in search of geologic time

Yesterday's text to Freeman Dyson will not be sent. After consulting the local police regarding weather conditions in Dulce, NM we decided we were ready to try again. We spent another 9 hours on the road yesterday, but smudgers never quit, they move in accord. It now truly feels like the "work" of this journey is complete. From here, we can begin to look back at these past 31 days and assess just how fundamentally changed we are and what to begin to make in response.

"For those of you accustomed to being taken from point A to point B to point C, this presentation may be somewhat difficult to follow. Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider's web — with many little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made, and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made." - Leslie Marmon Silko

project Gasbuggy

"The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, and was the first use of a nuclear explosion for industrial purposes. The test was overseen by the San Francisco Operations Office of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was conducted by the Lawrence Radiation Lab (later to become the Lawrence Livermore National Lab) in conjunction with the El Paso Natural Gas Company. Called "gas stimulation," the technique has been used employing conventional explosives, and it was hoped that a larger nuclear explosion would be capable of opening up "tight" gas deposits which are not otherwise economically viable. The test called for a 29-kiloton nuclear device to be placed at the bottom of a 4,240-foot deep shaft drilled in a "tight" shale formation known to contain natural gas. To a large degree the experiment went as planned: the underground cavity produced by the explosion, 80 feet wide and 335 feet high, filled with natural gas from the fractured surrounding rock. However the gas was too radioactive to be commercially distributed by the public utilities." -from the CLUI site

This was the road we couldn't find last Friday, F.S. 357. We only saw it as we were leaving. Hidden in plain sight.


After much ado we learned that J-10 (Apache reservation road) is the same as F.S. 357. We were at J-58 last Friday - a mile down the road. Perhaps the rain and lightning were a signal to not proceed.


despite looming clouds and the likely chance of a sudden downpour we proceeded onto J-10


It would have been an interesting 7 mile drive down this road if rain had materialized


the site is marked upon entering the Carson National Forest


Gasbuggy is marked as a "point of interest", indeed it was for us.




through the gate


Into an open meadow. Different plants grow in the area surrounding the site.
Storms gather in the distance.




the much anticipated monument


Gasbuggy yielded twice the kilotons of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima







we closed the journey once we made it safely back to Highway 64 without incident



the scenic route back to Santa Fe


the incredible Cabezon in the distance


though not one drop of rain landed on our car the area had obviously experienced flash floods



red road in Jemez Springs


We ended the day by passing through Los Alamos one more time.
On our way into town our breath was taken away at the enormity of the Valles Caldera.