“The Valley of the Fox"

We have located “The Valley of the Fox” ! 

Well, we have located a valley that looks plausible as a location for the Rock and Cloud Villages in “The Trail of the Fox”.  It may seem strange, but rather than picking a setting before I began to write, I first conceived the idea and started the story.  I based it on my travels through New Mexico in the past, sometimes hunting, sometimes skiing, sometimes just driving through. 

But after writing the first 2/3 of the book, I thought about the need to pick a certain location, to see if it would be a practical, workable setting.  In particular question was the ability of, the likelihood of, the Rock and Cloud people walking down out of their valley with The Trader, in search of The Walking Men (which happens in Part II of the book).

So, I began with www.maps.google.com, and searched an area which I thought might provide mountainous terrain, with flowing streams and a river to follow down onto The Flat.   In particular, the location had to be close enough to the edge of the Great Plains to make a meeting of plains dwelling Walking Men and the mountain dwelling Rock and Cloud people a plausible occurrence.

With a short search, starting with the Santa Fe National Forest in north-central New Mexico, just east of the city of Santa Fe, I found an interesting valley.  If you look at Highway 63, going north from Pecos, New Mexico, you see that it runs north into the National Forest, until it ends there.  It is this main valley, and the side valleys that feed into it, that I feel makes an excellent candidate for the valley of the Rock and Cloud people.

The streams in the valley form the headwaters of the Pecos River, and the river flows out at the town of Pecos, turning east for a bit toward the flat, the Great Plains.  The Pecos continues south and east, finally joining the Rio Grande in western Texas.  Since the wintering area that I propose for the Walking Men (Seminole Canyon State Park, Texas) is very near where the Pecos River joins the Rio Grande, near the town of Del Rio, Texas, I think this makes it also plausible that the Walking might follow the Pecos north in the spring time as the grass begins to grow, and the buffalo head north to graze.

My wife, Brenda, and I flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico and drove the 60 miles or so up to Santa Fe.  We stayed in Santa Fe for a couple of days while looking at both Highway 63 and at Highway 475 which heads northeast from Santa Fe into and also ending in, the Santa Fe National Forest.  We also drove along Interstate 25 East from Santa Fe, towards Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the edge of the plains.  We noted several points along the way which looked like plausible way-points for the Rock and Cloud people on their trading mission.  We ended at the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, an 8700 acre migratory bird sanctuary, which provided some nice photos of the plains, uninterrupted by (modern) human activity.

We would definitely recommend a stay in Santa Fe to anyone interested in traveling to New Mexico.  There is a long standing, active arts community there, ranging from formal galleries, informal outdoor exhibitions to street vendors.  The town is beautiful with most architecture following guidelines for the use of adobe and stucco construction with Mexican roof tile.  Late September is an excellent time to see the turning fall colors in a beautiful and very interesting part of the American West.

-       Mark W. Laughlin

All photos by MWL