Desolate, rock strewn, dotted with scrub brush and yucca. The only surface water is what they dam and manage or pull from artesian wells and sell. Wow is southeastern New Mexico bleak; and, as if Mother Nature didn’t deal it a mean enough blow, man mistreated it too. The lake here at the State Park near Artesia is so contaminated with DDT that there are warnings not to eat the fish. This broad valley/canyon, the Indian Basin is riddled with 28,000 oil wells and the associated tanks and pipelines and power distribution. Whole areas are posted as “danger, poisonous gas” because of ongoing and unpredictable H2S releases from the wells and storage.
Amazingly though, far into the canyon we found the artesian stream that is responsible for creating it. It bubbles up through the rock atop the mesa in a bed of high green grass then falls 150 feet to cool, cascading pools. Within a mile, it all disappears back into the ground. It is a beautiful oasis all the prettier in such as unexpected place