Capulin Volcano National Monument is about thirty miles east-south-east of Raton. Drive east along US Highway 64 (US64) from Raton. On reaching the village of Capulin turn left, north. Drive three miles then turn right into the park. Go to the visitor's centre and pay the small fee to the park ranger on duty. In addition to the some static displays and a hands-on exhibit of volcanic geology, there is an audio visual presentation that runs at the touch of a button.

Ascent

Capulin Volcano is an almost perfect cone of cinders. A paved road spirals up the cone from the visitor's centre on the southwest side to a small parking lot above on the same side.

On the day that Fu-Manchu visited with Number One Wife, weather was dark and stormy away over the Rockies from whence we came. Over the plain around Capulin, serried fairweather cumulus clouds drifted like so many white mesas with canyons of blue in between. From the parking lot we walked clockwise around the crater up to the highest point on the northeast side and then down

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All was quiet except for the periodic clatter of the locusts' retreat at our advance. Gusts of cooling wind stirred the low vegetation and branches of piñon and lone-seed pines

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. The common mullein had yet to reach the four- and five-foot height we had seen on our previous visit, a few years ago later in the year.

Small buff-bottomed wrens, rock wrens maybe, flitted from bush to bush. A profusion of ladybugs crawled over the branches and plants, eating the aphids and other minute life inimical to vegetarian good health. White pricklepoppy bloomed as did other unidentified plants from which hummingbird moths gathered nectar.

We sat in silence, in the shade, on the northeast rim literally between heaven and earth, watching while several clouds joined to grow darker and drift a little to the southwest. Unseen birds, possibly two hawks, called to each other across the gape of the crater. We walked down towards the parking lot that held ours and another couple of cars. Movement in the bushes and the thin locating calls of a family of Rufus-sided Towhees caught Fu-Manchu's attention; he saw, through binoculars, the male with a beak full of insects for its fledglings. The birds moved away and down the side of the cone as the cloud above us grew big enough to sprinkle us as from an aspergillum

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, a benediction of purifying water. We regained the car as the cloud saluted us with a crack of thunder.

Descent & Departure

Back at the visitor centre the young intern, a recently graduated environmental geographer from New York, helped us identify the creatures and plants we saw. Two weeks on the job, this slender, ruddy-faced youth, with his shirttail that had nothing much to hang onto, stepped out of the ranger station to inspect our cloud that had become more vocal by the minute. We waved goodby as we drove out of the parking lot on our way to Clayton, well satisfied by our visit, happy with the ten dollars admission to this fine example of the National Parks Service.

Previous Visit

It was October of three or four years ago that we visited Capulin Volcano mid morning. Ranger reported that there had been a snowstorm early, though there was little evidence of it at the Visitor Centre. Up on top of the cone, all the branches of the bushes and trees were coated with rime on the windward side of the storm. Though the air was cold it was invigorating as we walked anti-clockwise from the parking lot.

Looking around from the rim the air was clear in all directions with the curvature of the earth apparent on the horizon. On a clear day, other volcanic cones are visible and the general lay of the land is strange enough to the gaze of a first-time visitor to strike the imagination as that of an alien planet.

In course of conversation with the Ranger, she related her experience with a visitor from New York City who, on learning that she lived in the village of Capulin, was outspoken in his opinion that the village is the most boring dump he had ever visited and couldn't understand how she could tolerate living there. Fu-Manchu's opinion is that the Ranger is most lucky living so close to the pulse of Nature with clear air to breath and unobstructed space in which to walk.

Ranger shared an anecdote about some high-school students who lit a fire of old automobile tyres in the crater then telephoned the local news media in Raton with a report that the volcano had become active again. Uproar ensued in the local populace for a few hours.