Silver City Stop

Hi everybody, writing today from the library in Silver City, NM, the second town that the trail (or this version of it anyway) goes straight through I'll probably be blowing through here much like I did in the previous town of Lordsburg before taking some time of at the trail angel Doc Campell's place in a few days.
The route so far has been much different from what I am used to, with longer flat stretches, less water, and more open country . There has been a fair amount of road walking, either paved or otherwise, but the landscape has been getting more diverse over the last few days. Whereas before there was only desert and scub, there are now the occasional live oak and pine tree, more akin to the hills in southern California. The fauna has been rather sparse, discounting the ubiquitous cattle (and their even more everpresent droppings--just howe long does it take for those things to decompose out here?), but there have been some pronghorn antelope sightings, a small group of javelinas, some wild horses, an elk, many hares and quail, and always hawks overhead.
Much more interesting are the other hikers I have met out here; there seem to only be a few of us so far, and I feel like I have met most of them already. I ran into Shroomer and Why Not a few days back over the corpse of a recently deceased cow. The strange(r) part of this is that I had met them before on the PCT in 2010. I suppose its not that unheard of, given the small size of the thru hiking community and all, but given the setting (out in the absolute middle of nowhere, over a rotting ungulant) it was a tad surreal. I have also caught up with Eleanor, a 2011 PCT who is out here by herself with a supposed finish date sometime in early August. Given that I don't particularly feel like running the enitre way, she'll probably outdistance me soon, but it is nice to know there is someone else out ahead as well. That being said, we plan on hiking together for the next few days up the Gila River canyon, which is apparently a challenging but rewarding bit.
We'll see what the next few weeks bring, I'm just kinda winging it this time out. I hope to slow down before hitting the San Juan Mts in Colorado, but we all know how that usually turns out for me. Anyway, talk to you later!