It’s been 20 years since Laura Paskus worked at High Country News, first as an intern and later as a staff writer and editor. “I still find meaning in the work,” said Paskus, who has covered the environment in New Mexico for a long list of print, online, radio and TV outlets. “But right now, it’s easy to feel lost.”
She sometimes finds solace stepping into a stream or hiking in the mountains. But lately, she has sought the counsel of elders, including HCN board member emeritus, 85-year-old Luis Torres, who served on the board longer than anyone can remember. The following is drawn from two visits earlier this summer.
“I’m a hopeless optimist,” said Luis, after we devoured our chile-smothered plates at his favorite restaurant in Española, New Mexico.
That attitude, particularly in these times, is a testament to his tenacity and generosity of spirit — and to everything he has witnessed in more than eight decades of life in northern New Mexico.
The youngest of eight sons, Luis grew up on a ranch near Black Lake. The ranch sat at a high elevation south of Angel Fire, and it was rugged and cold even in midsummer. But the small disability pension Luis’ father received from his military service in World War I enabled him to buy a pickup truck, a rarity in rural New Mexico in the 1940s and ’50s.
Luis recalls his father helping neighbors or driving for hours to Raton to ask the school board to send a teacher to the community. An unofficial alcalde, his father negotiated for rural road repairs and fought to bring electricity to the community, a place so remote it didn’t even have a village.
“I eat, drink and sleep community involvement, and that, I got from my father,” said Luis, who later worked for Community Action Agency, the American Friends Service Committee and the Southwest Research and Information Center on issues related to land, water and community.
His family also grazed about 60 head of cattle in the surrounding mountains, and Luis would often rise early, saddle up and follow his father along the creek behind their house.
“In this creek, there was a riparian area with a lot of willows in it,” he recalled later at his house. “When you went through that little area early in the morning, the birds were singing so loud that my dad would turn around — he’d be in front on his horse, and I’d be in back on my horse — he’d turn around like that and look at me and grin and cover his ears.” Luis laughed.
“I never hear the birds sing like that anymore,” he said, becoming serious. He pointed to his porch. “Now, I see a hummingbird come through my feeders out there and I run out, trying just to admire it.” There might be a few magpies around the yard, but most of the birds are gone, he said.
The news coming out of Washington, D.C., can be just as bleak, but Luis believes that people will step up in time to steer the country toward something better. “In turning it around, people will be stimulated to think in very progressive ways, because, the mess this guy (President Donald Trump) has made, we won’t be able to fix it in a couple of years,” he said.
“The environment responds…”
And the genius of democracy, he said, is that answers will come from el oro del barrio, the gold of the community.
He finds particular hope in young people. Recently, while visiting a nearby mesa with a group of students, he found himself remembering his father’s delight at the deafening bird song more than 70 years ago. He choked up.
“I was a little bit embarrassed,” he said. “These poor little 16-, 18-year-olds, they didn’t know what to do, watching an 85-year-old man crying in front of them. But such is how it is.”
He hopes, at least, that trips like these make an impression. Those shy kids might be the ones to come up with new ideas that challenge society’s acceptance of biodiversity losses, injustice and environmental degradation. They could be the ones who fight to give the land, the birds, a chance to come back.
“The environment responds, you know?” he said. “You treat a piece of land well, and boy, within a very short period of time, it’s saying, ‘Shit, yeah, well, let’s make this place go,’ you know?
“Answers come from the darndest places,” Luis said. We just have to stop following the most powerful people — and listen to one another.
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This article appeared in the September 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “After 85 years, Luis Torres stands strong – and optimistic.”
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