Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Sunset on the trail, Rockhound State Park, Deming NM, February 9, 2009
It's cool in the park today - yesterday morning's light snowfall is gone except for a light dusting on the mountains across the valley.
Night camp
Site 27 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Find other references to Rockhound on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Rockhound State Park website
- Get a Google map of this area
- Check the weather here
Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.