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.

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.