Exploring the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness

Ted started down into the muddy arroyo with our new little buddy, Kenidee, close behind. I followed more slowly. Unexpectedly, my hubby skidded on the slick mire, spun around with one leg in the air to maintain balance, flipped around again, jumped the water, and landed perfectly on the other side.
Kenidee leaped across the icy water and looked back at me as if to say, what’s the problem. I laughed, but I was impressed with my hiking partners. If it’d been me, I would’ve splatted onto the mud.
We hadn’t planned to go mud skating on our third trip to Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, also known as the Bisti Badlands, south of Farmington, NM, but it had snowed during the week, and the warming temperatures created a quagmire.
As we slithered our way toward the Stone Wings, Kenidee, a miniature schnauzer, ran here and there, and soon her belly was caked with mud. We’d lost our beloved Oggie-dog a year ago, and after months of grieving and feeling like we’d never own another dog, Kenidee had come into our lives, packaged with surprises.
Although small, loving, and sweet tempered, she loved to hike, and she obviously didn’t mind the Bisti mud.
Eons ago, a river delta existed in what is now the Bisti Wilderness, a wetland much different than the temporary mud we slogged through. It bordered the Western Interior Seaway, and instead of the modern, otherworldly Bisti moonscape, the delta teemed with lush, tropical plants and animal life, including dinosaurs, crocodiles, and turtles.
As the river wended through the delta, it deposited layers of sediment, including sand, clay, silt, shale, and limestone. Volcanic activity added ash after the Colorado uplift created mountains.
Eventually, the river and sea dried up, and the dinosaurs, crocodiles, and turtles disappeared. Some of the vegetation turned into coal, caught fire and burned, creating small red rocks called clinkers. Their vivid red-and-orange coloring was scattered across the landscape.
Erosion carved the hoodoos, hundreds of them, a sci-fi setting of bizarre and beautiful stone shapes, some of which seem eerily alive.
The Navajos named the land. Bisti/De-Na-Zin comes from Bistie or Bistahi, depending on the source, meaning a large area of shale hills or among the adobe formations. De-Na-Zin from Dééł Náázíní means standing crane because crane petroglyphs have been found near the area, evidencing the wetlands that once existed here.
Three weeks ago, we hiked the Bisti Badlands for the first time. Since it’s a wilderness area, there aren’t any trails or signs, so we followed a faint footpath for a few miles and then wandered through the hoodoos like Hansel and Gretel.
We didn’t leave breadcrumbs because we weren’t lost, but people have become disoriented in the desert labyrinth. Neither were we alone because other hikers wandered nearby, but we didn’t find the features we were looking for. We were hooked, though, by the twisted elegance of the stones. Every wash we walked, every corner we turned brought more of the earth’s sculptures into view.
The next week, we returned with better directions, and Ted used his Gaia Map to plot our course. We were looking for the Chocolate Hoodoos and the Cracked Eggs, also known as the Alien Eggs. Again, we weren’t alone and talked with hikers who had lost their dog.
“Maybe she found the only carcass in the area,” the worried owner said. We hadn’t seen Zia, and I doubted she’d found a carcass even though rabbits and prairie dogs made their homes there. Later, we watched the reunion from a distance when Zia bounded back to rejoin their group.
Our little Kenidee, although she went on short forays, always kept us in view and leaped up the hills like a jackrabbit after Ted while I scrambled up sometimes on all fours.
It was up some of those hills we found the chocolate hoodoos and not far away the eggs which I thought looked more like stone roses, some even with rose-colored swirls. They were beautiful and strange, and some say they look like aliens emerging from the cracked shells.
This week, on our third venture into the badlands, the fields around Farmington shone with new snow. We parked near the Bisti Wilderness Church and started across the field toward the Stone Wings. Instead of walking, however, we found ourselves sloshing through mud.
We picked our way carefully, using patches of snow to buoy us up, but often skated as we tried to keep our balance. The effort became worth it when the stone wings came into view.
The formations looked ready to ascend to a higher dimension. We, on the other hand, were earth bound. Ted struggled up the slippery slopes for a closer photo of the wings, and, covered with mud, Kenidee morphed into a schnauzer-shaped Bisti formation. I stayed below, but mud coated my boots and smeared my pants, coat, gloves, and nose. All in all, we had a great time.
As we headed back to the Jeep, I thought about the transformations the earth had undergone there from river delta to desert badlands and the constant changes still wrought by sun, wind, and water to create one of the most surreal landscapes we’d ever encountered.
As I watched Kenidee scampering through the mud, I also pondered the changes we’d undergone with grief and grace sculpting us like the elements that had shaped Bisti’s stone wings.

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