The Black Place: Two Seasonsphotographs by Walter W. Nelson,essay by Douglas Preston108 pages, clothbound: $45. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2014 In the 1930s, while driving through northwest New Mexico, artist Georgia O’Keeffe stumbled upon a remote, uninhabited landscape she dubbed “The Black Place” – tall hills of layered sediment, coated in brown and black […]
New Mexico
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Two-wheel revolution in Gallup
Can a bunch of trails and bikes transform this down-and-out New Mexico town?
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Touring Indian Country via footrace
How to run in a reservation race that’s both sport and cultural tradition.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Navajo Nation bets on coal
A tribe digs into a dying industry.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Can a grazing buyout program ease life for wolves and ranchers?
A fledgling effort in New Mexico’s ‘Yellowstone of the South.’
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
The fignificent fig man
Lloyd Kreitzer’s journey as New Mexico’s premier fig grower.
Posted inGoat
Discovery: Good ol’ tallgrass was formed by good ol’ bacteria
It’s always tempting to reflect on how wonderful the West used to be. You know what I mean: Conservationists and Natives lament that the first invasions by white settlers wrecked everything, and ranchers and loggers long for a return to the era before 750-page environmental-impact statements. Who among us hasn’t conjured up wistful images of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The long journey of the Gila trout
Destructive New Mexico fires may have a silver lining for a threatened fish.
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
New Mexico’s groundwater protections may take a hit
The state has long been a leader in this area – is that about to change?
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
A new Apache homeland in New Mexico?
An Okie Apache fights his kin to build a casino and bring his people home.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
A review of Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait
Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait photographs by Craig Varjabedian, essays by Marin Sardy, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and Hampton Sides, 140 pages, hardcover: $50, University of New Mexico Press, 2012. Contemporary landscape photography often looks too pristine and over-saturated to feel authentic. But Craig Varjabedian’s monochromatic images of New Mexico transcend that. In place of […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The Latest: A New Mexico county is first in the nation to ban fracking
BackstoryThe tiny town of Pavillion, Wyo., sits in the middle of the state’s gas patch, and in the midst of the heated national debate over the risks hydraulic fracturing poses to water quality. Residents complained about well water turning brown after drillers fracked nearby gas wells. In 2011, the EPA released a draft report linking […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Hispanic leaders spearheaded the Río Grande del Norte National Monument
In early April, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, R, began pushing a bill that would limit presidential authority to designate new national monuments by forcing proposals to undergo environmental review first. The draft law is among a slew of similar measures House Republicans are working on in response to Obama’s March 25 creation of five new […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Beatification of a sinner: a review of The Soledad Crucifixion
The Soledad CrucifixionNancy Wood336 pages, paperback: $21.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In Nancy Wood’s newest novel, The Soledad Crucifixion, we find ourselves in Camposanto in the Territory of New Mexico, in the year 1897. Lorenzo Soledad has just been nailed to a cross. “On this, the last day of his life, the priest found […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The soul in Suite 100: A ghost story
I am from, as they say, an “old” New Mexico Anglo family. I did not grow up in New Mexico, but have always thought myself from there — tied to the place by blood and property and predilection, and by the way the smell of sagebrush and cast of light remind me that I am […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
The great New Mexican juniper massacre
385,000 years: That’s the estimated collective age of old, live junipers illegally cut for firewood between July 2010 and November 2011 on Bureau of Land Management land in northern and central New Mexico. Hardest hit have been the surreally beautiful badlands west of the small town of Cuba, now stippled with freshly sawed tree stumps, […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Troubled Taos, torn apart by a battle over historic Hispano land grants
Taos, New Mexico On a cloudless June day, Ernest Romero and I are parked on a ridge top in front of a home that gazes out over scenic northern New Mexico. The 2,200-square-foot adobe sits on three acres of piñon forest and is quintessentially Southwestern, with sand-colored walls complemented by sky-blue trim, wooden beams and […]
Posted inWotr
Fire on the mountain
I have grown accustomed to stinging eyes, an itchy nose and a raw throat. Smoke is always heavy in the air, especially in the morning after cool nights have pushed it down to the deepest part of the Gila River Valley, where I live. Despite all this, I have to confess that I take some […]
Posted inGoat
Carrots for conservation
A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
County kickbacks
Though Westerners tend to idealize frontier independence, rural county governments often rely on Uncle Sam. Federal payment programs meant to compensate counties for lost cash from tax-exempt public lands distributed about $900 million nationwide in 2009. One of these programs — the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) — was barely renewed in […]