In the far southwest of the United States lie the chopped up remains of the rocky mountains.
To the north, the Rockies form a wall that stretches for miles upward and northward, splitting the continent in two.
To the south it is mirrored all the way down to Chile. These mountains are the weak point in the great Continental Divide.
It is here that the great mountain range breaks up into lower peaks, and less drastically transitioned highland steppe valleys.
In the lowlands, there is hardly enough water to support non specialized forms of life. Iron wood mesquite grows in clumps wherever there the smallest ditch, divot, or indent for water to cease its flow through the vein like arroyos.
When you climb to 5000 feet, there are more cedar trees, more shrub oak, more rocks and less sand. Grass will grow in any crack it can find, grass and oak trees are the dominant lifeforms here.
At 6000 feet and above, the pine trees start to fill the landscape, water rests in nests of topsoil moistened and tamped to hold pools of water shaded by mature pines. Wild game and forage vegetation are abundant.
Cloudcroft is a small town perched 4000 feet above the dry desert floor.
There are no sun scorched and dying plants to be found, and a beholders current location is obscured by the profound contrast between areas so near each other.
The native people spoke of these mountain top safe havens as islands in the desert, migrating from low to high lands seasonally.
Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are so much larger than they look on the map. Every time I drive across any of these states I am floored by how vast the area is, when on the map it looks like a short drive. This means, for the remote islands in the sky, that light pollution is practically equivalent to being a mile or two out at sea. Barely any interference is made between your eyes and the skies. A truly paramount stargazing site.
If you were to stand on the top of the mountain and look east, you would see very plainly all of the sky from Roswell to Albuquerque. Any anomalies would be plainly visible. If you were to turn and look west, you would be looking at more than a million acres of U.S. Government restricted air space. The Holloman Air Force Base is down in the nearest valley, and over the years I have gotten to see a lot of fighter jets dog fighting with laser simmunitions (simulated ammunition).
Another time I swear they shot a missile towards the pacific ocean. I have never seen a huge ball of fire travel that fast and disappear into the sky before. There is an active missile range there, only a few miles away from the White Sands National Park, where many scenes in Star Wars were filmed.
Further west, NASA has a presence in the skies, and to the north is space campUSA and the Very Large Array.
If you want a chance to see a true honest to Alien ufo in the night sky, Cloudcroft, NM is a good place to maximize that small chance.
I am headed to Cloudcroft for the weekend, and must therefore delay the release of Xenospeak's 9th episode :
"Space Forces".
Thank you for keeping up, I will be back, hopefully with some more good content.
I hope some of you reap benefit from my musings, ramblings, and speculations.
I hope to find more like minded searchers.
