Contemplating Fire

It is the third time in four days that a single raindrop has fallen on my skin, a reminder of why I am here, sitting in the shade of a living ponderosa pine, in the Jemez Mountains in Bandelier National Monument. I am a lookout, a sky watcher, secretly praying for rain in a landscape of dried grass and shriveled flowers. This land is dusty, dry, parched, splitting at the seams, splattered black with ashen trunks and scorched limbs.  I wonder what on earth is providing sustenance for hummingbirds? The air is thick, acrid and stings my lungs with each life giving breath. What movie-set have I stumbled onto? I want rain.  

The ponderosa pine providing my comfort has a laminated 8 1/2 by 11 sign stapled to its bark. The irony of the message stands out like bold letters printed on a huge signboard, “Area Closed” Due to extreme fire danger. All Bandelier trails and backcountry are closed to entry. Effective 8:00 am June24th.”

The morning the sign was posted  I hiked to the top of Cerro Grande, making sure people were compliant with the message. They were. People stayed away, keeping the forest safe from accidental ignition. The closure would be lifted when monsoons arrived. Briefly refraining from hiking in the tinderbox landscape was a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the major inconvenience of inadvertently introducing catastrophic fire to this already stressed ecosystem.  

In the weeks before the closure, I hiked in steeped walled canyons, along broad mesas, up peaks and across meadows in Bandelier National Monument.  With each twist in the trail and open vista, I became reacquainted with a landscape first introduced to me on a cross-country road trip many years ago.

It was back then that I thumbed the pages of a tattered southwest hiking guide and stumbled upon a place called Bandelier National Monument. The hiking sounded good and I was eager to explore.

I fell in love with the landscape of Bandelier on that first visit. The afternoon of my arrival I hiked out of Frijoles Canyon and roamed the mesa top until I reached the breath of a canyon called Alamo. I sat under a large pinon tree, along the edge of the canyon, devouring pine seeds. It was a banner year for pinon seed production. I got my fill. Someday I will return, I mused, my eyes bathed in a palette of sienna, pink, ochre, buckskin, green and blue shading the canyon, sky, mesa and mountains.

In August of 1997, I returned to Bandelier and stayed, my love affair with color, light and beauty continues fourteen years later and strengthens with each step placed upon this land. I share my passion for this sacred ground while giving tours and programs, as an interpretive ranger, to countless people from all over the world.

Over the years, I have observed the changing climate and landscape of Bandelier.  In the first summer of my arrival rain fell, the verdant land became irresistible to those who sip nectar. Broadtailed and black-chinned hummingbirds zipped from blossom to blossom lapping up sweetness. In subsequent years, summers arrived with record-breaking heat and diminished rainfall.

Weather graphs illustrate the hottest and driest summers on record and winters lacking significant snowfall. Pinon and ponderosa pines fail without moisture. Native bark and twig beetles thrive on the weakened trees eating away what little life is left.  Only pinon skeletons remain, leaving juniper to shoulder the burden of green in a land of terra cotta cliffs.

I grieve the loss of the pines and pinon jays that followed suit.  Intellectually, I know weather patterns cycle, climates change and land rebounds. But this cycle is different, its scope broader, its effect strengthened by the impact of our behavior. I am in-part responsible for the loss of that which I love. This is a lot to ponder.

I continue to watch the sky. Through the haze of smoke, I see expanding blue.  The threat of rain recedes with the afternoon. I am stationed at the headwaters of Frijoles Creek ready to alert workers, in the canyon near Headquarters, of precipitation. I take my post seriously.  The Visitor Center and Frijoles Canyon has been closed to the public for three weeks.  Rain has become a threat.

A small storm can drop enough moisture to cause a flash flood. There is nothing to hold back the water. The land above headquarters is charred. There is no vegetation to keep the soil in place. Rainfall will bring logs and mud and ash slurry of crashing down Frijoles Creek in the wake of the Las Conchas Fire. On the blustery afternoon of June 26^th. at approximately one o’clock, a tree fell on a powerline near a private ranch in the Jemez Mountains along state road  igniting a blaze, exploding into a funnel of wind and flames, blasting upwards and out, rapidly devouring all in its path.

On Sunday, June 26^th, I shared a lazy day with a friend in Santa Fe. At 3 pm we stepped out of the house, our arms laden with sliced watermelon and cold beverages, treats to share at an afternoon party. “Hey I think the Pacheco Canyon fire blew up, the air is so smoky.” It took a few moments to get our bearings and realize this fire was new. This fire was different. My friend exclaimed, “ I think Bandelier is on fire.” “No, I think it is a bit west of the Monument” “Are you sure?  I think we should drive up and get your things.” I live, or should I say lived in the historic district of Frijoles Canyon near Park Headquarters. “No I don’t think we need to drive up. Someone from the Park will call if there is a problem.” Two and a half hours later I got that call. “Have you heard, we are officially evacuated.”  “What?”

That evening some friends and I grabbed a few important things from my cabin. It was not until we were driving out of the Park did I see the gravity of the situation. Orange flames mixed with a black and purple sky. Already bruised I thought. Maybe an hour or two before headquarters is gone. ”This is crazy. Lets get out of here.” It was hard to sleep that night wondering how life would be changed in the morning. Two of my co-workers had already lost their homes that afternoon to the fast and furious fire that would become the largest in New Mexico history. How much of Bandelier would be gone by sunrise?

When all was done, over 20,000 acres of Bandelier’s 33,000 acres were affected by the Las Conchas Fire. Some areas scorched to mineral soil and other areas lightly burned. Owing to the heroic efforts of Bandelier’s firefighters, the historic district stands, but not without threat.

Three out of fifteen miles of Frijoles Canyon, not consumed by flames, is now vulnerable to flash floods. A week after the fire ignited a decision was made to close the historic district. Bandelier employees were ousted from their offices and for others, like me, their homes; ousted from the canyon we love. Bridges have been removed, barriers and sand bags have been placed; Headquarters is at the mercy of rain.  I sit patiently waiting for rain to return this brown land back to green.

Full length:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mju9oYwI36c&feature=youtu.be

closeup of the vortex:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJOeVF7eQg

Spring Comes to Frijoles Canyon

It is Spring in Frijoles Canyon. Canyon Towhees are feeding their young nestled snug in a nest outside the office and countless other avian pairs are building homes and laying eggs. The canyon is full of life. Narrowleaf Cottonwoods have burst their buds offering a shade of green heralding the season. It is time to be awake, to be alive, time to arise from slumber.

This morning on my guided hike I nearly stepped on, but managed to barely step over, a large Bullsnake blending perfectly with winter grasses and autumn’s shed leaves. Perfect camouflage, I thought, as my heart pounded in my chest and as my eyes provided the visual information for my brain to fire neurons allowing my body to swiftly leap away from the snake. I needed a moment to determine that I was not about to step on a Western Diamondback rattlesnake. The harmless Bullsnake was the first snake I had seen this season. Safe, I continued with my program.

Snakes are not the only creatures to rise from their winter naps. For the fifth consecutive season the historic district of Frijoles Canyon has been home to a female black bear. Last spring the small shaggy blonde bear emerged from her winter lodging with two cubs. This year with a coat of cinnamon, momma and the cubs roam the canyon in search of delectable ants, tender shoots, buds, and roots to grow fat upon. As spring progresses the bears will add berries and acorns and possibly an apple or two from the old orchard to their menu. Omnivorous in their dining habits the bears would relish a dinner of dear meat if the opportunity arose. This type of meal occurs by being in the right place at the right time and having a little help from “friends.” Swift and stealthy mountain lions routinely stalk and take down deer in the Monument. A mountain lion will eat its fill and then bury or cache the leftovers for later. With an exceptional sense of smell, bears often find what the cat has left behind.

I delight in the opportunity to watch the bears from a safe distance. The bears, snakes, mountain lions and all the creatures of Frijoles Canyon are a reminder of how wonderful it is to roam within this protected landscape. This week is National Park Week. A time to celebrate our national treasures as we wake to the beauty of Spring.

The Pine Bough Mystery

Why are all these pine boughs on the ground? Are the trees losing their needles?  Virginia, a local resident, hikes the Falls Trail to the Rio Grande every Sunday. On her outings she began to notice the path littered with the branch tips of ponderosa pines and junipers. We stopped to chat about mid-way down the trail. I told Virginia she was not the first visitor curious about this phenomenon. All week long adults and kids alike have been asking for an explanation. The other common question I have been asked is, “What is that animal with long ears that hops like a rabbit?” The answer to the latter question directly relates to Virginia' mystery . The animal responsible for the litter and strange appearance is a squirrel. With a back of charcoal gray, a bottle brush tail and two inch long tassel ears, long rear paws and strong hind legs, the Abert’s squirrel is readily distinguished from other squirrels.


There are nine sub-species of the tassel-eared squirrels in the Southwest. Their range extends from the mountainous Ponderosa pine forests of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and parts of Wyoming and north central Mexico. Subspecies of Sciurus aberti can be determined by cranial size, body weight and coloration. For example, S. aberti ferreus living in the foothills of Boulder Colorado has a jet black body and a vivid black topped tail while the tassel eared squirrel residing along the North rim of the Grand canyon, S. aberti kaibabensis, sports a tail the color of snow.

The nutritious pine cambium is one of the Abert’s squirrel’s primary food sources. Each subspecies has adapted to eating the inner bark or cambium of the ponderosa in the region where they live, finding the terpene composition from other pine populations unpalatable. Abert’s squirrels also dine on the ponderosa seeds and buds. Ponderosa pines begin producing seeds at about sixteen years and continue producing viable seeds until they are 350 years old. Each cone will produce about seventy-five seeds with an average mature tree producing two hundred cones in a good year. A single squirrel can feast its way through as many as seventy-five cones in a day.

Abert’s squirrels are active year-round. In autumn excess pine seeds along with acorns and fungi are cached for winter. When the snows are deep, the tassel-eared squirrel will spend much of its time confined to the crowns of the mature pines gorging on the cambium and sleeping in pine twig nests. In winter, it is common to see the ends of pine boughs, nipped by hungry squirrels, littering the trail.   

Transitions

Greater Sandhill Cranes

It is that time of transition when winter begins to lose a tight grip, the weather warms, snow melts and woodpeckers drum frantically at dawn staking out their piece of turf. Spring is right around the corner. After a day of bluffing late season snow I welcome the intensity of sunshine under the blue vastness of the New Mexico sky. This morning, as I ascend the trail out of Frijoles Canyon to an archeological site on the rim, I am anxious to trade my winter uniform to the lighter weight of summer. With each switchback climbed I listen for any sound of spring announced by the voice of birds. The morning does not let me down. A sound, so familiar, tumbles from the sky into the depths, out of the mouths of Greater Sandhill Cranes, to the canyon below. Cranes wintering by the thousands in the middle and lower Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico have begun their northerly migration.Over the course of a few weeks the massive birds, with wings spanning greater than six feet, fly over the Monument in large formations and numbers, en route to their breeding grounds in Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Montana.

 In the Bandelier wilderness there is a large carving of a crane pecked into stone at the edge of a broad canyon. With a view all the way to the Rio Grande this spot is a perfect place to watch the flight of birds. Each time I make the trek to see this petroglyph I imagine the ancient people of Bandelier watching the cranes as I do today. Someone, long ago, thought it important enough to place this bird forever in stone. It is a simple and beautiful way to mark the season.

Crane petroglyph in Bandelier NM

It's Groundhog Day

Western Diamondback finishing a meal.

At sunrise, the prognosticator, Punsxsutawney Phil, peeked above his burrow and did not see his shadow. Spring is on the way, right? This morning I woke up to a temperature of -17F in Frijoles Canyon. Can you really depend on a groundhog?

It is not typical for the temperature to plunge to negative double digits in Frijoles Canyon but it does happen on occasion. Bandelier National Monument spans an elevation from roughly 5000 feet to just shy of 10,000 feet. Wayward  winter visitors expecting balmy weather and Saguaro cactus immediately realize they took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. And if those same visitors are hoping for a glimpse of an iconic western diamondback rattlesnake they need to stick around for a few more months until things warm up a bit.

Bandelier National Monument offers homes to many species of plants and animals, each adapted to their own way of coping with winter. When the weather turns cold in autumn, resident rattlesnakes den up, hibernate and remain inactive until the spring sun warms the earth.

I will never forget my encounter with just such a snake last spring. It was late May when I came upon a large western diamonback rattlesnake near Juniper Campground. A few visitors were getting uncomfortably close to the snake attempting to cross the road. Park ranger Sally King suggested they give the rattlesnake a wide berth and allow it to move away from the road. They did and it did. But not in the direction it was originally headed. The visitors departed after the snake moved into the brush. Sally shot a few pictures as the rattler slithered back onto the pavement. “Seems like that snake is intent on getting to the other side of the road,” Sally remarked just before she left the area. “Yeah maybe,” I replied thoughtlessly.

I left the area to talk to a few folks looking for a trailhead. Afterwards the campground host approached me to tell me that he had a report of a big rattlesnake near the campground. “Oh yeah, it was near the road, crossed over I think.” The host suggested that it was probably hunting rabbits. Just then I caught sight of movement under a juniper tree. I saw a rabbit and then a snake. The rattlesnake headed straight for the rabbit. The rabbit had already succumbed to snake venom. The rattlesnake was ready for its meal. The visitors who had been observing the snake earlier had inadvertently blocked the snake from its prey. I watched spellbound as the snake released its jaw and slowly began positioning and swallowing the rabbit. It took an hour for the snake to fully ingest its meal. I stood mesmerized until there was nothing but rabbit legs poking out from snake’s mouth, reminiscent of overgrown furry fangs.

If Phil is right, it won’t be long before Spring and the opportunity to witness snakes and other creatures waking from their winter slumber. When visitors ask, “Do you have snakes around here”; I smile remembering those “furry fangs” and say, “oh yes”. If you are patient and observant or maybe just plain old lucky you might just witness something quite amazing. Come see for yourself.

The Stone House

CCC Cabin

The other evening, when leaving the Visitor Center, a young couple hit me with a barrage of rapid- fire questions. “Does anyone live back there?” “Is it creepy?” “Do you ever get visitors, you know like family?”

I live in a house made of stone. The walls and floor of my home are made of igneous rock that flowed from the Jemez Volcano more than a million years ago. The volcanic eruption created the landscape on which my humble dwelling was built. Years after the eruption, young men with pick axes and crosscut saws, earning a dollar a day, toiled under the scorching New Mexican sun, quarrying slabs of stone to be cut into thick blocks that would make the walls of my house as well as thirty other structures in Frijoles Canyon that now comprise the Bandelier Historic District. These buildings, made of compressed volcanic ash (tuff) walls and basalt floors, serve as offices, visitor facilities, employee residences, an entrance kiosk and fire tower. We owe this good work to the Emergency Conservation Work Act of 1933, which provided funding and meaningful employment to thousands of jobless young men enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC).

CCC enrollees cutting stone

The men who cut the rock, also cut down timber, juniper, ponderosa and pinon pine, creating wood ceilings with elaborate woodworking detail and design. The architectural style, Pueblo Revival, was chosen to blend with the environment and the structures of local culture. There is both pride and privilege to working and living in the largest assemblage of CCC buildings in the National Park Service. Yet as with any collection of old buildings there are problems, drafty doors and windows, leaky roofs and mice who would rather live indoors than out. Yet the opportunity to be fully immersed in this part of American history is rewarding, mice and all. Yes, I have had visitors and none thought my home was “creepy.”

Moonlight Snowshoe

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Under the light of a waxing gibbous moon, twenty people strapped on their snowshoes in preparation for a hike winding along the upper reaches of Frijoles Canyon. This was the first moonlight event offered in Bandelier National Monument this winter. As we walked into the night the moon played hide and seek behind the limbs of aspen, Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir and ponderosa pines. One minute bathed in light, the next in shadow, we marched along content in our thoughts and happy to be surrounded by our companions. Most of us never take the time or have an opportunity to explore the forest at night, especially in winter when temperatures reach freezing and our thoughts are more inclined to imagine warm fires and hot cocoa. For those willing to surrender to the chill of evening air the rewards can be great.

Bandelier Moon

The Jemez Mountains are home to a healthy population of elk. As winter snow piles deep in the highest elevations of the Monument, elk begin to move down to regions of greater food availability. Simply put, less snow cover allows these animals access to more food. It is not uncommon to see herds swell to as many as fifty individuals where forage is abundant.

As we trekked along our route we listened and watched for elk, identified constellations and enjoyed the simplicity of non-motorized locomotion. At the end of our hike we were satisfied with time well spent. Next month in the light of a Bandelier moon I invite you to share in a similar adventure. Please contact the Visitor Center for details, 505 672-3861 ext. 517.

Skiing the Bandelier Nordic Trails

Solitude in the Pines

For anyone seeking quiet and solitude I recommend visiting Bandelier in winter. Winter at the Monument provides opportunity to marvel at deep blue skies while traversing high elevation trails by skis or snowshoes. Bandelier’s Nordic Ski Trails wind through aspen, fir, spruce and pine, each species offering a visual delight of textured bark and heady fragrance.

After a snowfall I delight in the opportunity to hit the trail. Each stride of my skis fractures the stillness with the sound of crunching snow, adding punctuation to a landscape bathed in silence, where only an occasional bird provides afternoon company. I look for chickadees, red crossbills, stellar jays and nuthatches busy in their task of procuring food. I admire the tiny chickadees' ability to adapt to the heat of summer and chill of winter with equal measure. Crossbills work steadily prying open cones for treasured seeds. In the distance the “yank, yank “call of the nuthatch reminds me a of tiny tinhorn. Bandelier's high elevation trails are a reminder of diversity in a world filled with simple beauty.