August 2014

It’s a strange beast, this vast ranch owned by Ted Turner since 1996. A century-old guest ranch devoted to hunting and fishing, long a favorite of Texans and other Southerners, it is turning a new skin under Ted’s management. Molting, changing, broadening its market. Becoming less Pennzoil, which owned it for 30 years, more Ted Turner conservationist, though the oil company retained rights to drill for natural gas.

It’s beautiful country, high desert to fir-covered mountain, broad meadows blanketed in wildflowers all summer. Fifteen hundred buffalo graze the lands, one of only two genetically pure herds in the world. Elk and antelope, bear and wolves. Fourteen hundred-year old pottery shards, grinding stones, arrowheads, pit houses. More than half a million acres roll over elevations ranging from 5,000 to 12,000 feet. It’s one of the largest private ranches in the country.

We arrive at Quemado, an impoverished tumbleweed town in central New Mexico that cuddles up to the Arizona border, in time for lunch at one of the two cafes. A sassy, frontier waitress takes our orders, a toothless old cowboy hangs his head at a corner table. Both straight from central casting. We arrive at a sun-bleached wood building just before two, it’s door ajar, a discrete sign stenciled on the window says we’re at the right place. No one’s inside, but a note tells us to sign the open registration book, they’ll be along soon ‘nuf to pick us up. (Yes, the setting calls for a little twang.) We wander back onto the street. I photograph the beat-up old retail building across the way. Back in Time, it’s called, back when it was once open. Not a car moving along this remote two-lane highway. The town sot wanders by, a happy grin on his face, says something that is hard to catch. He also has no teeth.

A van swings ‘round the corner just up the street and pulls along beside us. The driver, a woman born and bred in the ranch country outside of town, helps us throw our bags in the back. “Okay to leave our cars right here?” No problem, she says, nothing has ever happened to them in the 30 years we’ve been doing this.