Love Is A Burning Thing

Open your Rand McNally Road Atlas to New Mexico and look for the largest tract of empty space on the map. You’ll find it in Lincoln County, south of Vaughn and northwest of Roswell—a big, white void bisected only by State Highway 247…

Saturday, October 14, 2023 brought an annular “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse to the American West. Perfect timing for my autumn road trip, and since I love visiting New Mexico in October, I decided to start my adventure there and find an isolated campsite where I could enjoy the spectacle. It was simply a matter of choosing just the right spot.

I knew Roswell would be overrun with viewers, as would all of the state parks and national forests in the path of the Moon’s shadow. (Evidence of the inbound crowd appeared in the form of RVs and Subarus with cargo boxes swarming the gas stations in Vaughn on Friday the 13th.) Well before leaving home, I consulted this detailed interactive eclipse map to find an out-of-the-way location in the eclipse zone. That led me to the wide-open spaces of Lincoln County seen above.

The next step was to visit one of my favorite sites—an indispensable tool if you’re searching for publicly-accessible government land—the Bureau of Land Management’s Online Atlas. The BLM site confirmed that there is plenty of federal acreage in Lincoln County. Working with these online maps, I spotted a piece of high ground (elevation 5,406′, if you care) close to the center of the eclipse track that appeared to be surrounded by open rangeland, and likely populated solely by grazing cattle. And while further studying the area with an online topographical map, I learned that the name of this high ground is Cowboy Mesa. How could I possibly pass up a location with a name like that?

As I slowly bumped along several miles of rocky and rarely used two-track “roads” that twisted their way to the summit—receiving several questioning stares from the cows along the way—I grew more hopeful that few skywatchers, if any, would be joining me atop the mesa; this path was much too rugged for RVs, trailers or 2WD vehicles.

Indeed, during my two days and nights camped there, I never saw or heard another human. Gotta say, it’s pretty cool to have an entire mesa all to yourself.

This video gives you a 360° view of the thousands of acres of nothingness surrounding Cowboy Mesa…

(If you don’t see a video displayed above, follow this link to my YouTube channel.)

Right on schedule, the show began that Saturday morning. Naturally, after several consecutive days of crystal blue skies, a cloud wedge glided in at the worst possible time. Fortunately, these clouds were of the high and thin variety, so they merely added a bit of filtering to the sunlight without blocking my view.

And speaking of filtering, I must add the obligatory disclaimer here: Never try to observe a solar eclipse without proper eye protection. Apply that caution to your digital camera as well. Since my telescope would have been overkill for this event, it stayed at home. But I did bring along its solar filter since it happens to fit perfectly on the lens hood of my 200mm lens; it allowed me to get the photos below without frying my camera’s sensor.

Unlike past eclipses I have witnessed, on this occasion the Moon made its transit in a nearly perfect vertical drop…

A Cheshire smile in the sky…

I especially like the phase below; it reminds me of the Moon in Susanna Clark‘s painting that was used as one of my favorite album covers…

Almost there…

Encapsulated…

Centered in the Ring of Fire…

The Moon continues to fall…

And so on…

The stone cairn (about 84″ tall) that visitors to Cowboy Mesa have erected on the southwestern corner of the summit, with a view of the Capitan Mountains in the distance. This image was taken right after the one above, with much of the Sun still obscured. Though you have no additional photos for comparison, I can tell you that the scene below was substantially brighter an hour earlier and an hour later. Even more notable than the dimming of the daylight was the sudden chill in the air at the peak of the eclipse; it felt as though the temperature had rapidly dropped by about 15 degrees…

You can watch the daylight fade and then return by viewing the time-lapse video below. I set my phone’s camera to record for 15 minutes (7.5 minutes on each side of maximum obscuration), then accelerated that video into this 20-second clip…

(If you don’t see a video displayed above, follow this link to my YouTube channel.)

No long-haul travel is necessary for the total solar eclipse of April 2024, as the path of totality passes right through my home area code. But early April around here is a pretty safe bet for clouds and wet skies. Here’s hoping we’ll get lucky with a blast of Canadian high pressure on that date.