​We sat down with Isabel Trujillo in her cozy home on Valentine’s Day. To say that Isabel is still beautiful in her 80’s is an understatement. Isabel is radiant. Her quick smile and warm eyes immediately put you at ease. Perhaps because it was the day of love, her thoughts went to how she and her husband Henry met. She shared some memories of coming of age in Espanola.
 
When you don’t have a car and you need to get somewhere fast, you run. That’s what Ernest Victor Romero did when his wife Ernestine Montoya was is labor; He ran from Guachupangue to Espanola to get Dr. Nesbit to come and deliver little Isabel.  She grew up an only child playing happily within her large extended family.

Katie Weeks​
Audubon New Mexico

​This past year has given us new relationships with the spaces we live in, and a greater appreciation for the nearby nature of backyards and urban streets. Like so many of us, I have spent more time at home than ever before, finding new ways to entertain and occupy my brain while honoring the state’s Stay At Home orders. Rather than stopping off at water treatment plants after work, or travelling to new trails on the weekends, my birding habit has shifted considerably to the small half-mile radius around my home.

In October, New Mexico made birding headlines (that’s a thing, I promise) with the arrival of a hyper-rare European Golden Plover. The small wading bird made national news as a state first, and only record west of Delaware. Scores of birders trekked out to rural Northern New Mexico and the Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge to stalk the muddy ponds in hopes of glimpsing this very lost bird.

Under normal circumstances, I would have considered this a day trip and made the three hour drive for a once in a lifetime opportunity. But the unease of straying so far from home, as well as the intimidation at the logistics of toting a six week old newborn got the better of me. Instead, I packed my binoculars in the stroller and took (yet another) walk around the neighborhood. The continuing challenges of the pandemic mean big trips to view migration might not be in the cards right now, but it also gives us the opportunity to slow down and “get to know our neighbors” by developing deep knowledge of the more common birds seen on a daily basis.

An inquiring raven settles into a thermal overhead, circling, circling, circling closer to see what has settled into one of the metal folding chairs on Elk Ridge. From the western rim of the box canyon, an eastern sun continues to rise on this 25-degree winter day as it allows the raven to cast its shadow on the sandy precipice of the canyon’s northern rim. The raven glides effortlessly as its shadow dances, appearing and disappearing across the scratches of erosion on the barranca. These are the drainages, the paths of fallen rain, the funnels to the arroyo below. These are the evidence of the times before the rain evaporated prior to reaching the earth.

Traces of snow remain on north slopes or on the north side of rocks and trees. It slowly gives up its moisture not to the thirsty ground but to the kiln dry air. The evidence is the crystalline surface of the snow. It is evaporating.

The raven, apparently satisfied, departs to the west perhaps on his way to work at the butcher’s field of carcasses and bones in El Rito. Breakfast this morning, and then possibly lunch at Bode’s dumpster farther west and north in Abiquiu. There’s plenty to see and plenty of thermals to ride along the way.