered; and the government, much later, explained that it was actually some other experimental equipment, but that people got the date of discovery wrong - it had actually been 10 years later!

Alien autopsy

Little green man

Radio interviews were recorded, then re-recorded. Newspaper articles were published, then went missing from archives. An archeological dig in the area in 2002 uncovered several more materials of interest, but no explanation as to whether they provided evidence for any of the possible stories out there. Hmmm... all very confusing and mysterious. The rest of the UFO museum is devoted to displays about other UFO sitings and alien encounters around the world. Sadly, it is all set up in a way that looks a bit like primary school children put it together as a class project. Still, we can now say that we have been to Roswell and survived without experiencing any mysterious encounters or undergoing any nasty alien experiments.