I flew from LGA to Denver.
I found the tornado shelter sign
in the women’s bathroom disarming.

Then flew from Denver to Albuquerque,
and then drove 5 hours south and west.
First scorched earth – 98 degrees
soft hills and naked rock rising like a dead sea,
140 miles to Truth or Consequences

(the town was founded by Bob Barker)
where I bought a small saw and a straw hat at Walmart
(which wasn’t there 19 years ago
when I spent my birthday in
a tatty wooden tub containing
a hot spring the Rio Grande).

Then I turned the fancy little Subaru Outback
towards the west, and drove up and up and up
through the JEWELS of alpine desert mountains
(an inland island ecology,
the largest of which are in the Gila,
collectively known as the Sky Island Region)
on curvacious roads at 15 MPH

and at a brief apex,
the temperature dropped to 80 degrees
but then I wound back down and down,
until I was in a high valley of grasses and chollo in bloom

past an enormous open pit copper mine, the Santa Rita

to Silver City, N.M.
“Gateway to the Gila,”
well over 5,000 feet up, in the Chihuahuan desert

Fires sparked by lightning 2 weeks ago in the Gila have left the air in this high valley smokey, evenly hazy and taupe. Over 300 square miles had burned as of this morning. This is healthy, not a tragedy, right? But it’s  stressful for all the animals, esp the human ones. 1,200 fire fighters are in there trying to contain or squelch bits of the rampage. A lot of the park roads are closed, as is the Gila Cliff Dwellings Monument. Bummer. In tourist season, this is a blow, especially with the geographically impaired (myself included), for whom it’s easy to surmise that the state is on fire or at least at risk of smoke inhalation. And people have been evacuated from towns. What is happening with the cattle who graze nearby?

I’ll be here for a 2 week residency researching the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program,  supported by ISEA and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Instigated by a gracious talented and expert host: Michael Berman.

I don’t really know how to give some simple context for this project. I reach points where I can, then slip back into the murk of positions, territories, symbolism, and overlapping realities. And I am totally new to this: to facing issues surrounding public land rights, private land rights, shifting land rights, ideas and ideals about wilderness, and the politics and on-the-ground situation of this (or any) wolf reintroduction program.

The players: “enviros,” conservationists (some make a distinction, the former being extremist the latter being ecosystem people), cattle ranchers, government agents, non-profits, and politicians.