Winter Solstice

Tyuonyi Village Sunrise

Winter and Bandelier National Monument will always be linked in my psyche. My first winter season at the Monument was extraordinary. I recall seeing more stars in the New Mexico sky than I had ever witnessed in my entire life and even more amazing than the star gazing was watching winter solstice sunrise.

The winter solstice is always a special time at Bandelier National Monument. Every year Ranger Chris Judson leads an early morning walk to the Ancestral Pueblo village of Tyuonyi. Participants watch as the first rays of winter sun spill directly into the ancient village. I marvel at the perfect alignment of the sun’s ray and village entryway. The Ancestral Pueblo were a farming culture. They understood the relationship between lengthening daylight and their survival. In this land where the growing season does not leave room for error it is important to know the progress of the season. Was this village intentionally oriented to serve as a calendar, marking the return of longer days? I pondered this thought as I celebrated sunrise along with the others who shivered in the cold beside me while listening to Chris honor Pueblo culture with a traditional poem. We may never have a definite answer to this question, but we were all are curious enough to stand witness on that special morning.

This year solstice was ushered in with a full lunar eclipse. The two events have not coincided since 1638.  What did the farming people of the southwest think, three hundred and seventy- two years ago, as they watched the full moon disappear in complete shadow on the longest day of the year?

This year the eclipse began 11:30 pm MST and finished three and a half hours later. The day of the eclipse several Bandelier visitors asked me whether we were having an eclipse-watching program. I smiled and told them I would be sleeping during the event. But would I? It will be 94 years before another full lunar eclipse will occur on the winter solstice. Would I really choose sleep through a once in lifetime experience? Probably not. The more I thought about the eclipse the more my sense of wonder grew. The eclipse would be a reminder of our place and relationship between sun and moon. I did get up that night. It was a beautiful show.

My Road To Becoming A Ranger

Bandelier National Monument

As a young person I had ambitions of becoming a field biologist. I was a kid who devoured books about animals, daydreamed about  cheetahs on the African plains and imagined a sky black with passenger pigeons.  My hunger for all things natural was nourished by my grade-school science teacher, Russ Warner. Mr. Warner knew exactly how to inspire uppity pre-teen students. He took us on field trips, intrigued us with gee-whiz science experiments and challenged us to understand our connection and impact on the natural world. I was sure I would grow up to become an ornithologist or maybe a botanist studying the birds and plants in some far-away corner of the world.

However, as fate would have it an opportunity to work as a seasonal park ranger arose when I was a senior at Rutgers University studying natural resource conservation. I thought, perhaps being a ranger might be fun for a summer or two. So way back in 1980 I got my feet wet both figuratively and literally as an interpretive ranger leading canoe tours and doing informal presentations for the newly established Upper Delaware Wild and Scenic River.

I spent most of my days in a kiosk along the banks of the Delaware River. Visitors, few and far between, were mostly fisherman and boaters. During those lazy days of summer I had ample time to get to know the plants and birds of the region further igniting my desire to be a biologist. But one thing led to another and soon after graduation I found myself working as an environmental educator. It was great fun.

While honing my skills as a naturalist I still had a nagging desire to be a field biologist. A little voice in my head said, “Move West.” So I did and for the next ten years I made my living doing field biology. I worked on vast arctic tundra, in dense spruce forest, mucky bogs, rugged seacoast and islands in the wilds of Alaska, I traversed hillsides of old-growth Ponderosa Pine in western Montana, wandered through northern Idaho’s towering cedar-hemlock forest and became mindful of cactus in the spiny sun-baked desert of southern Arizona. Season after season in the field afforded me the opportunity to study, observe and really get to know the places where I lived and worked. I was living out my dream. Yet something was missing. I had no outlet for sharing my knowledge and experience. The best way I knew how to convey my passion for the land was as an interpreter. And so I returned to work, first as a ranger in Apostle Islands and later to cruise Alaska’s Marine Highway aboard the SS Kennicott in the resource-rich Tongass National Forest. The intimacy with landscape that I had come to know as a biologist transferred effortlessly to natural history interpretation.

Perhaps, the greatest gift of my career was realizing that landscapes and cultures are intertwined. Cultures are defined by landscapes and landscapes, in turn, are impacted by culture. I cannot interpret one without talking about the other. This truth, first revealed when living and studying shorebirds along the Arctic Coast in Cape Krusenstern National Monument, has influenced the way I interpret natural and cultural history.

During those summers living in tent along the beach ridges of Cape Krusenstern I befriended Inupiat elders who still lived in traditional subsistence camps. Each camp was adorned with a wooden fish rack laden with the bounty of the sea drying under the arctic sun; food that would feed the bellies of humans and sled dogs year around. The fish, nets and racks defined the Inupiat culture.

My encounters with the Inupiat provided insight and sensitivity for interpreting all cultures. Today, I spend my days interpreting the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo who once lived in Bandelier National Monument. New Mexico may be a long way from Arctic Alaska, but all people, past or present, north or the south depend upon the land for their survival.