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I can no longer remember my first impression of the mountains. That was in late August 1961, far too many years ago. I have fond memories of the mountains, however. I remember how they turned colors in the evening as the sun set. I remember the moon rise over the summit when I got caught after dark climbing La Cueva. I remember how emotional I got when I next saw them in 1986 – twenty years after graduation from New Mexico State University. Without my realizing it, these mountains had become part of my psyche, an element in defining who I had become.

And now, after more than a 40-year absence, I see them every day, and each day they show me a slightly different face. Why, just the other day I was driving east shortly after sunrise. The light was on the east slopes of the mountains, giving depth and definition to each peak leading ever higher to the ridge line and summit of the mountains.

When I returned in 2005, I made a commitment to learn their every nuance and, if it is at all possible, to have a deeper, lasting intimacy with these mountains.

From the west, the Organ Mountains rise from about 3,900 feet above sea level at the Rio Grande to just slightly higher than 9,000 feet. The land from the river to the mountains is not flat, like the western mesa, but sloped. The Spanish call it a bajada, or skirt. Instead of a mesa, the land is an alluvial plain. At the very base of the mountains, a hiker is but 3,000 feet below the highest pinnacle; that point being 6,150 feet at Dripping Springs. So while the pinnacles are sheer, the mountains themselves are deceptive. Though they seem taller and more imposing from the river, they are more like the grinding molars of an elephant than the incisors of an orca.

Before The Organ Mountains formed, a shallow, tropical sea covered the land. The drift of continents not only shifted the land north from the tropics, terminating the existence of the sea, but also set up the scenario for the uplift.

About 32 million years ago, long after the sea had retreated, magma began to intrude from great depths. Some of the magma was forced to the surface, ejecting vast quantities of ash, rock, and lava over an area of a hundred square miles. The result of this volcanic activity can be seen as the dark, red rhyolite that forms the southern portion of the range. The magma that did not reach the surface cooled to form a light gray granite. This craggy rock formed the pinnacles of the northern section of the range. There are also thick layers of sandstone, dolomite, shale and limestone of oceanic origin when the shallow sea was here. These Paleozoic (570 million to 240 million years ago) rocks are overlain by Tertiary (65 million to 2 million years ago) basal tuff composed of ash, rock and lava and speak to a continuing history of volcanic activity.

Between 15 and 8 million years ago, exotic terranes slammed into the west coast of the North American plate. Moving counterclockwise, these terranes began to stretch the hem of the continent. The North American continental plate cracked and began to spread westward, like the opening of a Chinese fan. The basin and range mountains of the Mojave Desert and northern Nevada are the result. The stress on the continent also created a fault that runs from the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains – the Sangre de Cristo Mountains – well into central Mexico. North of the border, the fault is called the Rio Grande Rift and was the cause of the basin and range action. The Organ Mountains formed to the east as the broken continental shard dropped into the depths in the west.

As the continent spread beneath what would one day become the Rio Grande and as the western side of the fault dipped into the earth, there was a corresponding bulge to the east, perhaps accompanied by a magmatic intrusion. Eventually, the magma subsided leaving a cavity unable to support the rocky arch. The arch collapsed forming the Tularosa basin, whose sides are the Sacramento Mountains to the east and the Organ Mountains and San Andreas Mountains to the west.

The east side of the mountains form a sharp steep angle with the plains below. The west side is a gentler, wider, longer slope. This is classic basin and range structure and is more evident in the San Andreas than the Organs, which may have been subjected to additional volcanic activity after the faulting began. While the roots of the Organ Mountains are four to five miles thick, there is an area just east of the pinnacles that is much narrower. The BLM rangers at the Aguirre Springs Recreational Area nestled against the eastern face tell me the area from San Augustin pass to the Sugar Loaf pinnacle – a Hershey-Kiss-like dollop of granite – forms an arc, once part of a caldera that extended past the White Sands Missile Range Headquarters, perhaps twenty miles in diameter.

Wind, rain, and temperature differentials have eroded the range, filling the basin with rock, sand, and gravel to an estimated depth of 30,000 feet, and forming the sloping bajada from the face of the mountains to the Rio Grande, which has carried the alluvium to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Organ Mountains were named by early Spanish explorers who saw the jagged, tooth-like spires as the ends of a massive pipe organ. I expect, if the archaic people, or the Jornada Mogollon people, or the nomadic Apache people who lived here before the Spanish named the elements of their natural world, they must also have had a name for the mountains. If they did, it has been lost in the mist of time as have they.

I have seen the Organs in a different light on many days. Each time I see them differently I marvel at how many faces the mountains present to me. Often there is a featureless, white cloud bank east of the range and therefore behind it from my perspective. On those days, the mountains are surreal – looking like a matte painting. They take on a soft pallet of blues and shadowy grays. The line between rock and sky is so sharply drawn it seems artificial, but the mountains are real and the sky is real, so the demarcation is also real. I think this is the most beautiful view of the mountains I have seen.

On other days, the clouds are billowing overhead, casting shadows as they move over the peaks. On these days, the mountains display a kaleidoscope of hues in tans and browns with touches of dark green and deep blue-gray shadows. The pinnacles themselves vary for an ivory gray-white to putty to steel gray, changing from moment to moment as the clouds drift above.

There are cloudy days, when towering thunder heads drift overhead. At times, the updraft from the mountains shred the cloud tops, sending curling wisps to dissolve in the rarified air. At other times, downdrafts pull the clouds into tendrils that curve and curl over the face of the pinnacles. To see these tendrils is to expect a fierce gust of wind preceding the rain. And when it rains, the face of the mountain can be lost in the rain shaft, which moves like a long-bristle whisk, sweeping the land clean and leaving its distinctive, moist flint fragrance lingering in the air.

Sometimes passing thunderstorms, dropping their rain along the western bajada, display a rainbow – which more often than now crests above the mountains creating scenes no artist could capture on canvas or film.

Ever changing, the Organ Mountains show their richest hues at sunset. As the sun drops to the western horizon, the mountains relinquish their gay, daily tans and browns, turning reddish orange to crimson, each face in light contrasting sharply with those in shadow – giving the range a rugged, craggy look. Like a dying fire, the crimson fades to a deep violet to the black of night – the Organs surrendering their fine detail until the morrow.

The mountains mean a lot more to me, now I have made my home in Las Cruces, then just something to admire. They have their own encantada – enchantment – that draws me to them.

Hiking desert mountains is different than any other mountains I have experienced. I have hiked the Appalachians – my favorite place being Catoctin Mountain where Camp David is. I have hiked in the Rockies, skied in the Sierras and the Austrian Alps. With the exception of the Appalachians and northern Rockys, these are all younger than the Organs and formed by crustal plates pushing together, lifting great masses of rock. For all intents and purpose, the Organs are geologically dormant. The rift which extends from the Robledo Mountains just west of the Rio Grande to the Sacramento Mountains seventy miles to the east is quiescent. It spreads less than a centimeters a year, pushing the Organ Mountains upward perhaps half that, inconsequential compared to other geologically active areas of the earth.

The Organ Mountains do not have the vast faces of granite to take your breath away with their majesty. They do not reach heights where forest and meadow cannot survive. They do not capture winter snows and give rise to vast glaciers. They are, nevertheless, subject to climate. Low rainfall – rarely more than nine inches a year – limits the types and size of plants. In the lower reaches, century plants (Perry Agave) sotol and banana yucca, prickly pear, barrel, and ocotillo cacti abound. Creosote bush, tarbush, and turpentine bush are the predominant shrub. All of these plants are desert dwellers.

Higher up, mostly because of cooler temperatures and a slight rainfall advantage, there are numerous grasses and small stands of stunted honey mesquite, Arizona white oak, alligator juniper, and mountain mahogany. As far as wild flowers, name a color – you’ll find a flower of that hue: crimson, pink, lavender, purple, cerulean blue, sky blue, yellow, yellow-orange, orange, white. They exist from the bajada to the granite pinnacles, pushing like giant teeth out of gums formed by the very top of the alluvial fan.

One trail from the Dripping Springs Visitors’ Center has taken me to the face of the mountains, where there is a water source that runs nearly all year long. Here in the 1870s, Col. Van Patten build a resort, a place where the wealthy could escape the summer desert heat. In 1917, when he went bankrupt, the resort was converted to a tuberculosis sanatorium, which lasted until the disease was beaten with penicillin. All that remains are a few dilapidated ruins, which the BLM is restoring or, at least, conserving.

Another trail circles La Cueva, an outcropping of volcanic tuff several hundred feet tall. The outcrop stands apart at the foot of the mountains and is perhaps a bit more than a quarter mile long and perhaps a hundred yards thick. At one end is a cave, thought to be occupied from 1000 BC until 1860. When in college, I climbed La Cueva frequently. Today, I walk its perimeter and remember the climbs, but am wiser, if older, and have no inclination to climb again. What I have observed – mostly by examining photos I took in the 1960s – is that creosote bush has taken over most of the terrain, where previously there was grass cover. There are fewer barrel cacti and more prickly pear. Both are indications of increasing desertification of the area.

I have made the six-mile through-walk of Baylor Canyon. The trail head is at Aguirre Springs. After an initial steep climb, the trail parallels the face of the mountains and I climb ever higher toward the saddle. The east side of the Organs on this hike revels more trees and shrubs, larger clusters of wild flowers, mostly because it is cooler and less affected by drying westerly winds.

The saddle of Baylor Canyon is grassy and usually windy as the mountain slopes on either side channel and focus the winds. But the view from this vantage to the west is beautiful. I could see Las Cruces in the foreground, the green ribbon of farmland following the Rio Grande. From there west, I could see the vast desert plain all the way to Deming – some 70 miles away. And the mountains – I’ve learned all their names. I can see the Caballo that stretch north from Hatch. Farther south, there are a series of mountains. The nearest are the Doña Ana, remnants of a massive volcano that blew up eons ago. They are on the east side of the Rio Grande. Across from them are the Robledos and beyond them the Sierra de Las Uvas. Then south of them are the Potrillo Mountains, in front of which are Mount Riley and Mount Cox. The horizon holds the Black Range in the north, the Cookes Range farther south, and the Florida Mountains just south of Deming. I now know their names and am learning them as well as I know my face reflected in the mirror when I shave.

From the saddle in Baylor Canyon, it’s three miles to the end of the trail, which twists and turns to accommodate the arroyos and hills, which have the appearance of mounds of water-smoothed rocks. It’s a false appearance. The mounds are actually blocks whose surface has been cracked and shattered by heat and cold and then eroded by wind and rain – giving the appearance of piles or rounded boulders. Farther down the canyon, the trail begins to switch back. The trees get smaller and there are fewer of them. While there is more rain at this elevation – approaching 6,500 feet – it is still much too dry for forest. Stunted trees, shrubs, grasses and cacti abound. The last mile of the hike is across the steepest part at very top of the bajada. The area is dense with creosote, tarbush, and sotol yucca. The grass here is thicker and perhaps greener because I was making the hike near the end of the late summer monsoon season.

I have seen ground squirrels and rabbits on my hikes. And snakes – bull snakes, and gopher snakes, and racers. There are Western diamondback rattlesnakes here, but I’ve yet to see one – not that I’m in any hurry to encounter one. I’m told others have seen mule deer, bighorn sheep, bobcats and mountain lions. I haven’t yet – perhaps because I’ve not gone into the less traveled and less disturbed areas.

Of all the places I have visited, the Organs are my favorite. They exude a peace and serenity which I thrive on. It is one of the reasons I wanted to return to Las Cruces – to be close to nature, close to creation, close to the Creator. I have found that in these mountains. And I revel in the tranquility that abounds here. Each day, when I look upon them – early morning when the rising sun lights up the sky above them while they are still black silhouettes, during the day when they are sun dappled, or in evening when they wear their dusk colors – I find myself smiling in contentment.

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