Bluewater State Park, New Mexico

I’m staying at Bluewater State Park, slightly south of I-40 and more or less midway between Gallup,NM and Albuquerque, NM.

The road to it winds through some pretty hills, passes through a small nameless community consisting of a couple of businesses closed for the season, some clutches of trailers and the inevitable corrals.  The road crosses a cattle guard and abruptly ends at an open gate and an empty fee collection station.

There is a sign on the gate saying it will be closed at 6pm and if you return later, park your car off the roadway.  I’ve seen those signs before and the gates have not been closed so I didn’t pay it too much heed.

I found a spot, paid my fee, hung my copies of the permit and went to check out the facilities.  There is a sign on the door of the women toilet/shower room that says the door will be locked from 5pm to 7am to save on energy. I disbelieved that sign and the door was locked at 9pm when I tried to use the toilet.  I walked to another building thinking it was an outhouse.  No, it was another flush unit with the same saving energy sign however it was locked for the season.  Strangely, there were lights on inside and I counted over a dozen security lights that were on as I walked back to my trailer.  Clearly saving energy is not what the sign actually meant.  Maybe, I speculated, it meant saving water since hydrants are scarce.

When I tried again in the morning, the shower was in use.  Since I also heard a smallish child, maybe the water here is actually warm. With chronic sunshine I expected to see solar tanks on roofs for heating water however none of the parks I’ve visited have them and hot water barely counts as warm.  While I was fixing breakfast an unfamiliar car left the shower building and drove out of the park (there are only two of us here).  A bit later it returned with different people and again parked by the shower building.

A new idea takes shape; maybe locking the door is to keep the locals out of the outbuildings.  Unemployment in the Deming area is close to 30%.  From the many closed businesses I see in every town, unemployment must be hurting lots of people.  I wonder what water costs that a local family would come to the park to shower. I saw the driver’s face when he drove past me; he looked unhappy and I think furtive. The car itself was old and the paint was gone from most of one side.  I wonder what it costs in spirit to take your family to public showers regardless of the why?

POST-NOTE:  I talked to a woman in the shower today who, it turns out, is one of the outsiders.  She buys an annual daily pass and comes in regularly to shower.  The water is warm at this park because she has emailed administration several times complaining about the previously cold ‘hot’ water.

The woman was quite talkative and told me she lived in one of the trailers outside the park, that it belonged to a male friend of hers and that it had neither a septic system nor a well. Since she has no septic system they use a pail which she emptied before leaving the building.  I’m quite sure hers is the same voice I heard on the weekend showering with a little girl.

She made it quite clear that living independently outside of town was worth the inconvenience of no water.  I wondered what kind of interference she had experienced since using the park facilities does not seem particularly independent to me.