May 10 2007
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Dulce The Same But Not The Same
We visited the town of Dulce, New Mexico today, the cultural center of the Jicarilla Apache tribe here in the far northern reaches of the state. When I drove through here in the early 1990s, there were about three buildings huddled around the crossroads. Now there’s a giant supermarket, two casinos, and a brand new school. It’s interesting that there are bars and liquor stores in town, considering most of the other Indian reservations and their dry status.
Mark Pilkington and I drove around the Archuleta mesa today (not ON it) and realized that this is some of the most incredibly beautiful scenery in the country. It is also the perfect place to hide UFOs or tests of exotic aircraft because of the mountainous, heavily forested territory. This must have occurred to Paul Bennewitz in the mid-1980s too, since he was convinced that this mysterious region was home to one of most dastardly threats we ever had to face: evil aliens in an underground base somewhere inside the mesa. Of course, as I point out in “Project Beta,” this belief was stage-managed by the U.S. Air Force. To date, I have heard of no credible evidence that this was the case, although I have heard from a few people (some of them former residents) that there was some sort of hidden facility near here, but it had nothing to do with an extraterrestrial threat. There is also the matter of strange lights that flew over the area almost nightly and of course the cattle mystery.
We drove into Colorado for a few miles, just south of the infamous San Luis Valley. On the way back into New Mexico, on a small gravel road winding next to the Navajo River, we spied not one, but TWO cattle dead in the middle of a fenced-in pasture. There were no predators around them, and one appeared to be in a worse state of decomposition than the other. The rest of the herd stood well away from them, in another area of the ranch. Mutlilation site? Maybe, but probably not. Predators may have scattered when they heard us driving up (in fact a crow took flight from his perch on one of the carcasses) and the other cattle were in a fenced-in area adjacent to their dead compatriots. We weren’t about to trespass for a closer look, but the sight added a touch of drama to a nice day in the picturesque area around Dulce.
We are not allowed to film anything on tribal land, but that didn’t stop the crew from getting some beautiful shots (from outside the border of the reservation of course) of a storm cell that moved through in the late afternoon, complete with lighting strikes and a double rainbow, and snow-covered mountains in the background. Dramatic stuff which should help make the documentary “Mirage Men” one-of-a-kind.
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May 10th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Greg: I thought “First Snow” was a great film because it’s all about paranoid paranormal experiences and it takes place near Abiquiu. I used to go to Ghost Ranch every summer while a teenager — where Georgia O’Keefe did her paintings. Anyway “First Snow” is mainly a landscape film in my opinion and I can see why most viewers wouldn’t be able to handle the slow pace, despite it’s paranormal renderings.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432289/
May 10th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Drew,
Most people reading the comments may not know what you’re writing about. Abiquiu is a picturesque town north of Santa Fe which we passed through today on the way back from Dulce. We visited the anthropology and palentolgy musuems there yesterday–one room apiece for each. They were Nice, neat, and informative though. The natural amphitheater with the haunting echo effects just north of the museums was cool too. I’ll check out the film. Thanks.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:46 am
As Greg says, the main thing I’ve taken from our trip to Dulce is how incredibly beautiful the landscape is. Its been a long time since I’ve experienced absolute silence (broken in the day time by regular comercial overflights) and absolute darkness (OK, there’s the hotel lights and peoples’ porch lights, and an antenna with a light on it up on Archuleta peak).
Also important to me was the realisation that anyone (military, aliens or any combination thereof) who wanted to conceal their activities up on the mesa, could do so with a minimum of difficulty as long as they had a helicopter to get them up there. Nobody on the ground below can see anything more than a few feet from the mesa’s edge.
One more point: our brief interactions with local Apaches and non-Apaches, some who had grown up there over several decades, others who had only recently moved to the area, elicited absolutely nothing that hinted at strangeness being endemic to the area. At least not any more.
That said, there’s no doubt that some strange sh*t has gone on there in the past, and that it had an effect on those who were immediately touched by it, such as Gabe Valdez and ranchers who lost cattle to the mutirators.
Anyway, it’s a striking place to visit, and the breakfast at the Best Western hotel ain’t half bad either. I can personally recommend the Senior Breakfast.
MP
May 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Greg, Mark (Pilkington)’s observation that your interactions with the locals “elicited absolutely nothing that hinted at strangeness being endemic to the area” might be correct in inferring whatever strange sh*t’d gone on there was a thing of the past.
What I’m immediately minded of, though, is the Sufi practise of surreptitiously exposing any would-be disciples to a host of worldly attractions to see whether these prove more attractive to them than spiritual matters.
As you yourself observed, when you drove through Dulce in the ’90s “there were about three buildings huddled around the crossroads.
“Now there’s a giant supermarket, two casinos, and a brand new school…bars and liquor stores…”
Maybe strangeness is still endemic to the area, it’s just the focus of attention for the locals that’s changed.
And in a more paranoid vein, wouldn’t that be precisely what anyone carrying out dark and nefarious covert activities in the area would want?
May 13th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Alan,
I talked to the New Mexico MUFON section director on Saturday morning, and Gabe Valdez on Friday evening. Both said that the weirdness continues around Dulce, but not nearly as much as in the 1980s and ’90s. The tribe has closed ranks and refuses to let anyone do research there anymore. This may be the reason that things seemed to have stopped when we asked a few locals. The new buildings and infrastructure are due mainly to fundng provided by oil and natural gas resources in the area, and to some extent from the casino.
In the midst of this crackdown on weirdness in Dulce, I found a t-shirt for sale in one of the stores picturing an alien in a flying saucer. Below the image were the words (if I remember correctly) “I got probed, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt/ Archuleta Mesa, New Mexico.”