I'm in Maine right now, enjoying a summer vacation in a lake-side cottage, with lots of time for bobbing about with the grandkids.

My husband mentioned lately that he craved a pecan pie, and I would have made one for him, except I didn't want to go out and buy a load of ingredients that I wouldn't use up in the next two weeks.

So I improvised with what I had around. My first substitution: using butter instead of vegetable shortening in the pie shell. The resulting crust was rich and flaky. I may do this more often!

My second substitution was using maple sugar instead of karo syrup. This seemed like a no brainer. After all, I'm in New England, where much of the US's maple syrup is made! And I knew I couldn't use a whole bottle of karo syrup up any time soon. However, maple syrup has a thinner consistency than karo syrup, so I had to account for this in my recipe. I added a tablespoon of flour, and that was all the adjusting I needed to do!

Also, I wasn't in my kitchen, so I didn't have my equipment. Again, I improvised. First, instead of whirring the flour and shortening together in my food processor, I cut the butter into the flour using a fork. This was not as time consuming as I had feared, but I still prefer to use the food processor. 

Usually I use a piece of plastic wrap to chill my dough, and then a piece of wax paper to roll it out. This time, I used one piece of plastic wrap for both purposes.

The recipe I found on the internet that I used as a guide for this pie called for prebaking the crust, so that it wouldn't get soggy on the bottom. I don't normally do this, but I found that the effort was well worth it. Prebaking usually involves putting a piece of parchment paper into the crust, then filling the pie shell with dried beans. Because I had neither parchment paper nor beans, I improvised this step as well, using coffee filters, another pie pan, and a small casserole dish. The coffee filters stop the second pie plate from sticking to the pastry, the pie plate stops the crust from puffing up, and the small casserole dish added the weight that held the pie plate in place. 

Working in a strange kitchen can be a bit unsettling. I think we all have our favorite spatula and feel a bit lost without it. But in this case, things worked out just fine. The results came out pretty good; good enough to share.

Maple Pecan Pie

Crust: 1 1/4 cup flour

1 tsp sugar

1/2 cup cold, salted butter

1/4 cup ice water 

Place flour and sugar in a bowl. Mix with a fork. Cut the stick of butter in half longways, then turn and cut longways again so that you have 4 long sticks. Cut the sticks  into little cubes. Sprinkle the cubes over the flour and sugar mixture, then cut them in with a fork. (Cutting in means smash the butter, blending it into the flour until there are no big pieces left. Add the ice water, and stir and mix with the fork until the dough becomes one large clump. If this doesn't happen, add a little more water, half a teaspoon at a time, until it does. Press that clump into a round ball.

Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap (or use plastic wrap to cover the bowl in which you mixed the dough) and put it in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. 

While dough is chilling, preheat oven to 425°

When the dough has chilled, take it out of the refrigerator. Spread the plastic wrap on the counter and sprinkle it with flour. Put the ball of dough in the middle of the plastic, then turn it over so that the top is floured. Moving your rolling pin from the middle of the ball to the edges, roll your dough out on the plastic wrap. When your dough is spread out enough that you can place your pie plate upside down on the dough and see an inch of dough all the way around, pick up the plastic wrap and flip it, the dough, and the pie plate over. Your dough is now in the pie plate! Peel off the plastic and crimp the edge of the dough, cutting off excess and using it in places that need it. 

To prebake pie shell: place a coffee filter in the bottom of the pie shell. You may need to use two or three, overlapping them to fit. Place another pie plate on top of the coffee filter. If you don't have a second pie plate, you could try using a round casserole or a plate. What you need is something that generally fills the bottom and keeps it from puffing up in the oven. My second pie plate was smaller than the first (which is why you can see a ridge around the edge of my pie, just outside the filling). It was also light, so I placed a little round ceramic casserole dish (probably intended for souffles) inside my second dish to hold it down. 

Place pie plate in oven. Bake for 10 minutes. Take out of oven, remove pie plate (and casserole if using) and coffee filters. Return to oven for an additional 5 minutes.

Take pieshell out of oven and place on a rack to cool. 

Reset oven temperature to 350°

Pie Filling: 3 cups pecan halves

5 TBS melted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 TBS flour

2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

1 cup maple syrup

Measure 3 cups of pecan halves. Pick out 3/4 cup of the best looking nuts and set aside.

Pour the remaining 2 1/4 cup pecans into the cooled pie shell. 

I melted my butter by putting it in my mixing bowl and microwaving it, but you can do it any way you want. 

Add the brown sugar and flour to the melted butter and stir to mix.

Add the vanilla and eggs and stir until they egg is well distributed.

Add the maple syrup and stir well again. 

Carefully pour the butter/sugar/egg mixture over the nuts in the pie shell.

Place the reserved 3/4 cup of nuts and place them on top the pie. I like to do this in concentric circles. 

Bake the pie at 350° for 40-50 minutes. If your crust begins to get too brown, you can tent it with aluminum foil (assuming you have some, which I didn't!)

Home of the Spirit Animals

The history of the horse in North America is  controversial right now. Historians have long asserted that Spanish explorers introduced horses to the Americas. First arriving in Hispaniola in the Caribbean with Christopher Columbus during his second voyage in 1493, six horses reached the North American mainland with Hernán Cortés in 1519. Following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, horses that were abandoned or escaped the Spanish adapted to the wild, becoming known as mustangs. Many were sold throughout the extensive Indigenous trade network, spreading thousands of miles long before Europeans entered the region.

But few know that the horse had its origins in North America. The Eohippus, ("dawn horse"), also scientifically known as Hyracotherium, developed in North America some 50 million years ago. This browser was approximately the size of a dog, but over millions of years, it grew and evolved into the Equus, our modern horse. It is believed that horses later crossed the Bering Land Bridge into Asia before they vanished from its home turf. Equus scotti, the last of the horses that lived in North America, disappeared about 10,000 years ago, just about the same time as other megafauna such as mammoths and saber toothed tigers did.

Some groups claim that horses never died out here, and that the Indigenous Peoples had horses long before the Spanish came.

Cyd Raschke's Home of the Spirit Animals (2025, Raven+Grace Press, ISBN 9798992383836) tells the story of how the first foal from Spanish horses might have been born in the Americas. The 2026 Spur Award for both Best Western Juvenile Fiction and Best First Novel, it follows a Native American girl who longs to return to her tribe after many years as a slave, and a Spanish Moor who is shipwrecked on the Texas coast. 

Diego had been sailing with a group of beautiful horses that were bound for Cathay when a hurricane sunk his ship. The year is 1496, and Europeans have not yet figured out that the Americas stand between them and the Far East. The San Esteban is charged with establishing a trading enterprise for exporting horses to China and Japan, and carries Andalusian, Arabian, and Galician horses. When the ship goes down, Diego manages to save the horses, but finds himself alone in a land that he believes is Java. He doesn't understand the customs or the language.

Sixteen-year-old Nemae came from a tribe that lived in what is now called the Texas hill country. When she was quite young, her father was killed in a war with other tribes, and she and her mother taken captive. They now live along the coast, and her mother has integrated into her new tribe, marrying and having a child, but Nemae continues to feel like an outcast. She dreams of majestic creatures, calling them the spirit animals of legend, and when Diego arrives with his horses, she believes they are calling her to something greater.

The two build a relationship as they travel to find her people, and a place that will accept a stranger and his strange new animals. Some people are hesitant or even terrified of the horses, while others are curious. Nemae and Diego advocate for them, showing how the animals can be used for hunting, transportation, and even protection. They also must argue that, unlike deer, the horses are not good to eat. Convincing the superstitious and tradition-bound people does not come easily.

This story of the reintroduction of horses to the Americas, is either upper middle grade or YA. It has some content that might be confusing or disturbing to younger readers, including some violence and some male predation of the subservient Nemae. It isn't graphic, but parents and teachers will want to talk with their readers about some sections.

About the Author

Cyd Raschke grew up in rural Washington State, where a relative placed her atop a palomino Belgian when she was a toddler. One inspiration for this story was to correct assumptions that wild horses are not native to America.She set the novel in Texas after learning the story of Mustang Island, and visiting Hill Country where she saw how ideal the land would be for horses to thrive. 

Ms. Raschke has a PhD in Social Psychology. She and her husband live in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where they raised two sons. Of Alaskan Native and Scandinavian heritage, Cyd feels a sense of loss of legacy shared by many descendants of Indigenous Nations and was grateful for the chance to share some of her native culture through this story. It is her first novel. 

Bandelier National Monument: A Beautiful Walk through History

Last week my hiking buddies and I went to Bandelier National Monument, and got not only a beautiful hike, but a lesson in New Mexico history.

Bandelier is a 33,677-acre site in Frijoles Canyon. It is near Los Alamos on the Pajarito Plateau.  Over 70% of the 50 square miles of the monument is wilderness, with only 3 miles of road and more than 70 miles of hiking trails. The whole area is dotted with the remains of ancient villages.

Bandelier was designated a national monument by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. It was named for Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss-American anthropologist and archaeologist who spent eight years among the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico. Bandelier researched the cultures of the area before he wrote The Delight Makers, a novel set within the prehistoric Indian culture of the Southwest. In October of 1880, a man from the Cochiti Pueblo named Jose Montoya brought Adolph Bandelier to the area and Bandelier proclaimed the cliff dwellings "the grandest thing I ever saw." Recognizing the importance of its heritage, the National Park Service cooperates with surrounding Pueblos, other federal agencies, and state agencies to manage the park.

The first site that we came to was Tyuonyi (Que-weh-nee), a circular pueblo site that once stood up to three stories tall. Tree-ring dating of fragments of ceiling beams recovered from various rooms show that site dates from 1383 and 1466, during what is called the Pueblo IV Era. Other parts of the structure suggest that building may have begun around 1150, in what is called the Pueblo III Era.

The Pueblo III Era appears to have been a tumultuous time for the indigenous population. During this period, deep drought, environmental stress, and social unrest caused a wide-scale migration of Ancestral Puebloans away from the Four Corners area. Many of those migrants may have moved into Frijoles Canyon. Archaeological surveys of the area have found thousands of individual sites, but they were not all occupied at the same time. During the Classic Period, defined as AD 1325 to 1550, the population may have peaked. Most pueblos from this period have between 150 and 500 rooms each, with the largest containing approximately 1,500 rooms. This suggests a large population, though a specific total number of residents for the entire monument is not officially cited in any of the literature I found.

Near Tyounyi is the Long House. Built along the base of the cliff, these structures were 3 to 4 stories tall and supported by the walls of the canyon. The foundations of rock walls delineate the lower floors, while beam holes and cavates, the term for rooms artificially hollowed out of tuff, the soft volcanic rock, form the upper floors.

After that, we walked another half a mile to the Alcove House.  Formerly
known as Ceremonial Cave, this cave sits 140 feet above the floor of Frijoles Canyon and is accessed by 4 wooden ladders and a number of stone stairs. Archaeologists believe that approximately 25 Ancestral Pueblo people lived with Alcove House. There is a reconstructed kiva on the site, and viga holes and niches that suggest where the homes were. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to climb these ladders while carrying water from the stream below.

That is yours truly in the navy shirt and white cap. I am terribly afraid of heights and really proud of myself for making it both up to the top and down again. I cannot tell you which was harder!
 

Farther up the canyon, we spied ladders dug into the cliff walls and conjectured that they led to other places that may have been inhabited.

Bandelier was abandoned by 1600, when its inhabitants relocated to Cochiti, San Ildefonso, and other pueblos near the Rio Grande. These pueblos remain occupied. 

 

In addition to showcasing ancient structures, the park is famous for the park headquarters and visitor center, buildings that were built in the 1930s by crews of the Civilian Conservation Corps. There is a museum, a gift shop, and a café included in these buildings.

For more information about visiting Bandelier, click here. 

The Gila Catwalk; A scenic walk through history

 

Last month, I went with a couple of friends and my husband to do some exploring in Southern New Mexico. One of the places we visited is called "The Catwalk.” This place may be a popular tourist attraction now, but 120 years ago, it was all business, and that business was mining.

The Catwalk National Recreation Trail is located within the Gila National Forest. It is situated near the small town of Glenwood, approximately 65 miles northwest of Silver City. To get there, turn east off U.S. Highway 180 onto NM-174, which is also called Catwalk Road, and drive roughly 5 miles to the trailhead parking lot. Catwalk road crosses the stream, and while the water was very low when we went, it may be flooded and impassable during heavy rain or spring runoff.

The Catwalk goes into Whitewater Canyon, which contained a large number of very productive mines, including the Confidence. Because of the cost of moving the heavy ore, it was preferable to process gold and silver ores as close to the mines as possible. However, Whitewater Canyon was too narrow to permit processing.

In 1893, John T. Graham established an ore-processing facility at the entrance to Whitewater Canyon to help serve those mines. A small town grew up around the mill. Sometimes it is known as Graham after its founder, and sometimes it is called Whitewater after its location. The town quickly grew to have 200 residents, one of which, William Antrim, the town blacksmith, was Billy the Kid’s stepfather. Whitewater Canyon was a favorite hideout of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and of Apaches, including Geronimo.


However, the mill’s steam generators needed a good, steady supply of water. A water pipe, four inches in diameter, was constructed between Graham and the high mountain waters to make sure the generators and the town would be supplied. The pipe was encased in a wooden sheathe that was packed in sawdust to prevent freezing. By 1897, the town and mill’s needs had increased so much that an eighteen-inch pipe was constructed parallel to the original, four-inch line. In what was considered quite an engineering feat for the time, holes were drilled into the canyon walls to help brace the pipes, which ran some twenty feet above the canyon floor, and because the whole line needed monitoring and repair, a catwalk—a narrow walkway—ran the whole length of the pipe.

Beleaguered by profitability, water issues, and flooding, the mill never made the huge profits that Graham had hoped for. By 1904, the population had dropped low enough that the post office closed. The mill itself closed in 1913, and the town faded away

soon after that. All that remains of the mill now are some foundations and a few walls that blend into the canyon just above the parking lot. Rusted old pipes and a few wires and braces from the original waterline appear along the trail.

The town may have died, but the Catwalk itself has stayed vital. In the mid-1930's the Civilian Conservation Corps, the work program developed by F.D. Roosevelt to combat the rampant unemployment of the Great Depression rebuilt the Catwalk as a tourist attraction.  In 2012, the Whitewater-Baldy Fire destroyed much of the vegetation upstream, leading to massive flooding that washed away the work that the CCC had done. The bridge system was rebuilt and is now open for approximately .5 miles from the parking lot. This is a very accessible area and easily hiked by all ages and abilities, including wheelchairs. After the bridge system, the trail has been cleared for another .5 - .75 miles. Beyond that, backpackers can follow a much more rugged trail.

 Today the area is managed by the Gila National Forest  as a day-use area. It has picnic tables and restrooms.

James C. Cooney and the Alma Massacre

 

Gold and silver were first discovered in the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico by James C. Cooney, who was born in 1840 and came to the U.S. from Ireland to escape the potato famine. He joined the Army and was a sergeant in the 8th U.S. Cavalry when he was posted to Fort Bayard, near Silver City, New Mexico in 1870. He was scouting in the Mogollon Mountain’s Mineral Creek Canyon, north of Mogollon and east of Alma, when he discovered rich gold and silver deposits. Cooney kept his discovery a secret until his military discharge in 1875. A year later, he began working the claim, called the Silver Bar Mine, with his partner Harry McAllister. The mine proved itself to be the richest claim in the new district, and Cooney’s little mining camp became a town. Although it was no more than a handful of tents, log cabins and rough wooden buildings, it, and but it and Cooney Peak, rising up in the distance, must have made the ex-cavalry sergeant very proud as well as rich.

Cooney wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy his prosperity. In the early evening of April 28, 1880, Chiricahua Apache
warriors led by Victorio struck Cooney’s silver mine, killing two miners and wounding a third. After dark, Cooney and another man, William Chick, rode down the canyon to warn local settlers of the danger. The next morning, believing the raiders had moved on, Chick and Cooney decided to ride back to the mine. A couple of miles up the canyon, the Apaches caught and killed them both. The warriors then spread out, targeting shepherds and their families. According to The Weekly New Mexican, "one hundred thousand head of sheep...were scattered or killed," and at least 41 people were murdered in what came to be known as the Alma Massacre. The violence continued until U.S. Army troops from Fort Bayard, forced Victorio and his warriors to withdraw from the area.

Cooney’s older brother, Captain Michael Cooney, collaborated with fellow miners to create a tomb near the site where the miner was massacred. They used black powder explosives, drills, and hand chisels to create a cavity large enough to accommodate Cooney's coffin in a large boulder. The miners then sealed the entrance with a mixture of cement and local ore sourced from Cooney's own silver claims, protecting him from scavengers, floods, and further raids. Located north of Alma along Forest Road 701, the tomb is now a historical landmark, protected by barriers and marked by a plaque.  It is a testament to practical frontier ingenuity and group solidarity among prospectors operating in lawless terrain.

The Alma Massacre remains one of the deadliest single raids in the Apache Wars, illustrating the brutal reality of frontier conflict where civilians bore the heaviest casualties. However, the threat of violence was not enough to keep miners from the area. By 1887, the Mogollon/Cooney district had become the largest producer of gold and silver in New Mexico, yielding somewhere between $5 and $7 million in gold and silver over the next decade. By 1889 the town of Cooney had grown to 600 residents, a school, a church, and two hotels. But silver prices collapsed in the 1890s, and the town’s population began to dwindle. A disastrous flood that scoured the canyon in 1911 finally put an end to the town.

Gutierrez Hubbell House: An historical gem in Albuquerque's South Valley

By John Phelan - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10535924

Last weekend I gave another of my lectures on the Civil War on Route 66. This time, the venue was the Gutierrez Hubbell House. My only regret is that I didn't go there much sooner. 

The Gutiérrez Hubbell House is a historic, territorial-style hacienda in Albuquerque's South Valley, in the village of Pajarito. Although there was a house on the site that dated back to the 1820s, when the property was part of a 40,000 acre estate owned by Clemente and Josefa Gutiérrez, most of the existing structure was built in the 1850s and 1860s, after  James Lawrence Hubbell married their great-granddaughter and heir, Julianita.

Hubbell came to New Mexico in 1846 as part of the American Expedition into Mexican territory led by General Stephen Watts Kearny. The twenty-two year old captain was born in Connecticut to an Anglo father and a Hispanic mother. Evidently, he liked the country and its inhabitants, for he resigned his commission and married Julianita Gutiérrez in 1849, when she was just sixteen years old.

Julianita came from a prominent ranching and trading family. The Gutiérrezes were related to the Baca family and the Chaves clan, both powerhouses in New Mexico politics. Her paternal grandfather was among the first governors to serve New Mexico when it was still under Mexican rule. 

Santiago may have resigned his commission after the Mexican American War ended, but he rejoined during the Civil War, when Confederates threatened the territory. He organized and commanded a company of New Mexico Mounted Volunteers, called "Hubbell's Cavalry Company" or Company B of the 5th New Mexico Infantry Volunteers. As their Captain, Hubbell led his men in the front lines at the Battle of Valverde, defending the McRae Battery when it  suffered a frontal attack. From a company of seventy-four men, thirty-nine (53% of the total company) were killed, wounded, or missing in action. The Confederates were able to overrun the battery and take possession of six guns.  After the battle, Captain P.W.L. Plymptom, a US Regular Army officer, sent in a report explaining that his battalion had failed to save the guns from the Confederate charge because New Mexican Volunteers had broken from their position. Hubbell contested this report and was unhappy with how his volunteers were treated by regular army. 

After the war, Santiago and Julianita continued to build onto their house with the help of their twelve children. Located along the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro,the oldest continuously used European roadway in North America, which runs north from Mexico City to Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo), north of Santa Fe, the house was a natural stop for travelers and became one of the  important parajes, or camp locations, along the trail. It was used as a stagecoach stop, a trading post, and a post office in addition to being a private home. Trading must have become second nature to the Hubbells . The third of Santiago and Julianita's children, Don (John) Lorenzo Hubbell, established the famous Hubbell Trading Post located on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Ganado, Arizona.

The house, which has existed under three national flags, (Spain, Mexico and the United States) is listed on the State of New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties as a symbol of the blending of Spanish, Native American and Anglo cultures and traditions, and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is managed by the National Park Service and offers a traditional garden and a heritage garden as well as walking trails along the acequia madre (mother ditch) and around the property, and cultivated farm plots for visitors to enjoy. I was charmed by the displays within the house, which included a room with an extensive timeline, the room where the young sons slept, a room that served as a general store, and the main living room. The thickness of the walls, the vigas in the ceilings, and the territorial trim around the windows was impressive. 

Click here to download a pdf of the guide to this historical site.

Click here to download a self-guided tour of the veterans interred in Fairview Cemetery.
click here to see trails in the south valley area. 

Dark Treason: Great Historical Fiction for Young Patriots

Dark Treason: An American Revolution Spy Thriller is the fourth book in Robert J. Skead’s American Revolutionary War Adventures, a middle grade historical fiction series intended for readers between the age of 8 and 12.

The series begins with Patriots, Redcoats & Spies, set in 1777, when twin boys John and Ambrose Clark are 14 years old. After their father is shot by British soldiers, the boys discover their father is part of the Culper Spy Ring. They decide to fulfill their father’s mission of getting a secret message to General George Washington, a trip filled with danger and intrigue. The series continues into 1778 with Submarines, Secrets & A Daring Rescue, in which the twins help transport gunpowder to the patriots, man one of the first submarines, and attempt to rescue one of their older brothers from prison. In book 3, Links to Liberty, John and Ambrose help defend the Great Chain that stretched across the Hudson River at West Point, blocking British war ships in 1779.

Now it is 1780, and John and Ambrose are seventeen-year-olds. Ambrose is training to join the dragoons,
while John is studying at Yale to become a preacher. Both become involved when Benedict Arnold, the hero who captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and was wounded in the 1777 Battle of Saratoga, traitorously tries to give his present command post, West Point, to the British through their master spy, Major John André.

Skead has done an excellent job of integrating his fictitious characters among a host of historical ones that young readers should know.  Especially now, when the nation is celebrating its 250^th year, this series helps readers understand both the tragedy and triumph events that shaped America. Well grounded in real events and peopled with real people, including Patriots George Washington and Benjamin Tallmadge, and those on the other side, including Major John Andre, Benedict Arnold and his young wife, Peggy, young readers are encouraged to enhance their understanding through the historical letters and biographical information in the back of the book. There are also discussion questions and a glossary. Additional teacher materials are available on his website.

The book ends with hints that a fifth book will further explore the role of the Culper Spy Ring, especially Agent 355, a mysterious woman who lived in New York and may have played a significant role in gathering information for the Patriots.  

Robert Skead lives in Wyckoff, NJ, and frequently visits classrooms to visit with his readers. You can learn more about him and his books at his website.