San Augustine Pass
“At last the pavement merged into a new four-lane highway that soon was lifting in a long, easy curve into San Augustine Pass. Sarah spared as much attention as she dared to the stone spires and cliffs that formed the Organ Mountains. There were breathtaking heights, and sheer drops from summits that looked razor-narrow. Even now Sarah felt the fascination that had led her as a ten-year-old girl to try and climb to the top of those majestic rocks.
She reached the top of the pass. In moments the car swept around a curve and downward, the road dropping almost frighteningly, a curving descent into a landscape starkly grand. Far ahead there were other mountains, a distance-blued line. But below lay a desert basin running south and north. This was the famous Jornada del Muerto, fifty miles wide, a hundred miles in length, bordered by the San Andres Mountains and the Oscuros on the eat, the Rio Grande to the west.
At the foot of the pass sprawled the little town of Organ, much as Sarah had remembered it—small, run-down, a cluster of buildings passed by the fast traffic in moments.”
Eva Zumwalt
When the Heart Remembers
Doubleday & Company, 1984
“At last the pavement merged into a new four-lane highway that soon was lifting in a long, easy curve into San Augustine Pass. . . .”