~Jessica Rath

​​Got ya – you probably thought of chile. But that’s not what I mean, the topic of this article is: grapes. The grapes used for wine-making.

Did you know that the first wine-making grapes in the U.S. were grown in New Mexico, not in California? And did you know that the initial reason for producing wine was the Catholic Church? When the Spanish colonists settled in the Americas, including what is now New Mexico, several Catholic religious orders built churches and established missions so they could convert the indigenous populations. Franciscan monks followed the colonists to the upper Rio Grande valleys and to Santa Fe which in 1610 became the capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, a province of New Spain. The monks had to celebrate a daily mass, and for the sacrament of the Holy Communion they needed wine – which had spent many  months on galleys coming across from Spain, then overland to Mexico City, then from there via trade routes up to the Santa Fe province.  The wine was shipped in caskets with lead tops, which was probably poisonous; or it was shipped in goatskins, and by the time it arrived it was probably vinegar. So, the monks used choke cherries for making early wine. 
 
The Spanish King had forbidden the exportation of grape vines because he was  concerned that the New World would take over wine making. But some monks ignored this edict and smuggled some vines into what is now New Mexico, started to cultivate the stock, and soon produced their own wine – with a variety of grapes that is known as the Mission Grape and is still used today.

I learned all this and much more when I visited Stan Bader, owner of Las Parras de Abiquiú,  a five-and-a-half acres organic vineyard. “Las Parras” is Spanish for grapevines, the perfect name for this gorgeous property. I wanted to learn more about grape growing and wine making, and I couldn’t have come to a better person. Stan’s obvious love for and extensive experience with this topic make him a veritable treasure trove when it comes to anything related to grapes. 

Officially, he’s retired. In  1996/97 New Mexico’s department of Agriculture  was trying to encourage the growing of grapes, to boost the  industry, and Stan thought this might be an interesting thing to do  after retirement, as it would allow him to spend a lot of time outdoors.
 
“In 1996 we put our first grapes in and it has been a learning process ever since”, Stan told me. “I put in 200 Cabernet Franc grapes, and supposedly they’re the hardier grapes for cold weather. After one year they grew fantastic, 20-foot long vines. But when we came back next spring and started to prune, we found that they were literally dead. All the way back to the root. I went to an education conference in Albuquerque, and I was asking an old-timer what was the cause, why did this happen. He said, ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to you!’ WHAT? ‘Well’, he said, ‘you tear those out and put something in that will grow’. So that’s what we did. We took everything out, and kept six plants for 10 years, but they were never able to produce except for a couple of years. The roots never died, but the top does.”
 
I wanted to know WHY these grapes didn’t do well, and what other varieties would be more successful?
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 “The grapes used for Cabernet Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and other French wines just don’t do well here”, Stan explained. “Partly because of the cold, but also because of desiccation. We have no way to block the cold spring wind that comes down the Chama River, and that wind has extremely low humidity. The vines get dried out. We learned over time that if you keep their feet wet, if you keep the root zone wet over the winter, then the bud that’s produced up on the vine can survive.” 

“You can take a razor blade and cut across a bud – that will expose the primary, secondary, third, and sometimes even the fourth bud. You’ll see that the primary bud has died, it is brown. But the secondary isn’t. It’s green. It will take the place of the primary. BUT – it’s only half as productive as the first one. And if you lose THAT one, you’re looking at the third one, and that one is there to keep the plant alive and survive that year, but  you have to wait for other years to get fruit. We’ve had situations in the 20-plus years that I’ve been growing grapes here that everything, particularly the white grapes, died. And we had to start all over again. The roots are fine, and the little vines from the ground up which are pencil-size or a little bigger, they survive. In the spring the sap is starting to come up. You’ve already done some pruning, and if you can see drops of sap at the tips where you pruned, it means it’s coming alive, the roots are sending the moisture up. But if there’s a cold snap, if it’s in the 20s for a whole night or anything  longer than five hours,  that’s their death. If it’s under five hours  you might get them through.  The old trunks are too brittle. The moisture inside is mostly water, that water crystallizes, freezes, and then it expands,  but the brittle wood can’t, and it cracks. They can be 1/4-inch wide and go all the way to the ground. That kills the trunk, kills the arms, and you’ll have to take those out. The thin ones, pencil-size or a little larger, are more limber and the freezing doesn’t split them.”

 “A lot of the popular grapes which come from the Mediterranean area, from France, or from Germany, we can’t grow. But we can grow hybrids. Almost all my grapes are hybrids, except for Riesling: that’s a grape we can grow here. There’s a sweet version of Riesling, and there’s a dry version. They both grow here in New Mexico. Riesling is a popular wine here. While we have problems growing Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot here in the northern parts, we can grow other grapes, and we learned to make really good wines utilizing these grapes.”  

I had no idea that grapes are so sensitive but,  not everything works here in the valley, Stan says. Other places like  Velarde for example, at the mouth of the canyon of the Rio Grande, are much better for growing; people there can grow all kinds of grapes whereas Las Parras can’t. They can grow Riesling, Gewürztraminer, grapes for German wines.

“I say that I can tell people more about what NOT to do, than what to do. I learned the hard way. “

“I got into this because of my interest, as a kind of hobby. I ended up doing way more than I should have, my first 200 vines were a mistake, sort of – but other varieties, the hybrids, did well. Like Léon Millot, for example;  the French used it to color lighter wines because it has a dark skin for color. They use it to color wines like Pinot Noir which  doesn’t have a good dark color, but has great fruiting flavor. The addition of Léon Millot grapes gives the wine a robust color”.

For Stan, growing grapes is  a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. He warns though that it is  very difficult to make a profit.  Crop production isn’t all that robust, the vines just can’t produce like they do in California. Also, up here in northern New Mexico the grape vines native to the mediterranean regions (they’re called “vitis vinifera”, different from vinifera hybrids) don’t grow.  Wineries pay a premium price for those grapes whereas for the hybrids they don’t. And Stan’s vineyard is too small to have mechanical pickers, so the grapes have to be picked by hand. Plus, they have to be pruned, fertilized, watered, weeded, and if there are any pests, one has to spray. Luckily, here in the north pest control is very minimal, except for  powdery mildew  which can be controlled pretty easily with a food-grade mineral oil spray.

Las Parras is a certified organic, whole farm, but  the wineries don’t pay anything extra  for organic grapes. Most wineries don’t produce organic wines because all the grapes are mixed together. 

“On my five and a half  acres I’m doing well if I can get close to 20 tons”, Stan is telling me. “Last year we only got about half of that. For one, we had terrific winds in the spring, the whole time when they were in bud-break state and started to flower. That strong wind inhibits pollination. Grapes don’t rely on honey bees, the blossoms are too small; they rely on other native bees, and they can only handle  a light wind or breeze. Plus, May AND June had periods when it was blistering hot, close to 100 degrees, that shifts the grape plant down in terms of growth. So they didn’t produce that much.”

I was curious to learn where the Las Parras grapes would end up:
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“ I sell my grapes to four different wineries. Prior to Covid, I was almost exclusively selling to Black Mesa Winery  in Velarde. Covid disrupted the wine business, people weren’t going to restaurants, and a lot of the wine is being sold to restaurants. Lots of wineries were left with wine that they couldn’t sell. Now, after Covid, Black Mesa is selling and making hard apple cider, because  some parts of the community don’t drink wine very much. They drink beer. Apple cider right now is a hot item, and it can be ordered in  bistros and similar establishments  that sell beer. So, they don’t need so many grapes, and I sell to other wineries as well: to Tony Black’s Smuggler Winery in Bosque,  to Jaramillo Vineyards in Belen, and to Sheehan Winery near Albuquerque.”

After the interview we walked across the vineyard a bit. It was a windy, blustery day so I said hello to the resident cat – “He thinks he’s a dog”, Stan said – and then I left. Maybe the next time you drink a glass of wine, if it was produced in New Mexico, you might ponder whether any of the grapes came from Las Parras. And good luck to Stan for this year’s crops! 

Besides Georgia O’Keeffe? I bet nobody comes to mind. However, the architect who built the Mosque up on the mesa near Plaza Blanca, at Dar-al-Islam, was actually very well known beyond the borders of his country, Egypt. His name was Hassan Fathy, famous for incorporating sustainable architecture and traditional concepts and materials into his designs. 

He was born in Alexandria/Egypt in 1900 and graduated in 1926 from what is now Cairo University, with a focus on architecture and engineering. He soon gained a reputation for creating sustainable and affordable buildings. His designs were concerned with the problems of the poor and tried to improve their standard of living. He became known as the Architect for the Poor and actually published a book by that name. Besides working in Egypt, he also completed major projects in Greece, Iraq, and Pakistan. In 1976 he participated in the U.N.Habitat conference in Vancouver, Canada. He held several international positions and was given a number of prestigious awards. For example, in 1980 he received the Right Livelihood Award, which honors courageous change-makers.
 
When he died in 1989 he left behind a legacy of about 160 building projects which ranged from New Gourna, a housing project near Luxor which used traditional techniques such as adobe bricks and offered shelter for 3,200 displaced families, to elegant private residences in different cities in Egypt,  to the Dar-al-Islam Mosque and Educational Center right here in Abiquiú. Construction began in 1980.

​On one of the most blusterous days of this unusually wintery March, I met with Fatima van Hattum, a soon-to-be PhD graduate and program director at New Mexico’s statewide women’s foundation,  who had actually gone to school at Dar-al-Islam and currently serves on the board. She kindly took some time off her busy schedule to show me all around the premises. We entered the compound from the back, and while I admired the beautiful lattice windows and carved wooden doors of the classroom we were in, Fatima told me a bit about the history of Dar-al-Islam.

An American couple, and other community members, many of  whom had converted to Islam, conceived the idea of founding a Muslim community, a religious and educational center where  people from all over the world could live and study and worship together. Princess Moudi, a daughter of  the late King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, provided some of the original funding. The original founders bought a 5,000-acre area  in Abiquiú because they were attracted to the cultural diversity of the land:  Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos all live next to each other.

It was a very ambitious project. They had meetings, studied Islam, read books, and then they started this building. It is all made with adobe, although some of it was finished later, after the school closed.
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When I admired the doors, I remembered that Fatima’s father, Benyamin  van Hattum, is a master woodworker, and I asked whether he made them?  “Yes, my father made all the doors”,  she replied. “He is a master carpenter, and when they were looking for a carpenter in the community, they asked him, and he did all the woodwork. Some doors have specific verses, often about knowledge, carved into them.”

When Hassan Fathy came to Abiquiú to build the mosque and the other parts of the complex, he  brought two master masons from Upper Egypt who showed the local builders how to construct the domes and vaults with adobe bricks. Although  adobe is also used in New Mexico, the pueblo people use different techniques, Fatima tells me.
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We’re entering a  dorm now. I admire the style of the window lattices and doors: they’re Nubian, from Upper Egypt, Fatima explains. The window style using triangles is Northern African. Adobe is an Arabic word! It means clay brick. I certainly didn’t know that.

Fatima continues: “At its peak time,  30 to 40 families lived here, when the school was running. It went up to the 6th grade. That’s where my older siblings and I went to school. I was in Kindergarden. Some families lived right here on the mesa.”

“In the early 90s they lost the funding from Saudi Arabia and the  school closed. Dar-al-Islam became more of a retreat center, and its most consistent program has been a Teachers’ Institute. Teachers from all over the country come to learn how to teach about Islam. And in the summer it’s rented out for retreats and camps to folks from all over the country.”
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“The school employed a lot of people. Dar-al-Islam also owned the Abiquiú Inn, and all the land around it. There was a mechanic, a laundromat; many different businesses employed many people. When the school closed, a lot of people moved away. At its best time, it was a very diverse and lively  community,” 

We next enter a recent addition, built in the last five years maybe. It’s a retreat space, rented out to groups and  workshops, to larger groups from different programs, all related to Islam. The governance of the organization has changed over time after the school closed, it was managed more from afar. But this is changing again: there is a new board since last year, and Fatima and other locals who grew up in Abiquiú are members. The  consensus is that it’s a space for Muslims and Non-Muslims, a space for contemplation, prayer, and reflection for community and friends.

Fatima takes me to the  library: “They put a lot of effort into the collection. There are Arabic books, English books, all about Islam. Also books about the different regions of North Africa and the Middle East. There are sections for Fine Arts, Education, Language and Literature – sections related to a broad range of subjects. Ideally, in the future, everyone in the community could use the library”.

We enter two other courtyards. “During recess, this is where we kids would play. Some of the classrooms opened onto these courtyards”.

The big building  had  classrooms for all the different grades. It leads to the new part, and then to the mosque.

“The mosque was the first building that was built, everything else was subsequently built. It is ALL adobe – the entire compound. This is an incredible feat. The architect gave lectures and workshops. People came from all over to learn”. Fatima explains the building process some more:  “It’s similar to New Mexico adobe, the way the bricks are made is similar, but the domes, squinches, and the vaults are different.” We are in an adobe dome, and Fatima tells me to stand in one corner and  put my face in that corner. She then stood  in the opposite corner and whispered something – it came across loud and clear, out of MY corner, loud enough  so that I could hear it! These interesting acoustics are also in the Mosque.

(To see lots of photographs from the construction of the adobe buildings, click here).
We take our shoes off so we can enter the Mosque. The beauty of the space combines New Mexican and Middle Eastern art. The latillas and vigas are so New Mexican, and the windows are North African.
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We enter the room where people wash before going to pray. And now we see the front door – we had come in through the back door, the school. During the summer, people pray here every week. We look at the walls: they’re incredibly thick,  four to five  feet.

Fatima had just defended her PhD dissertation, so now she has more time to dedicate herself to a project about the local history – documenting the oral history of people here,  with stories of people who have lived here. She feels that the lessons of the past are so important, that we need  to preserve and learn from its wisdom.
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Once outside, we reach the  playground. On a bright day, one can see the Pueblo de Abiquiú, the valley, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but today everything is grey.  Dark grey, light grey, almost white – it swallowed up everything that is more than 100 yards away. But the interesting journey that Fatima took me on, into the past, into different cultures and continents, made me forget the bleak weather. I enjoyed her knowledge and commitment.

I don’t often read the Sun newspaper, but I picked up a copy while grabbing some sinful and embarrassing snacks from the dollar store the other day. I do sometimes follow the articles about local government and events (for example the ongoing NCSWA trash debacle). And, this paper has the most outlandish and plentiful police reports I have ever seen. Anyway, deep in the classified section, I saw a small ad announcing an “experimental pop up eatery near Espanola.” It only had a phone number and was pretty vague and cryptic. I love a good mystery and was intrigued, though also on guard to it being a scam. I called the number and was answered by an even more cryptic outgoing message, asking me to leave my contact so, warily, I left my number.  I was called back on the same day by a pleasant and young sounding man who asked me some questions, mostly pertaining to my interest and experience with food and unusual places that I’ve dined at. He then invited me and one guest to the Espanola Airport on Saturday at 5pm (wait, Espanola has an airport?). He gave me a code word and told me to recite it to the staff that would meet us and, presumably, other people who saw the ad and were deemed worthy of this clandestine invite.
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Hoping we had nothing to lose by showing up, we drove to the airport the next Saturday with excitement and trepidation. There was a huge white circus-like tent, the biggest I’d ever seen, out in an open field near the runway. It looked brand new and we couldn't see what was inside from the parking area, as it was completely walled to the ground with only a small opening visible from our distance. Weirdly, there were a few horses and, I think, a llama, kind of blocking the entrance.  I’m thinking, ok, a catered feast at the airport with maybe a cowboy theme?  Strange, not super exciting, but we were game. We were met by a large shuttle, asked for the code word by the driver, then taken to the tent. I counted 30 people, so I assumed at least 15 had responded to the ad.

​We were told to walk into the small doorway, single file. It was very dark inside. Once through a short, near blackout, tunnel-like hallway, we entered a larger space. There was a dim glowing blue light and it was barely light enough to see my wife’s or anyone else’s face. Once my eyes adjusted somewhat, I saw a surprisingly small oval room, probably about 40 feet long and 25 feet wide. There were 15 very nicely set and plated tables, each with only two chairs and all on the outermost edges of the room against the wall. In the middle, on large round tables, were colorful, pyramid shaped stacks of food, maybe fruit and cakes and an array of silver pans with sterno flames? Too many to name and too dim to really understand what I was looking at. But, it was all very inviting and comfortable and strange.

​We were each guided to a table with our respective partners and asked if we preferred red or white. This could only mean wine, so we opted for red. It turned out to be a 2013 Malbec from St. Helena, one of my favorite towns in the wine region of California, and a very good year! When the wine arrived we were asked to hand over our phones and told that we would be given them back at the end of the evening. Ok then…

Pleasant, taciturn and efficient waiters brought several small plates to our table filled with very eclectic and very delicious tapas. There were succulent bbq ribs, bacon wrapped dates and small spicy deep fried jalapeños filled with a rich, creamy cheese and some sort of nut, pecans, I think. We were eating up all this mystery, wondering what the catch was and how much was this going to cost when the room started to vibrate and hum, but quietly and smoothly. Then it felt like we were thrust up, crazy fast, but again very smoothly, and the room was filled with blue, sunny light. Each table had a curved window twice as large as the table and floor to ceiling in height. It was brain twisting to try to make sense of what we were seeing. It looked like the sky, the sky at 30,000 feet, like high up in a jet, but we weren’t moving, we were, uh, hovering. What is happening here!!? We all looked at each other in disbelief. The floor started to pulsate with warm, inviting light, and then gradually louder music filled the room with a rhythmic beat. The calm waiters kept bringing out food, now on bigger plates filled with sophisticated concoctions seemingly from all parts of the world. There was Baingan Bharta, one of my favorite eggplant dishes from India and a Chicken Cacciatore, rivaling any I’ve tried in central Italy. All this amazing food and the never ending flights of wine and music and now, dancing, took me to another place. A dreamlike place where we all happily embraced the intoxication with relaxed joy. Were we drugged? During a hypnotic spin on the dance floor, my wife looked at me with the same awe and wonder we shared way back when we were falling in love for the first time. It was a beautiful moment and I can still feel like it just only happened a moment ago. Then the music softened and the floor lights started to fade, and we all seemed to come back to reality and I noticed that the windows were now dark. The waiters had cleared all of the tables, our wine glasses had disappeared and that same dim, blue light was back. Abruptly, the small door opened in the “tent” and we were all gently herded towards it, handed back our phones in the now dark, open night and put back on the shuttle.

The entire evening is blurry and distant now, like maybe the whole thing was a dream. But the memories of it my wife and I share to the tee. I’ve driven back out to that exact location where the tent was. There is no sign of it ever being there and it seems impossible that it ever could be. But I’m thankful I was able to snatch these few photos before they took our phones away. It was a truly mind blowing dining experience I doubt I’ll ever top. And, we never did get a bill…
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`Jessica Rath​
 
Maybe you remember that the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Espanola had a Discovery Day on  Saturday, March 11th. The Center is such a fantastic source of research and exploration in our area, and their work with injured wildlife is so much appreciated, that we wanted to follow up with a deeper look. So, we reached out to Ambassador Animal Specialist Raelynn Archuleta who kindly agreed to an interview with me. 

It was a pleasure to meet with a young person who is enthusiastic about her job. Clearly, Raelynn’s dedication to the animals she cares for is 100%. She grew up in El Rito and got a Bachelor's in Wildlife Fisheries Conservation Ecology from New Mexico State University’s main campus in Las Cruces.

“When I graduated in 2021, I started as a volunteer here at the New Mexico Wildlife Center, mostly while I was looking for jobs. Then I decided to do the internship that was offered. After that, I got hired as part time staff and finally full time staff as this is what I really wanted to do,”  she told me. “I've always been interested in wildlife, ever since I was little.”

I asked her about the animals at the Center; are there any endangered species? “The walkabout path that we will visit shortly hosts our ambassador animals. They are non-releasable, mostly due to human impact, human imprints, and because of really bad injuries that they had. Some of our injury ambassador animals cannot be released because it can be fatal. Our hospital site can rehabilitate and release animals whenever that’s possible and is closed to the public. Manchado ( a Mexican Spotted Owl) came to us in 1998. He was found on a highway in the mountains of south central New Mexico, most likely hit by a car. He had a serious head injury. Then, during care, one of the rehabilitators noticed that cataracts had developed in one of his eyes from the injury, rendering him unreleasable. There are less than 2500 Mexican Spotted Owls in the United States and they are listed federally as a Threatened Species. This makes  Manchado a rare and unique Ambassador Animal for his imperiled species."

J.R.: What exactly is a human imprint?

R.A.: Unfortunately, once a bird imprints on whoever feeds it first, this becomes irreversible. We have a couple of new human imprint animals here. People think that they're doing the right thing but actually they are doing the bad thing. When you see an injured animal, you should not talk to it or feed it. You should call the nearest wildlife rehabilitation center as soon as you can. Once an animal gets imprinted, it can’t be reversed. If you feed it from when it’s a baby, it will imprint you and think that you're its mom. It won't try and feed by itself. Because we’re  humans and not birds, we can't really teach them their natural behavior like their actual mother would.
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J.R. That's good to point out. We tend to think we’re doing the right thing – there's a sick bird and you feel like you can help it. But that's a bad thing.

​R.A. That's also why there are a lot of signs, like, don't feed the wildlife. Once one person feeds it, more people are going to feed it. And that's when the animal is going to associate people with food. And that's when human and animal conflicts start happening.

J.R.:Let me ask you about Dyami: How did he become an ambassador here? What is his history?

R.A.: “Dyami” is Native American for “Eagle”. He came to us from Virginia in 2015, where he had fallen out of a nest as an eaglet. The previous vets who took care of him found out that he had developed cataracts at a young age. They thought it might have been a genetic thing. He also had a wing injury, probably from falling out of the nest.  After several surgeries and physical therapy it was determined that his flight capabilities were permanently limited.That’s why he was deemed non-releasable. He was placed with the New Mexico Wildlife Center as an Ambassador Animal in 2017. And after he got transferred to us, after about a year and a half, he got beat up by a rat! We don’t know exactly how it happened, but the rat did some serious damage to him. He went back to the hospital, and when I started volunteering, he was doing recovery there, and that’s how we first met.

When I became an intern he was released from the hospital and put into a new enclosure. I let him recuperate and settle in a bit. The previous coordinator had let me do some animal care, and she saw a connection that we had.  I was soft-talking him, I had never been the “bad” person, so I started with him learning to re-trust humans. He took small baby steps, but we both learned from each other. To be able to present him on this last Discovery Day it took almost a year of trusting and bonding with him. When I was here as an intern I came at least three times a week for eight hours. When I became a seasonal worker, I was here five days a week for eight  hours. Same thing with full-time, working 40 hours a week. I mostly spend an hour at a time training with him, associate him with choice base training, positive reinforcement, and to gain his trust.

He is about eight  years old. That’s still pretty young. Bald eagles normally don’t get their white heads until their fifth to seventh year. He’s not really “bald” – this comes from an Old English word “bala”, which means "white patch, blaze".

J.R.:How old can Bald Eagles get?

R.A.: Bald eagles’ lifespan in human care is 40+ years. In the wild, it is 20 – 30 years if that, because they lead a dangerous life, fighting for food and shelter, finding a mate. Also, Bald Eagles were endangered due to lead poisoning and pesticides.

J.R.:What is your relationship with him? Is there a loving connection?

R.A.: We don’t use the word “love”; they’re not domesticated, not like pets. It’s more like a trust-bond. He doesn’t necessarily love me but he trusts me. He recognizes me. It’s the first big animal I care for as a trainer, and we passed several milestones that have been recognized – this made me very emotional! More than him! [She chuckles].

J.R.: This must feel very special, to have a wild animal trust you – must make you feel good.

R.A.: Yes, especially in our training: when he does something I know he can do, that’s really great. He does have his bad days too, when he just doesn’t want to do anything. Like today, when it’s cold and wet. So then we’ll do some positive choice base training, for example: if he comes and sits down on my glove and takes some treat from me I’ll call that a win for today.

J.R.: Is the training  for stimulation, to give him exercise?

R.A.: Food is his main motivator, he’s a wild animal: he knows that if I do this, I’ll get a reward. We don’t use any negative reinforcement. We use LRS – Least Reinforcement Scenario. Training is also for educational purposes, and for outreach. And to get him physically moving. For if they just sit there, their health and QOL (Qhality of Life) begins to decrease.

J.R.: What does he eat?

None of our animals get live prey. We mimic what he would eat in the wild. Mice, voles, quails, chicks, and rabbits – cut up. But bald eagles mostly eat fish, they will steal the fish an osprey has caught! They’re scavengers too, if it’s already dead – they eat it because it saves them work.

J.R.: What are your future plans?
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R.A.: This job is a door-opener, eventually I’d like to work with bigger exotics, but I want to get as much experience from here as I can. I envision zoos, aquariums;  somewhat bigger facilities.

​We continued our conversation at the eagle enclosure.

Interview with Leandro and Vangie Valdez
​~ Jessica Rath

“Everything has changed so much since I was young! We had no cars, but horses and horse buggies. My Dad did all the farming with horses, he had no tractors.” This is what long-time Coyote resident Leandro Valdez told me when I visited him and his wife recently. I wanted to find out more about Coyote’s past, and they graciously agreed to an interview.

When I entered their kitchen, I noticed a prominently placed photo on the wall: It was from Leandro’s 80th-birthday bash at the high school in Gallina, which I had attended too. Hundreds of guests were there! Leandro and his wife Vangie are the third couple from the right; the other six couples are his three daughters and three sons with their spouses.
 
I soon learned that a lot more had changed since the time of horse-buggies. Coyote used to have a highschool – the Charles Lathrop Pack School! Arthur Pack, then-owner of Ghost Ranch, donated the funds to build the school, and he named  the school in honor of his father. He sold Ghost Ranch to the Presbyterian Church in 1955 and, together with his wife Phoebe, was the original donor for the Presbyterian Hospital in Espanola.
 
When Leandro graduated from highschool in 1956, there were lots of children attending the school, some of them were bussed from grade schools in Youngsville and Cañones. “Every Sunday we had baseball games. There was a team in Coyote, a team in Gallina, one in Cañones; and they even had rodeos in Gallina”, Vangie told me. “There used to be over 100 kids just  here! Now, kids come from Lindrith, Cañones, Youngsville, etc. to go to the high school in Gallina, but altogether there are less than one hundred. People don’t want to have kids any more. Plus, people moved away because there’s no work here.”
 
Before, people were working for the lumber companies, and there was lots of logging in this area. There used to be a lumber mill in Gallina, and another one between Coyote and Youngsville; a lot of people would go to work there.
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“When I went to school in Gallina, there were lots of students – black students, white students. The parents would move to Gallina from all over the States, there was so much work because of the lumber mills”, Vangie said.

​Also, there were six stores in the area, not counting the two in Youngsville. Two in Coyote, two in Arroyo del Agua, two in Mesa Poleo. And across from the post office there used to be a restaurant.
 
I asked Leandro why the work stopped: “Because of environmental protection – there were endangered species such as the spotted owl and salamanders, things like that. So they stopped the Forest Service from cutting timber. Now, they can cut only a small amount, to thin the forest out. At that time, the lumber industry, the Forest Service, and the schools were the main employers here.”
 
Leandro worked for the Forest Service some 25 years, until he retired. Before that, he also worked in the logging industry for several years. And before that, after he graduated from highschool,  he joined the military and was sent to Korea. The US Army was stationed there to protect South Korea and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). He was 17 years old and stayed for ten months. A tragic accident which killed his brother who was 15 at the time forced him to get a hardship discharge and return home. His brother went on a school picnic at the Chama River near where the dam is now (which hadn’t been built yet). The river was about 12 feet below the road; the river itself was about 4 feet deep but had risen all the way to the road – 16 feet deep. The bus went around a corner, and the road had already been swept away – his brother drowned.
 
Leandro returned to Coyote in 1958 and finished his tour with the military as a National Guard, even after he and Vangie got married in 1961;  every summer he had to go for several weeks. He started working for the Forest Service, and he learned to work the pumper unit; there was no Fire Department in Coyote yet. He  had a crew of fire fighters, and they would travel all over the US for the Forest Service, wherever  there were fires. Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Arizona, Tennessee, Kentucky – he was the crew boss. In 1974 he became Fire Manager Officer, because he had experience with the administrative part. He had taken a correspondence course about computers; that helped him when he worked for the Forest Service. “At first, they said: we won’t have any computers here! But two years later, they had them” Leandro told me.  Everybody had to learn for themselves how to operate them. The correspondence course helped him.

​I was curious to know how the two had met! It happened at a wedding dance in Gallina; Leandro and Vangie’s brother had already been close friends. Leandro  asked her for a dance, and after that, they knew they’d be together. Vangie said that her Mom was very strict; for example, when Leandro wanted to take her to a drive-in movie in Regina, she was allowed to go only if her brother would come along too – as chaperone. Yes, there was a drive-in movie theater in Regina! There used to be a lot of entertainment here!
​
 After many people moved away, the stores would close, one after another. The store across from the post office (the only store that was still open when I moved here in 2009) used to have a laundromat. But then people bought their own washers and dryers; people didn’t use the laundromat any more and this store also  closed eventually. 

Recently somebody bought the store again. But to make the gas station work  would require a lot of money – new tanks and new pumps, because what’s there is outdated. If it would be a 24-hours gas station, it may work. Right now, people have to drive to Abiquiú or to Regina to buy gas. It may be convenient to be able to get gas in Coyote; however, if it’s a lot more expensive, people might think twice.

In 2001, the New Mexico Magazine published a lovely article about Leandro and his way of life, written by Alice McSweeney. I didn’t ask how she knew about him, we had already chatted for almost two hours. But there’s no question that he and Vangie can look back at a rich, fascinating, fulfilled life. I’m glad that their memories and the history of this region is being preserved in different ways.