Mills Canyon, NM

Ghosts, rattlesnakes, bears, flash floods, and Texans

Three years ago today, I agreed to take my son to Mills Canyon, up in Harding County, NM.

Mills, NM

Harding County is not on any beaten path, and there are fewer people who live there than who lived in my apartment complex. Fewer cases of covid, too.

Canadian River Canyon in Harding County

The town of Mills was established because a guy decided it would be brilliant to raise fruits and vegetables at the bottom of the canyon. It worked fine until the creek rose… the Canadian River, which formed the canyon, flooded and wiped out all the crops, trees, and structures. Also the hoist system he built to bring up the crops broke and fell into the canyon. Then WWI came along and everyone left and never came back. Or something like that, I’m not going to look any of this up.

Mills today has a post office and a kitty and a handful of people. There’s also awesome ruins to explore including the fabled two-holer outhouse. I took a speeding bluebird to the face when I hollered into the grain silo. Ow!

KITTY

So we exhausted the pleasures of Mills & drove down into the canyon. There was a huge sign at the rim like “TURN BACK DO NOT DRIVE THIS ROAD YOU WILL DIE” but I never think those signs apply to me. 100 yards later I deeply regretted it but it was way too late. Somehow we made it down into the canyon and into a campsite on the river just before the monsoon hit and huddled though torrential flooding that thankfully abated. I stayed nervous though, wondering how to get OUT of the canyon the next day considering the steep single track road was mostly slippery clay where it wasn’t jagged rocks. We decided to hike as long as we could to let the road dry out the next day.

The next day was beautiful, and perfect for hiking! Except we didn’t want to be down by the river because there were fresh bear tracks. :-(

We tried exploring the hills, but there were rattlesnakes. :-(

We tried to explore the ruins, but there was a family of unmasked Texans (July 2020, no one had vaccines) camping down there too. They were cute but yuck.

Besides the built ruins, it was easy to see where the orchards had been.

And where the fields had been. Such a huge effort, wiped out in a single weather event.

Speaking of getting wiped out, the unmasked Texans had already left and the clouds were massing for the afternoon rains. It was time to leave. I have honestly never been so incredibly scared in my entire life as I was driving back to the rim on that road. It’s a miracle my Scion didn’t transform into a flaming ball of wreckage with what I put it through.

When we were safely trundling back to Mills along the long washboard road, I commented to my son that I wanted to tell him to take his seatbelt off & jump if I went off the road, but I didn’t want to scare him, and he answered “oh mom, I had my hand on the door handle the whole time.”

Anyway, that’s Mills, NM, at the heart of Harding County. I was glad to be reminded there are plenty of things to die of besides covid, and plenty of ways hubris shapes our interactions with nature. I will never go back. Five stars.

Epilogue: in a fit of depression during lockdown, I archived everything in my photo roll during the first six months of covid. Thanks, creepy and invasive Google bots, for reminding me of the anniversary of not dying horribly in the middle of nowhere.