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The population of Pie Town is under 200. But it
provides a break in the trail for hikers on the Continental Divide,
most of whom find their way to the Daily Pie Café. David and I stop
at the Daily Pie on our drives from Albuquerque to Arizona’s White
Mountains. And the locals go there. The wonder of Pie Town is that
there is a place for the locals to go. The café is the kind
that once existed in small towns across America. Now that most of
those cafes are closed, or replaced by Subways and McDonalds, it is
a treasure to be cherished. Pie Town is in the heart of Catron
County, the most violently vocal anti-wolf county in New Mexico.
Catron County is ranching country. I care about ranching almost as
much as I care about wolves.
"Did you hear about the rancher who won the
lottery?" I overheard a cowboy at the Daily Pie counter ask his
buddy. His buddy shook his head. "His neighbor asked him what he was
going to do with all those millions. ‘Guess I’ll just keep ranchin’
‘til it’s all gone,’" he said.
A board on the café wall shows what pies were baked
today, and how many pieces are left from yesterday’s pies. Apple pie
with green chili and pinon nuts is one pie you’re not likely to find
in the rest of America. This one is worth a trip to New Mexico.
In the course of work on a Mexican gray wolf article
for Arizona Highways, Pie Town was a natural stop on my way
into the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area straddling the Arizona/New
Mexico border. When Michael, conservation advocate for an
environmental organization involved with wolf restoration, offered
to meet me in the area to explore, I automatically suggested meeting
at the Daily Pie.
The Daily Pie is not a place to talk comfortably
about wolves.
I hadn’t thought about that.
Michael and I had never met before. It is odd to
meet someone in a place where you can’t talk about why you’re
meeting. We drank coffee, then headed west, aiming for a spot on the
map where the weekly flight of Arizona Game & Fish had picked up
telemetry signals from the San Mateo pack. On the maze of dirt
roads, we ended up a couple of miles south of our intended
destination.
But it was already late, so we decided to walk where
we were, just to get a sense of the country. We climbed up through
forest on an overgrown two-track, steep at first, then leveling out
onto a bench. Walking about half a mile through old autumn leaves,
we talked so much about wolves that no wolf in its right mind would
have appeared anywhere near us. Then, tired of the track, we headed
up the slope through forest to the top of a ridge. I thought we
might have some sort of view from the ridge, but there was only more
forest up there. Millions of acres of forest. When it was time to
turn back, we decided to follow the ridge, which seemed to parallel
the track. We imagined easily making our way down as we neared the
road where we left our vehicles. In the cloudy afternoon, the sun
was amorphous at best. As it lowered, the clouds becoming grayer, we
bushwacked through forest to reach our track. From the beginning,
the track did not feel familiar. Nevertheless, I willed it to be
correct. It was too late in the day for it to be wrong. Michael must
have felt the same way. Noticing a pile of coyote scat, he said,
encouragingly, "We’re going right. I saw this pile on the way up."
I’d seen both piles, too. "That pile was flat," I
said. "This one is rounded."
Guided by shit, we knew it was the wrong road.
Neither of us much wanted to climb back up to the
ridge, to retrace our steps in the darkening late afternoon, but
Michael, pointing out the edge of a hill ahead and to the right of
us suggested that going around it might bring us to the right place.
I am always ready to assume that other people know
what they’re doing. This, in spite of the fact that I also know that
virtually everybody guesses at virtually everything. Some people do
this with great confidence, finessing their way through. Perhaps I
remain ready to believe because I am lazy. Believing Michael was
easier than trying to figure it out myself, easier than going back
up the ridge and retracing our steps. And, after all, I barely knew
the man. Wasn’t it possible he could be right?
We cut through woods, rounded the hill, found
another old track and followed it. It began to rain. A white truck
with a red line painted along its side, passed on the road far
below. I had seen that truck parked at the Daily Pie Café. Maybe it
will come back, I thought, if we need it.
The track we followed led us to the road, but there
was no hill to descend to get there. Wrong track. This was not where
we’d left the vehicles. We had no idea whether it was even the same
road. The white truck with the red line did not come back. The last
light, faint enough in the cloud covered sky, faded as we began
walking uphill on the road. The rain increased. By the time we
turned around half a mile later, it was dark. And raining hard. Now
we walked downhill. I wondered what – other than not finding our
cars – had led Michael to turn around. I didn’t ask. Having no
instinct myself about the correct direction in the dark, cold rain,
I figured his instinct was really all we had. Michael reminded me of
many of my hiking buddies, wonderful, bright men, most of whom had
his dark hair and beard. Of course, whenever I hiked with them, we
always became benighted. When I hiked alone, I always got to my
vehicle before dark.
Why is that?
I was tired. I had driven 3 ½ hours to get to Pie
Town, another hour on the back roads of Catron County. I had now
walked somewhere between three and four miles, which is not very
far, but under the circumstances of the dark, and the cold rain,
seemed a long way. We still had a drive to get to Reserve, where we
had reservations for the night. I had no idea where Reserve was. I
was hungry. I wanted to go home. I refused to complain. I
would prove I was tough, able, confident and brave.
Something glinted around a curve. The cars! Two
silver cars, glinting in the rain-dark night. I told Michael I
thought he was wonderful. I did think he was wonderful. He
had known to turn around . . .
How often have I tried to make the wrong direction
be right? How many extra miles have I hiked, or driven, headed the
wrong way before forcing myself to acknowledge I am wrong? How often
have I retraced my route only to find the point where if I had
turned one way instead of the way I did, I would have been so close
to my goal?
We got into the cars, made u-turns, drove downhill,
Michael first. After stopping at a crossroads to talk to someone in
the only other vehicle we saw that night, he told me were going the
wrong way, that we needed to turn around and follow the truck to get
to the road to Reserve.
Several miles farther on, the truck turned off the
dirt road, first giving Michael instructions to keep going straight
ahead. We did that. For miles. Dark, wet miles, in which no other
vehicles appeared. The rain increased. When, finally, we reached the
paved road to Reserve, I felt great relief, imagining we were almost
there. The rain turned to snow, the blizzarding sort of snow that
blows directly into your windshield. The wet road turned icy.
Reserve did not appear. We drove (slowly) miles along the paved
road, passing through a small community I thought would be Reserve.
It wasn’t. A sign at the edge of town said -- Reserve --26 miles. I
thought it was too far to drive. I couldn’t imagine driving another
mile. Then, suddenly, a sign announced "Reserve." Michael did not
turn into town. We kept driving. I wondered if our trip so far had
addled his mind. I wondered if he forgot we were staying in Reserve.
I wondered if he was asleep. I continued following him.
And then we stopped. A motel simply in the middle of
the night. A restaurant that closed at 2:00 p.m. I was too tired to
eat anyway. We got into our respective rooms. I fell asleep.
In the morning, I had an enormous bowl of oatmeal
and we went on, looking for wolves.
Copyright © 2011 Ruth
Rudner |
