Interview with Robert Garcia

By Jessica Rath

​Whenever I get the chance to talk to an Abiquiú “native” I’m delighted to be able to learn more about the village’s history. With cameras, computers, and mobile phones just about every trivial activity is being immortalized these days, to the degree that it seems like information overload at times. However, if we go back some thirty or fifty years, the situation changes, and more drastically so the further back in time we go. That’s why I’m so grateful when people who grew up in Abiquiú agree to an interview, so we can preserve a sliver of the past.

One such person is Robert Garcia, known as “Bobby” to his friends. He’s an invaluable source of information and I hope we can repeat our interview in the future, but for this piece we’ll focus on two stories: the first one chronicles a restoration project of La Capilla de Santa Rosa de Lima de Abiquiú which happened in the late 1970s, and the other one offers some background and history of the Abiquiú Land grant.

Robert and his four siblings grew up in Abiquiú. Born in 1961, he’s the oldest, followed by sister Angela, brother Randy, sister Victoria (called Vicky), and his youngest sister, Monica – “We tease her and call her ‘the cabouse’, because she was born in 1974”, Robert said.

“We all were raised in Abiquiú,” Robert went on. “When we grew up, we didn't have much, but we protected what we did have, and my Mom, my Dad, and my Grandparents instilled in us the value of a dollar. We planted large gardens where we grew corn, chili, cucumbers, pumpkins, and what not, and whatever we didn't need we’d sell to the community.”

“And my gosh, how times have changed! We used to sell a dozen ears of corn for 50 cents. We just went to the store the other day, and the wife picked up four ears of corn for $2!”

Bobby continued: “We also had chickens, and we stored the extra eggs in a refrigerator until we’d get phone calls from the neighbors  who wanted one or two dozen, usually on Saturdays because they needed the eggs for their Sunday morning meal. We kids did the deliveries.”

“My Grandfather and my Dad ran cattle, and my brother and I spent the entire summer chasing cows. We also helped with the branding and vaccinating and other ranching efforts, mending fences for example.”

“One of my clients was Georgia O'Keeffe. She would order eggs. Her caretaker, Agapita Lopez, who retired recently from working with the O'Keeffe Foundation, would call us up and ask, ‘could you deliver a dozen eggs, or two dozen eggs?’ On occasion Miss O'Keeffe would be there to greet us and we would chat with her. My Dad was employed by Miss O'Keeffe when he was in high school, he used to drive her around. He accompanied her on several trips to Hollywood because Miss O'Keeffe had a sister out there. They would take the train, my Dad accompanied her, and then Miss O'Keeffe bought him a ticket to get back to Espanola. My Dad and Miss O'Keeffe were pretty good pals.”  I’d love to hear more about this!

Next, Robert told me about the group of high school students who were involved in and helped with the restoration of the ruins of the Santa Rosa de Lima church between Highway 84  and the Rio Chama.

“When I was in high school, there was an effort not only to preserve, but also to study the history of the Santa Rosa De Lima church. Anthropologist Gilbert Benito Cordova and a few of his colleagues started the Association de Santa Rosa de Lima, and they collaborated with the state of New Mexico to hire high school students who would work the grounds of the ruins.  At the same time, the Association petitioned Mr. Alva Simpson who owned the property on that side of the river where the church was located, to donate the land. Well, he did, but he donated it to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, so it became church property.”

“In the first year we didn't do much preservation work but we mapped the area. There were foundations of homes within the area. An archeologist taught us to use a device that would take probes from the ground, and the probes measured the water content of each probe. The looser material contained less water than the areas where an adobe or a rock mortar type structure was located. So we laid out a grid, and we mapped a good portion of the two acres and validated the homes that were no longer existent.”

“The following year we worked the entire summer, and this was my sophomore year. The Association asked us to delineate the perimeter of the existing church, of the ruins. At that time, the association had hired an archeological student, also from  the University of New Mexico. And this was the famous Santero, Charlie Carrillo. He was young, eager, and he was our next-door neighbor there in the village. I used to chop wood for him so he wouldn’t freeze his butt off during the winter.  With Charlie's help we did some excavating, and we determined where the perimeter of the church was.”

“During my senior year, we had built up the perimeter of the church to about three feet, maybe four feet tall. We were making our own adobes on site.”

​“One day some folks from the State Historical Preservation Office stopped by
and they told us that the site was on a national registry of historic places, and we had to stop the reconstruction. These folks were worried that the highway department would realign the road. To this day, that perimeter wall is still in place. It's about four feet tall.”

“One of the things we discovered while we were excavating the interior of the old church was the burial site of a child, and it freaked us out a bit! But we were also curious and very interested. Mr. Carrillo taught us the archeological procedure to very intricately excavate the skeleton. A unique feature that we found was a cross made of wax, within what would have been the chest of the child.”

How exciting this must have been! They took the discovery to the elders of the community, and somebody remembered that it used to be a custom to place a wax cross on the chest of a male child, and a crown of flowers on the head of a female, before the burial. Robert and his fellow high school students had discovered the bones of a little boy. There was even an article published about this old, almost forgotten custom, he told me – the students must have been so proud!

Next, I asked Robert to explain the land grant to me. It’s a term I’ve heard a lot, but what does it really mean, what does it involve? It came up recently: “The land grant bought the property around the post office from the Tres Semillas Foundation.” Who and what is this, I wanted to learn. Robert was the right person to ask.

“Land grants are a concept that was brought over by the Europeans when they landed in the New World,” he explained.  “It’s essentially a socialistic concept; an area is typically deeded to a community which has the right to utilize that land and to live off of it. It's a shared area where they can run cattle, their sheep, or their goats. They can collect firewood. They can collect building materials for their homes. Usually there's an area within the land grant with smaller
portions which are dedicated to families so that they could build a garden.
So that is what a merced is.”

“The Spanish discovered an abundance of resources here in the New World, in the New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, California, Southern Nevada, and Utah area. They found that the indigenous people that lived here were thriving. In an effort to establish a tax base, they encouraged the founding of villages. Expeditions of people coming primarily from Mexico City started building settlements, and then the governor would issue a tract of land which was called a merced, a land grant, to this community. Later on, the Mexican government started issuing land grants not to communities but to individuals, as a reward for military service or for other accomplishments.” 
​
“So, Abiquiú was issued a land grant in 1754 by the then-governor, his name was Tomás Vélez Cachupín. He used a very simple meets and bounds type of survey to identify the boundaries: from this arroyo south to that hill, from the hill east to this point, from there to the river, and then from the river back to the original point. Ever since then the Abiquiú land grant has existed.”

“Abiquiu was a busy hub of activity at one point in time, it had more people than Santa Fe and lots of caravans were passing through. This was an opportunity for the locals to trade the goods that they produced for salt, coffee, sugar, and other food stuffs that they couldn’t get in and around Abiquiú. Right there in the Pueblo, on top of the area that we call moque, the expeditions would stay overnight to gather enough provisions to make the long trek to Los Angeles or San Francisco.”

“During this period there were lots of raids going on, the Spanish would steal Native American people's kids, and Native Americans would steal Spanish or Pueblo Indian kids. After a few generations the settlers intermingled with  the locals, with the indigenous people, and over the generations these individuals got the name genízaros. The root word of genízaro is janissary, a Turkish term, I believe. Its definition is a militia, a militant type of people. The armies in and around Turkey would get individuals to supplement their troops, and these individuals were called janissaries. The Spanish named the individuals that were stolen and assimilated genízaros.” Interestingly, the Federal Government, in drafting the Patent for the Merced, identified the recipients of the title of land, as the “converted half breed Indians of the Pueblo of Abiquiu”, aka Genízaros.”

“Right after the Civil War, the United States was beginning to annex states on the western side of the nation, and there was much interest in the properties out west.The U.S. government established an office that was tasked with identifying the ownership of the lands out west, particularly the Native American pueblos and the communities that were created by the Spanish and Mexican governments.”

“Right around the turn of the 20th century they sent out a number of U.S.surveyors to map the areas. And the village of Abiquiú was mapped. And as a result of this mapping, Abiquiú was awarded a patent to the property, when William H Taft was the president. The Land Grant is actually recognized by the U.S. government. It's a document which  has more security than a deed that you get from a bank,” Robert explained.

“A number of land grants were recognized by the Surveyor General over a period of 30 to 40 years, but in some communities the people left and there was nobody there to sustain that land grant. So the federal government started assimilating these properties, and they became BLM and Forest Service lands. Back then only a small percentage of the population could read. The federal government started, for lack of a better word, condemning these properties, taking these properties back, essentially stealing them.”
 
“Around 1937 or 1938 a letter was mailed to the mayor of Abiquiú. The village didn't have a mayor but there was a post office, and the postmaster said, ‘I wonder what this is all about.’ It was obviously from the IRS, so the postmaster opened the letter, and it was a notice to the mayor of Abiquiú stating that the Abiquiú Land Grant was delinquent on property taxes, and if payment or arrangements could not be made, the land grant would become federal property. The postmaster handed the letter to some of the senior gentlemen within the village and they arranged a meeting of all the heads of households.  It was decided to seek out legal advice. One of the gentlemen had connections to an attorney in Santa Fe, and the attorney read the letter and advised the people of Abiquiú to arrange a reimbursement schedule to the federal government over a period of time.”

​“Ultimately, each head of household provided $20 to commence the reimbursement of these back taxes. There were 81 or 82 heads of households, and each came up with $20. At the same time, the attorney advised them to consider incorporating the land grant as a 501c3 livestock Co Op, a non profit. That way, the property would be assessed and taxed as agricultural land.”

​“In order to be incorporated as a 501c3 the community members had to establish bylaws. These bylaws were, for the most part, written in Spanish, and they govern how the land grant was to proceed. They contain a number of articles that delineate how and who and what each individual is entitled to. And one thing became a rather touchy subject, which is the transference.”

“All the heads of households became members of the land grant. Each head of household, towards the end of his life, had to decide, who am I going to leave the membership to? One of the criteria that was identified in the bylaws was that the member was required to pass his membership to kin, to blood. It could be a son, or a daughter, or a nephew, or a cousin, but the cousin had to be on his side of the family. Initially, this was not an issue, because back then families had so many kids. So that process continued from the late 30s into, I'd say, the 70s, two to three generations removed, maybe four generations.”

“In the early 2000s Governor Bill Richardson championed a bill which established that the land grants would become political subdivisions of the state. So far, the land grants were not eligible to receive state assistance, and they could not petition the state for help with infrastructure, community centers, or any type of funding. Governor Richardson championed a bill that would allow  the land grants to become a political subdivision of the state, if they so desire. And that bill became law, it passed the legislature.”

“So in the early 2000s we had a special meeting with a couple of state representatives, and they pitched this new law allowing the land grant to be recognized as a political subdivision of the state. The members of the land grant voted to allow the Merced de Abiquiú to become a political subdivision.
So now, the Merced is subject to all the state requirements.”

“Every year the Merced has to put together a budget. They are audited by the state auditor. When candidates run for office, the election has to meet the election code as delegated by the state. Notices for meetings have to be posted in accordance with state law and in the time period required before the meeting is held. All of this work is the flip side of the coin of becoming a political subdivision, but the land grant is now eligible to petition the state for funding, and the village has received funding. So that's the benefit.”

“Of the 81 or 82 families, the original heads of household, there are currently 62 active members. That doesn't mean that the other 19 or 20 members have been abolished, but these families may have moved out of state, to California or to the east. Some of the families have moved to Texas, and their kids, they're not from here anymore. But at the same time, we hold those memberships in the event that an individual comes back to the state of New Mexico, and they're interested, and they can show that they are kin to an original member. The board requires the submission of a family tree, a genealogy, tracing your family back to an original member.”

“My earliest recollection of attending an annual meeting was with my grandfather, Casimiro, when I was eight years old. My Dad actually served on the board of trustees. He was the treasurer for a number of years, so I would chat with him, and go to meetings with him. I attended many meetings over the years.”

“Our bylaws state that it should be one of the primary goals of the board of directors to repurchase any properties when they become available. So when the land that Tres Semillas had for a number of years was up for sale, the land grant had some money saved up, which allowed them to purchase that property back. They want to maintain pretty much what was there, the little farmers’ market, the little plot of land where they used to grow produce, they want to keep all that going.”

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Because of space I had to leave out quite a bit of what Robert told me, both about the Santa Rosa de Lima ruins and about the land grant. He’s a veritable treasure trove of stories about Abiquiú’s history both ancient and recent, and I wish that he will let me interview him again. I noticed the same qualities that I found so special when I talked to other people who grew up in Abiquiú: a deep appreciation for their history, their community, the strong connection to their unique culture.  No wonder that most of the original land grant members still live in Abiquiú. Thank you, Robert, for such an informative talk, and for the link to an article from Youth Magazine, January 1979, about the Santa Rosa de Lima restoration project with great photos – from nearly 50 years ago! Plus, Robert provided us with an additional historic document, a copy of the original Patent for the Merced de Abiquiú from November 15, 1909 – check it out!

Ryan Dominguez shares memories of his mother.

By Jessica Rath

When I do interviews for the Abiquiú News, I’m frequently impressed and touched by what I learn about the person I’m talking to. Especially when it comes to people I’ve casually known for ages, I’m awed by the complexity I discover: the individual becomes multi-dimensional when they tell me about their past, their interests, their life journey. A case in point was Ryan Dominguez who I first met some twenty years ago; he and his wife Jeanette were neighbors, plus we were members of the Abiquiú Volunteer Fire Department. But I had no idea that he was a performing guitar player and a music teacher until I interviewed him. And how did he get into music and playing the guitar?  His mother encouraged him. There was nothing to do for a young kid in Abiquiú, but when he complained about being bored, his mother told him to pick up the guitar that was in the house, and learn how to play. “Being bored” was not tolerated.

Ryan kindly agreed to share some more stories about his wise mother.

Her name was Criselda Dominguez, born and raised in Abiquiú, and she had twelve children. You’d think this was enough work, but she found the time for an enormous amount of volunteer work, benefiting the Abiquiú community. She also had a regular job, she worked for Ghost Ranch, but this wasn’t a “normal” nine-to-five job either, Ryan told me.

“She worked at all hours.  Her job consisted of taking the elderly to any appointments that they needed. If they needed groceries, she would take them. She would do their income tax for free. She also did a lot of volunteer work; she probably volunteered for every board there was here in Abiquiú: the library, the gym, the recreation center. At one point she did work for Georgia O'Keeffe.”

“My Mom would try to bring helpful programs for the people here in Abiquiú,” Ryan went on. “In the summertime, she'd open the gymnasium next to the church, so that the kids would have a place to be during the summer when school was closed. It was almost like a daycare, people would drop their kids off, and they would stay there the whole day. My Mom noticed that the kids weren't leaving for lunch because they were simply dropped off. She just couldn’t let the kids go hungry, so she went to the county to see if there was something that they could do about feeding the kids. They actually developed a summer meal program: they would bring lunches and drinks for the kids at the recreation center, so that they would have something to eat.”

“That’s what my Mother did in the summer. She was also part of Save the Children, an international charity organization similar to UNICEF. She would go around Abiquiú and take pictures of kids that were experiencing hardships and then submit the paperwork, and they would get sponsorships from people outside of New Mexico. The type of sponsorship the kids would receive was clothing, school supplies, or just extra cash to help out.”

Ryan’s mother was primarily concerned about children and the elderly. She did this during the summer for at least 20 years, I learned.

“She also brought a Senior program to Abiquiú, where they would feed the Seniors,” Ryan continued.  “That way, they had a place to hang out at the parish hall, and they could visit with each other. She was always looking out for how she could help the people from Abiquiú.”

“She would also help with the commodities:  free food from the government, such as cheese, milk, fruits and vegetables. They sent it to her house  and we would get all the boxes ready, and then my mom would call people to let them know that they could pick it up from her house. This happened only once a month, and she wanted to do more for the community. She ran a food program where people could get $30 of groceries for only $15, for half the price. It wasn't a nine-to-five thing, more like eight-to-ten. It didn't matter when they needed something, my Mom never turned anyone away. She would never say, ‘come back tomorrow.’ She would never say anything like that. If people needed something, she was always there to help.”

Sometime in the 1980s Criselda won the New Mexico Woman of the Year award for all she did. It was an acknowledgement for all she did for the community, and she was invited to have a meal with the governor. Plus, it was featured in the news.

Ryan told me: “I remember another story: on Sundays, after mass, she would go visit the elderly, and while she was visiting, I had to chop wood and stack it for the whole week. So, while she was inside visiting, I was outside chopping and stacking wood. We’d go from one house to the next and I couldn't receive any payment. I had to volunteer my time. Although they wanted to give me money, I was not allowed to accept it. My Mom had prearranged that I would not receive any money.”

​“Then, in 1983, our family home burned down. The community came together and rebuilt my Mom's house in about two weeks because of all that she had done for her neighbors and other people in the village. She cooked for everybody, that's all she could afford. When you have a job and you have twelve kids, clearly you don't have any money to spare. She gave in so many other ways. For example, my Mom started collecting clothing. If people from other countries came and they didn't have any clothing, they would just go to my Mom's house and would pick out whatever they wanted. She never took any payment because she really lived a selfless life.”

I wondered –  was she very religious? Was that maybe part of the reason why Criselda  was so selfless, because she believed that  when she was helping others she was serving God, and that's the way humans should behave?

Ryan affirmed my question: “Yes, my Mom was very religious and what mattered to her was not so much what you receive in life, but what you can give someone else less fortunate. When I would complain about our lifestyle, because we were pretty poor, she used to tell me that we were blessed, because there were others even less fortunate than us.”

“When I was younger I couldn't understand this. I wore torn jeans with patches on them. My Mom would sew some of our clothes, and so I was always wearing some hand-me-downs, almost everything was a hand-me-down. And I couldn't understand why. As I got older, I could finally understand that. And, today, when I see that the fashion nowadays is to wear torn jeans, I have to laugh that people are paying for them. I joke with them, and I tell them: ‘You know what? I initiated that style!’ Now that I'm older I totally understand that my Mother did what she could with what she had. And she even gave more without any expectation for payment.”

So many people nowadays seem rather selfish, they only think about what's good for them and never consider anybody else. I find that rather sad. It might have been hard for Ryan to grow up with torn jeans and hand-me-downs, but I'm sure that now he feels very appreciative for the way he was brought up. Maybe you feel kind of blessed to have had those experiences, I asked Ryan.

“Yes, I am appreciative,” he answered. “My Mom always looked at things like the glass is half full. Back in the day people had to dig their acequias. And the elderly would call my mom and ask, ‘Do you have any sons that can do the acequia for us?’ Sure enough, my Mom would say, ‘How many do you need?’, and then she would line us up and tell us, ‘You're going’, ‘You are going’, and ‘You're going’. We had no choice. We would have to go and do the acequias. And after a weekend of working on an acequia, which wasn’t easy work, I would get a paycheck: they would pay us $25. $25 for 24 hours of work. I remember saying to my Mom, ‘This is not worth it. $25 for 24 hours of work is not worth it.’ But she would tell me, ‘Well, that's $25 more that you have now than you did on Friday, right?’ This  taught us the value of hard work.”

I think it's good to be reminded that there are so many people who have so much less and who are suffering much more. We often feel unhappy because we can’t afford the next shiny thing, while overlooking that we actually have enough, all we need and more. That we have so much to be grateful for.
Ryan confirmed this. “We were always taught to be thankful for what we have and to consider that we were blessed, because we did have the necessities.  They weren't the best necessities, but there were enough, all we needed”.

Criselda passed away when she was 77 but until then and after she retired from Ghost Ranch, she continued to volunteer for many different organizations. She served as a board member for Las Clinicas Del Norte, and she served on many other boards in Northern New Mexico. She always had to be involved with something, Ryan recounted. Towards the end of her career, when her children started to move out, she found a way to surround herself with kids, because all throughout her life she had been around children. She decided to volunteer as a grandma at the elementary school, she enjoyed the presence of children so much.

“It was interesting, she called everybody my dear,” Ryan continued.  “Like, ‘Hi, my dear’, or ‘How are you, my dear’. And that’s why she became known as La Dear, because she said it to everyone. There was a type of respect that you don't find much anymore. My Mom was stern, but she was not mean. She asked you to do what was expected of you. I remember when I would receive awards at school, she never told me that I was doing a good job, she never praised me. Her understanding was, if you do something at 100% the way you're supposed to, why should you expect awards? You don't need any compliments for that because you're just doing what you're supposed to do.”

That must have been a little hard sometimes, I would imagine.

“Yes, it was,” was Ryan’s reply.  “But I now understand that you shouldn’t expect praise for what you should be doing, right? If you're living right, that's what you're supposed to be doing. Don't expect praise for something that is expected of you. It was sometimes hard for us kids to understand, but she would show her love and gratitude towards us through facial expressions. I was never allowed to complain. My Mom believed that if you feel blessed, then you shouldn't complain. You should be grateful. That was her stance in life. If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem.”

There is a lot of wisdom in Criselda’s way of bringing up her children. She taught them never to play the victim but that they could be whatever they wanted, that they will reach their goal with hard work. Ryan said: “She taught us, don't expect to be given anything. If you expect something, you're going to be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. But if you don't expect anything and then you get something, you'll be happy.”

Criselda passed away in 2010 and she was helping people, volunteering till her last day, Ryan told me. She was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and she lived for almost a month after she learned of her illness. Not once did he hear her complain, although she must have been in agony – the cancer had spread to her bones. “That's the way she was: regardless of all the pain that she was in, she never mentioned it.”
​
Thank you, Ryan, for sharing your memories about your mother with us. I will think of her the next time I want to complain about the heat, or if I feel sorry for myself because I can’t afford the cute-looking shoes that I don’t really need. And I will remember to cultivate a sense of gratitude for everything that supports me. What a great teacher your Mom is.

Conversation with Wendy Dolci
​
By Jessica Rath

When I first heard about the forest stewards, I got their mission all wrong: I thought they were taking care of trees. Maybe you’ve heard of  people like Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the author of Finding the Mother Tree, who scientifically documented the amazingly complex communications and exchanges which take place between tree roots and the fungi/mycelia (tubular filaments which form an underground network). That’s what I thought the forest stewards were concerned with, because I had missed the “Site” in their name.

The focus of the group is heritage sites. And to tell you upfront: this is an immensely captivating subject! If you’re interested in archaeology, history, paleontology, or anthropology you might consider joining this group.

Our national forests are loaded with a diversity of cultural and heritage sites. Without any attention, these sites risk being destroyed or fading away because of neglect. As the population has increased and more people visit the forest, there’s the concern that these sites could be lost. The Forest Service doesn’t have the resources to monitor these sites, and so that’s where the Site Stewards come in. They are formal volunteers under the federal government volunteer program. As official volunteers, they work locally with staff at the Santa Fe National Forest.

The Site Stewards are an all-volunteer organization under the auspices of the Site Steward Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit organization incorporated in the state of New Mexico. The Foundation’s mission is to generate and manage resources to support the conservation, preservation, monitoring, education and research of archaeological, historical and cultural resources in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona.

The Santa Fe National Forest Heritage Resource Program staff are those who work most closely with the Site Stewards, coordinating with local indigenous people to decide which of the sites are most in need of care and monitoring. Six distinct areas are currently being monitored within the Santa Fe National Forest. Each area has a leader and an assistant leader assigned to manage the group’s activities. A few of the sites are well-known to the general public, but most of the sites that are monitored are in little-known, remote areas.

​A Site Stewards Council manages the group. They meet quarterly to talk about site visits, progress on special projects and committee activities, funding, and sometimes have special educational talks. A recent council meeting had a talk from an expert on rock art, with a brown bag lunch afterwards. There is an all-hands annual stewards meeting; every other year it’s in the forest with an option for camping out over a weekend.

Before being officially certified as a Site Steward, a significant amount of training is required. Site Stewards are selected in part for their commitment to preserving the cultural heritage of the Santa Fe National Forest. Training includes online and in-person training, visits to a variety of sites, and a detailed orientation for the site(s) that a steward has been assigned. Stewards learn to tread lightly on the land, creating the least disturbance possible. They look like regular hikers: they don’t wear anything that would identify themselves as stewards, and do not confront anyone they might encounter. They observe and report anything unusual back to their area leads or Forest staff. If there’s anything big, such as any kind of vandalism taking place, they call Forest Dispatch and/or report back to Forest staff.

​Sometimes damage has natural causes, such as animals or weather-related erosion.

The heritage sites are very diverse. In some places there are remnants of room blocks, or walls. There are petroglyphs in places and artifacts such as arrowheads, other stone tools, and pottery sherds. All of these are evidence of those who were here before us -- including Native American and Spanish cultures. As cultures evolved, some people would move on, others would move in. Sometimes the original Native American sites were reconfigured into a Spanish settlement. It’s a very rich history that the site stewards are monitoring.

The site stewards are, in general, outdoor people, who like to hike, and are okay with driving on rocky dirt roads that are not for the fainthearted! Safety is foremost though, and stewards must always have a backup person identified before they go out to visit their sites. The backup person knows where they’re going, when they’re leaving, when they expect to be back, the car they’re driving, and where they intend to park. If they don’t check in as planned, the backup person knows what to do.

​Right now there are over one hundred people participating in the Site Stewards program, and they are looking for more people to join the ranks.

If you are interested in joining the Forest Site Stewards, please visit their website, you’ll find out what to do. But before signing up, you may want to know more about what kind of sites they go to, what they might find, and what they do to preserve the site.

I asked Site Steward Wendy Dolci about this, who told me:  "This is a wonderful program for people who really care about our history and culture. We do our best to just observe and not disturb. And we're curious people. We're people who love the outdoors. There are vestiges of old adobe or rock walls, and pottery. There is an amazing history to be learned from pottery sherds alone -- by analyzing the stuff that was added to clay to improve its quality, the thickness of the sherds, the decorative elements on the inside or outside of the pottery. You might learn where trade has occurred, because many areas predominantly have a certain type of pottery, but then you'll find another type there. So you know that there was interaction between different areas. There's so much you can learn simply from pottery. The same is true for stone artifacts, arrowheads, or tools for grinding and sharpening. It all tells a story.”

Doesn’t this sound amazing – I bet people would be attracted to the fact that not only is it fun to do and it's useful, but they will learn things that normally would require some college courses.

“Yes, we learn from the research and writings of archaeologists,” Wendy confirmed. “It's really fascinating to learn what archaeologists do, how they work, and what they record.”

​I was reminded of my interview with Greg Lewandowski who lives right by the old Tsama Pueblo, owned and managed by the Archaeological Conservancy. He and his wife are its site stewards. He had put me in touch with two archaeologists, the Conservancy’s Southwest Regional Director and her assistant, the Southwest Field Representative. They could see things that a lay person would not notice. And that was so interesting, once you know what you’re looking for, you can see so much more.

Wendy confirmed this. “You really do learn. I used to walk by things and not even notice, but now I can tell, for example, that tools were made in a spot because of the flakes of obsidian there. And I notice when I walk by a boulder with a grinding slick, and know what it is. Our team has found some interesting things, and you know what we do with them? We leave them there, we put them back. And sometimes, if it looks like it's in an area where it could be easily spotted, we will just tuck it away, we hide it a little bit, we don't want it to be found. Most of the sites that we go to are not well-known to the general public. We hardly ever see anyone in person when we're up there. And I think that's good.”

One can learn so much from every little artifact. If somebody takes it away, that really removes an important part of the region’s history. One may think that it's just an old broken plate. Why shouldn't I take a sherd, it's nothing, it's useless. But people need to understand that it's part of everything around it, that it belongs to whatever is around it. If you remove it, you are taking away part of the story. It’s as if one rips pages out of a book – a single page of paper doesn’t seem significant, but when it’s missing, the story will be distorted and its meaning is altered or even lost.

​“That’s why it is so important to protect these sites,” Wendy added. “It is illegal to take things, but it’s not some random law, it's not just arbitrary. It has a reason, taking things destroys the history.”

“There's been an amazing amount of research done by archaeologists in this area,” Wendy told me. “The site stewards visit many of the sites but even so, there's so much more. It just can't all be protected. Some of it is so remote and is exposed to erosion and other damaging natural causes. Our team hasn't seen any vandalism in progress, though we know it does occur. We have  seen some odd things like small artifacts in a pile, or a rock, that is standing upright that wasn't there during previous visits. We report these things. If we see recent footprints that we know aren't ours, we report it. We look for that. We look for things that might have been disturbed, or discarded trash. If we find a brand new coke can then that's something we would report.”

Wendy continued: “In some places we see Native American petroglyphs, and there are also old Spanish petroglyphs. You can tell their relative age by the how light or dark the scratched-off areas are. There was a time when people just went out and took what they could find, dug things up and went away with them. Everyone should know that it is illegal to do that. These heritage areas are protected by federal and state laws. We're doing our best to monitor things. We have a good group of people. There's a lot of learning involved, and it piques your curiosity: you see things, and you wonder: why is that there? Sometimes there's no answer to that, but it gets your imagination going.”

Isn’t that a fabulous program! If you like the outdoors, if you enjoy hiking in our glorious forests, if you’re interested in the local history and culture, you’ll get all that, but you’ll see everything with new eyes. You’ll literally see things that were hidden in plain sight. Something that looked familiar, that you saw numerous times and didn't take much notice of, suddenly has new meaning: it may belong to an old structure and points to people who lived many hundreds of years ago. It connects you with the past, a different culture, and unfamiliar customs. You’re less of an isolated individual but become part of a rich tapestry, a deep story that was there all along, unseen.

​Thank you, Wendy, for sharing this wonderful program with us!

Luciente became a non-profit organization in 1997. Here is part of their original mission statement:
​
“Foster community development through the establishment of community based organizations which have a direct and positive impact on the lives of local community residents.”

Besides starting the library, Luciente sponsored and supported a long list of individuals and initiatives which benefited the community, young and old. Some of you may remember the days before the County had established its recycling program, when Abiquiú resident and artist Sabra Moore parked some huge trailer beds on Bode’s parking lot every Saturday (or was it once a month? I’ve forgotten) so people could bring glass, paper, and other recyclables. The successful Abiquiú Recycling Program was sponsored by Luciente.

Other projects they sponsored:

“The Boys and Girls Club and The Northern Youth Project were among the first organizations Luciente sponsored. Other sponsorships included the Children’s Art Fund, the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, Abiquiu Computers, Abiquiu and El Rito studio tours, Abiquiu Chamber Music Festival, and Rio Arriba Concerned Citizens, which is still sponsored by Luciente today” (from the website).

​I believe it was in 2006 when I became directly involved with Luciente because I designed their (then) website.

The website included galleries with lots of photos from events and programs sponsored by Ludiente, such as:  ABC! (Arts Boosting Curriculum), which was founded in 2004 by Abiquiu artist Irene Schio and educator Rabia van Hattum to provide creative and imaginative art programs for children in the greater Abiquiú region. The ABC After School Club met once a week throughout the school year at Andaluz Gallery, and twice a week in the summer months.

Plus, Luciente was involved with Regalos, a store which sold art from local artists and eventually became part of Bode’s. Other projects included an open-studio tour that reached all the way to Youngsville and beyond.

​Because of their rich history I was curious: what is Luciente up to these days? What are some of their current projects?

Board President Janet Harrington (known as Jen to her friends) agreed to meet with me so I could ask her about Luciente.  I’m always curious to learn where the people who end up in Abiquiú came from, and what brought them here, so I asked her about that, as well.

Jen was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but her family moved a lot so she lived in many different places. After she married her college sweetheart, they lived in Los Angeles, and she moved to the Bay Area with her second husband. She still has a house in Los Altos, and when the Abiquiú winter gets too cold, she spends a few months in Silicon Valley.

​She came to Abiquiú after her partner Bob White retired. He was living in Santa Rosa, California, and he wanted to buy some land, but because of all the vineyards in Sonoma County, land there is prohibitively expensive. So he looked in Oregon and Arizona and eventually ended up right by the Chama River, in “downtown Abiquiú”.

Jen is a retired kindergarten teacher who also does a lot of photography. How did she become involved with Luciente, I wanted to know.

“At the beginning of COVID, I guess it was in 2020, Luciente started packing bags of groceries for people and delivering food,” Jen reminisced. “They asked for volunteers, so I went to the school to help pack food items, and then somebody would deliver them. That's how I first got involved with Luciente. Then they asked me to join the board. Next was, ‘Well, why don't you be president?’ I replied, ‘Wait a minute! I just joined, and you guys have much more experience than I!’ But in these small groups it's not really “an honor” to be elected president, it’s more like ‘Okay, it's your turn.’ That's how I became board president!” Jen laughed.

Currently they have seven board members, although they had as many as nine or ten in the past. There's usually been quite a turnover, Jen told me. People are busy and often not fond of going to meetings, even when it’s only once a month.
“If you look at the past history of the board you’ll see that almost everybody you know has been on the board one time or another,” Jen said. “Our current board is: Randy Sanches (Vice President), Debbie Vigil (Secretary), Carol Ho (Treasurer), Thanh Ho, Matti Gallegos, Shaia D’Ourso, and me.”

What are your current projects, what are you involved with, I asked her.

“For a long time Luciente was basically an umbrella foundation,” Jen replied.  “We sponsored the studio art tour and the Chamber Music Festival, and for a while the library. All these individuals and groups used Luciente  for their nonprofit status. But now, most have either formed their own nonprofit corporation or, like the Chamber Music Festival, don’t exist anymore. With the COVID pandemic, the grocery delivery really started our switch over to food. We decided we wanted to start food pantries in the schools, so now we have one at the Abiquiú Elementary School and one up in Gallina at the Coronado High School. We’ve recently opened a third pantry at the little elementary school in Lybrook, north of Cuba, in the Jemez Mountain School District.”

But that’s quite remote and distant, I’m surprised to hear they go so far away.

“Yes, Lybrook is all children from the Navajo Nation.” Jen confirmed. “Their pantry even has clothing available for the kids. So the food pantries are one of our big food projects, and the Farmers Market is the other one.”

​I had no idea that the  Abiquiú Farmers Market is a Luciente program.
What does that mean, I asked Jen.

“Andrew Furse started the market seven years ago. Andrew and Lupita (Salazar) are the market managers, but they don't have their own 501c3 status,” I learned. “We do their banking and bookkeeping and fundraising, stuff like that. Our wonderful bookkeeper, Sylvia Lampen, does the bookkeeping for both Luciente and the Farmers Market.”
​
And what does the food pantry involve, I wanted to know.

“We provide healthy snacks like granola bars, yogurt, cans of chili, soup, peanut butter, tuna, some fresh food. The idea is that if a student is hungry, the teachers can get snacks from the pantry. And if there is a child who might face hunger over the weekend, we can provide a backpack with food to take home.”

Snacks for schools – what is this exactly? How does it work?

​“We use Sam's Club a lot,” Jen explained. “They deliver even way up there to Gallina. So that's great. And we're also an agency of the Santa Fe Food Depot. We get some bulk food items from them, but it seems as though they don't have as much free food as they used to, and they don't have a lot of snacky items. But the Food Depot  does these big mobile food deliveries; there's one in Abiquiú. Once a month they drop food at the gym.”

“After we got involved with the school in Gallina,” Jen continued, “I thought that this area needs one of those food drops. They are so remote – no stores at all, a true food desert. Shortly thereafter, my friend Anne Beckett took me to the Food Depot in Santa Fe, and we had a tour. What an amazing place it is – they do a lot of food distribution and also diapers! While we were there, I mentioned to the management, there is a remote town, if you're thinking of going past Abiquiú. Gallina really could use one of those mobile food deliveries. Yes, Gallina is actually on our list, they answered, but we don't know anybody there to help organize the distribution. So I told them that I know people there, because the school nurse is on our board, and she's been running our food pantry. So I put them in touch with Debbie Vigil, and now it’s happening! They get a monthly food delivery for about 150 families.”

“I’d been thinking about what other ways Luciente might enrich the lives of our local children, and I happened to see on Youtube a wonderful documentary (it won an Oscar for best short documentary in 2024), called The Last Repair Shop. It is about a music repair shop for the Los Angeles School District. They give free instruments to the kids, and if they get damaged, then they can send them to the shop to have their instruments repaired. They interviewed some of these children, and having their instrument changed their life. It was such a sweet little film. I thought how good a program like this would be for Abiquiú. And then I learned that for the last couple of months of the school year, Maximiño Manzanares had been teaching art  and music to all the classes at Abiquiu Elementary. Thank you, Maximiño, for your shining example!”

Luciente means ‘bright’, or  ‘shining’ in English. By helping children and their families, by supporting projects such as the Farmers Market, by providing food when it is needed – Luciente does indeed make many people’s lives brighter. Please visit their website if you want to volunteer or become involved in some way, maybe become a board member!

​I’m grateful to Jen Harrington for sitting down with me and spending the time for this interview. Maybe we’ll have a Youth Orchestra in Abiquiú in the future? Starting with ukuleles and drums? (As Maximiño discovered, the school had already stored away a beautiful set of drums).

Interview with Michael Martin, grandson of George Martin Senior

​By Jessica Rath

How many of you, our esteemed readers, remember General Stores? Before supermarkets, shrink-wrapped groceries, packaged goods, self-checkout, credit cards, and so many more new-fangled contraptions? When sugar, flour, beans, etc. were stored in big bins and had to be hand-measured into a paper bag by a clerk  who then weighed the item and calculated the cost? In Germany where I grew up, such stores were common at least until the end of the 1960s, even in big cities where one could find several supermarkets as well.

Martin’s, the general store in El Rito which closed its doors for the last time on  August 29, 2009, was different from my German memories. At Martin’s, besides groceries one could buy horseshoes, nails, screws, bolts,  and hammers, pails, ropes, medicines, crockery and dishes, soap, lanterns, chicken feed, kitchen gadgets  – just about anything the local families and farmers might need. Oh, and one could get gas, too. It was a sad event for the community when the store closed, people had to drive to Abiquiú or Espanola for almost everything.

The building stood empty, but unchanged for many years. I always wanted to find out more about its past. Greg Martin, who ran the store until it closed and who is the grandson of the original owner George Martin, moved to Albuquerque, I learned. But his cousin Michael Martin (everybody knows him as Mike), who is  the Chair of Northern New Mexico College’s Board of Regents, lives in El Rito and kindly agreed to meet with me. Over a cup of coffee at the Abiquiú Inn we had a lovely chat.

​First of all, a quick family history, so you’ll know who Mike is referring to later. George Martin Senior started the store together with his business partner John Sargent in the 1920s and eventually became the sole proprietor. He was married to Margaret Allen Martin, an Irish nurse with the nickname Dambo, who ran a Maternal and Child Health Care Center in El Rito. They had five children: John, Tom, Roberta, George and Pat. Tom, and later Tom’s son Greg ran the store until it closed. “The Martins also acquired a ranch, later managed by their son Pat, daughter-in-law JoAnn, and grandchildren Mike and Tim.”(1)

Image credit: Evergreens & Dandelions on Unsplash

Which means that Mike, the person I was talking with, is the grandson of the store’s original owner, and that his uncle Tom and later his cousin Greg ran the store, while he grew up on his father’s ranch.

Where did your family originally come from, I asked Mike.
“My grandfather, George Martin, came from Alsace Lorraine, and went to school at Manhattan University in New York,” I learned. “Then they thought he had tuberculosis, so he came out west for his health.  Because he had a bachelor's degree from Manhattan College, and they needed somebody to be the principal at the school here, he moved to El Rito. And then he met my grandmother, who was originally from Ireland, Margaret Allen, and they were married in 1912.”

Wait a minute – is Mike talking about the El Rito campus of Northern New Mexico College? I had no idea it had such a long history.
​
(1)Rio Grande Sun, Obituaries

Image credit: Gia Marie Hook

“It was founded in 1909 as a normal school to train teachers”, Mike informed me. “It actually became a college before we were even a state, in 1912.”

​This is so interesting that I had to do a bit of research. The school was known as the Spanish American Normal School and was a teacher training institution, originally meant to train students to become teachers for the local schools in Northern New Mexico. It was the first institution for Hispanics in the United States. In 1969 the last class graduated from Normal School, and it became part of Espanola’s Northern New Mexico College in 1971 (actually, a community college until 2005).

“My grandfather was working at the college,” Mike continued.  “He was their first principal in 1910, and then in 1913 they promoted him to be President. He was president for one year, because in 1914 they moved the family to Pueblo, Colorado. They moved back to El Rito in 1925, and George went into partnership with a man by the name of John Sergeant. They both had a store together. Eventually the partnership dissolved, and my grandfather went into business by himself. This must have been about 1930, where the current Martin store is.”

“My grandfather's degree was in languages. He spoke German, French, English, and Spanish. He was very good friends with Mr. Bode, with Martin Bode,  Karl's father.” Sure, because Martin Bode immigrated from Germany at the turn of the last century. The area of Alsace-Lorraine was part of Imperial Germany from 1871 until the Treaty of Versailles at the End of World War I, and even today people in the region speak a dialect which is similar to Swiss German. At the same time, people are fluent in French and German. One can imagine that Martin Bode and George Martin would easily communicate in German.

How was it growing up in El Rito as a kid, I wanted to know. Did you go to school somewhere in El Rito? Was there a school? I had no idea, of course.

Mike corrected me.  “I went to school here in Abiquiú, to the St. Thomas Catholic school. I started in 1964 in the first grade, and went through the spring of 1971 when they closed the school. That’s when I was in the seventh grade. I spent my eighth grade at El Rito Elementary, then went to Mesa Vista High School, and graduated in 1976.”

So how did you get from El Rito to Abiquiú, I asked.

“There were three or four families that carpooled,” I learned. “At the school,  we had four nuns, and there were two classes for each nun, and school was held in what's now the Parish Hall. There were two classes in each room per nun.”

So there was no school bus, I wanted to confirm.

​“Well, there was a school bus that picked up the kids here in Abiquiú, but it didn't go all the way to El Rito,” Mike explained.

When I heard that Mike attended Mesa Vista High School near Ojo Caliente, I was reminded of my recent interview with Quentin Wilson; both he and his wife Maria had been teachers at Mesa Vista. Did he know them, was he their student, I asked Mike.

“I know them both very well,” was his reply, but they were not his teachers.  “He is quite the adobe specialist, and he helped us with some projects at
our house.” Funny, how this all weaves together. But then again, in small towns everybody knows everybody, of course.

Mike went to college at the New  Mexico State University in Las Cruces, and graduated in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in agriculture and  economics. And then he returned to El Rito and worked on the ranch, because his father inherited the ranch, while his Uncle Tom got the store.

I imagined that it would be fun for a young kid to spend time at a grocery store where everybody you know would show up sooner or later. But it turned out that I was wrong.

“We used to help my Uncle Tom do the inventory at the end of the year”, I learned, “but that was about the extent of my time at the store. We stayed pretty busy on the ranch with all the work to be done there.” Sure, that made sense; I didn’t think of that.

But I did want to hear about the store – was it a true general  shopping place, where one could purchase just about anything, I wanted to know.

​“Yes, it was a general store,” he confirmed. “They had everything. They had groceries, they had hardware, dry goods, just about anything that you need. My Uncle Tom had horse shoes, plumbing parts,  feed for the livestock, candy, and he had a gas station as well.”

“The store was really busy for a long time. My uncle used to have a couple of gentlemen working for him, and then a couple of young boys would come in after school and help them with stocking the shelves. Yes, they did a lot of business.”

As Mike was talking, I could  almost  picture everything, the cash register, the balance scales to weigh dry goods,  the baskets with apples, carrots, and other produce. I could smell a mixture of onions, garlic, and spices.

“When they first had the store, there was a big counter in the front. You came in and gave your list to the proprietor, and they filled your order while you waited for your items. Then later they switched over to where you would actually go shop for yourself. But for a long time, there wasn't anything like self serving. No, you came in and visited with the other people while they got your groceries together.”

It must have been a social hub of sorts, where people could meet and hang out.
Mike confirmed: “The post office was right across the street; the building that’s right next to El Farolito used to be the old post office. So, everything was right there together. You could come to get your mail and then you could shop. And you could get the gasoline for your tractor or your truck.”

And then it all changed. It became harder and harder to make a profit because customers dwindled. Were there more people living in El Rito then, or why did business  sort of peter out?

“I think people weren't nearly as mobile back then as they are now,” Mike explained.  “And they couldn't easily get to town. You know, back in the 20s, there were very few automobiles in El Rito. People just had horses and teams and wagons,  and it was just subsistence living. It was a big deal to go to Espanola even back in the 60s.”

And there were no streets, only  dirt roads. If it was raining, it would be a drag to go to a store somewhere farther away.But then your cousin Greg at some point had enough, I suggested.

​“Yes, Greg closed the store in 2009. He had run it since 1974 or so, and business had slowed down. A lot. People were doing a lot more shopping in town, and he was just ready for some peace and quiet.”

Was it sad and difficult for the community when the store closed, I asked Mike.

“Yes, it was very hard,” he confirmed. “Greg was the only one selling gasoline fuel at that point. The other store in El Rito had been selling fuel, but then they stopped so we no longer had any gas station in town. We had to drive to Bode’s or go to Espanola or to Ojo Caliente to get fuel, and that was a big adjustment for everybody.”

I asked Mike about the work on their ranch, what he had to do when growing up.

“We had a lot of cattle,” he told me,  “so we had to irrigate some fields and grow alfalfa, and then we cut it and made hay bales. We’d take the cattle up into the mountains, to our forest service permit area, and they'd spend the summer up there. So we had to go up there and check on them, and then we’d bring them back home, so they'd spend the winter there in El Rito on the fields, and we'd have to feed them every day. Taking care of animals was a big part of the routine.”

Mike had a final word: “The community has been very, very good to our family. They were always supportive and I've always felt lucky. It’s been a privilege to be able to live in El Rito.”

​Thank you, Mike, for telling me about your family, about your past, and about the iconic store in El Rito.

What better way to introduce a poet and writer than with one of her poems? So, here it is:

Lake Valley

At the end of the road, there is a gate

It is an old gate

The kind that takes two arms to pull

Common rez courtesy means the passenger opens the gate

while the driver passes through

The mud ruts make everything hard

An abandoned one room house keeps guard at the gate

Someone told me once a family of five lived there

I don’t know if it’s true, but it could be

There is a thrum in the ground

Petrified wood scatters with pottery shards

The wind carries small porous pebbles of ancient lava

In the distance, I see a group of wild horses

The days of taming them are gone

The road has alternate paths forward

A way cut through when the rains came

At the end of the road is the house, hogan, and corral

A lonely tornado ruined the house long ago

someone told me

Many people once came here for ceremony

My grandfather sat at the head of the hogan

A circle of us sat along the wall

Tobacco smoke holding the room, keeping us warm

There was blue corn mush and elk meat with piñon

There was tea in a pail


There was sweet corn and canned fruit

I used to pick out the cherries for myself

The thrum tenderized the ground

The drum pulled the room inward to the fireplace

A song carried out the chimney, ribboned with wind

that finds me here today, years later

opening a gate for ghosts to pass through

Santana Shorty

A good poem captures your attention by building a multi-dimensional picture: it creates a rhythmic, visual image which is imbued with your feelings, memories, and thoughts, as if tiny hooks would pull little snippets from your mind and weave them into a reflection of the words you read. At least, that’s my experience reading Santana’s poem, and now I want to learn more. When did she start writing poetry, how did she become a writer? Although she has a full schedule, Santana graciously agreed to chat with me.

She was born in Santa Fe and grew up in Abiquiú, Santana told me. The family lived in Plaza Blanca, and when she was about eight years old her parents separated. She and her Mom moved to Barranco while her Dad moved to Lindrith, a small village past Coyote and Gallina.

Santana’s father is Navajo, and she is a member of the Navajo Nation. Her mother is Anglo and has been a teacher at Abiquiú Elementary for many years. Santana started school there, then went to Fairview Elementary in Espanola for a couple of years because her mother was teaching there, and then returned  to Abiquiú for fifth and sixth grade, again because her mother was teaching there. For middle- and high school she attended  the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe.

​“My mother is an amazing teacher,” Santana told me. “She's taught for  25 years, and she always stuck with elementary, first grade, second grade, those are her favorites. She encouraged my and my sister's artistic interests, she really nourished those. I've always been a big reader, and she got me the books I wanted to read. So I've been reading a lot ever since I was really young, and I've been writing since I was really young. My Mom  did a remodel recently and found a bunch of boxes filled with things that she had collected over the years. In some of the boxes there were some journals with poetry I wrote when I was six years old.”

How nice of her mother to preserve all these early records! I bet it was fun to sort through them.

​For middle- and highschool, Santana was a dorm student at the Santa Fe Indian School, something that was both challenging and enriching. On the one hand, it was hard because she loved Abiquiú and being with her family. She would try to spend the weekends at home, but often Cross Country and Track and Field events took place on Saturdays. It was inconvenient to go home for one night and be back at the school by Sunday afternoon, so she would stay for close to two weeks sometimes. On the other hand, it taught her self-reliance and independence.

“I was valedictorian of my school, and I got a full-ride scholarship to go to Stanford, which is where I went for my undergraduate studies,” Santana explained. “One of my main extracurriculars was poetry.”

I wanted to hear more about Santana’s poetry. She had mentioned that she wrote poems at an early age – what motivated her? Is it even possible to put that impulse into words?

She had to think about this for a moment. “For me, it is a way of processing the world,” she answered. “The artistic component is a byproduct of trying to understand life and experiences. It's not always that I want to write a good poem. It's that I have something on my mind that I can't let go of. The only way for me to satisfactorily explore that is via poetry. And then afterwards I recognize that I have a piece here that I want to work with.”

This is so interesting. It’s almost as if something is nagging her, as if a poem knocks on her head and wants to come in and then she has to explore the meaning of it.

Santana explained further: “A lot of artists have their little obsessions, the things that they have to return to again and again, and maybe at some point they can move on to the next thing. It's part of that. You have to get it out of your system, you have to explore this thing so many times, until you can finally put it to rest and don’t have to think about it anymore.”

​And what are the things that want to be explored, I wanted to know. Do they come from the past? Or from relationships? Do they come from nature?

“For me, what tends to be knocking usually comes from nature,” I learned.  “I write a lot of poetry about landscape, and the desert. New Mexico. That's something I can always write about, and will forever be obsessed with. Sometimes it also can be current events or a life experience.”

She continued telling me about her education: “I went to Stanford in the Bay Area, and I graduated with a biology degree. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I ended up in the tech industry, and I worked in the tech industry for a long time in the Bay Area. In 2019 I moved back to New Mexico because I missed it and I wasn't really happy in the Bay Area anymore. I tried to pivot into a career in the public sector and I worked for the Santa Fe Public School District in their Native American Student Services Program. I was hoping to shift into a full time government position, but then the pandemic hit, and there was a hiring freeze. So I went back to the tech sector because it was reliable.”

​“I was working for a bank creating banking software,” Santana continued. “During all this time I was writing. I wanted to get more experience with writing, I wanted to learn how to write more formally. So I started to take some continuing education classes with UNM and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and eventually one of the teachers encouraged me to apply for the IAIA’s MFA program in creative writing. But  I didn't know if I was good enough, I didn't know if I had the credentials. My Dad also went to IAIA in the 80s for Studio Arts. He's a sculptor and a painter. And so eventually one of my poetry teachers from the Continuing Ed classes pushed me a little: ‘Come on, you should have already applied!’ So I did, was accepted, and started the program in 2022.”

It was fascinating to listen to Santana. “It was the best decision of my life, I found my people and my community in that cohort. I had started a novel, and the program helped me finish the novel, I finished the first draft in February of last year, and I graduated in May. After getting my MFA I really wanted to have my writing passion mimic my day-to-day existence. It felt as if I had split personalities, my big-girl banking job in the daytime, and then writing at night. What job could I do that would enable me to do both?”

“And then two weeks after my graduation the president of NMSA (New Mexico School for the Arts) here in Santa Fe called me and said that they had an opening for the Creative Writing Department chair position! I applied, started the interview process, and they offered me the job at the end of June last year. So I gave notice to my banking job, moved to Santa Fe, and started as the department chair. Now I teach creative writing to high school students, run the department, and I still get to work on my own creative projects and writing. Life has really shifted in the last year to align with my ultimate dream job.”

​Doesn’t this sound  fantastic? We often have to work jobs simply  to make money, jobs that are not ideal. But Santana could give up her banking job and now pursue her passion. She can work in a field that is most dear to her heart and that supports her. That's so  impressive.

Santana agreed. “For a long time, I didn't think of it seriously. I just thought of writing as my hobby. For many years, especially after graduating college, I didn't know what my dream job would be. I knew what my dream or my passion was, but to turn this into a job that would support me? I didn’t think that was possible. But I tried new things and pushed myself out of my comfort zone,  and that’s how I found out what my dream job could be. Yes, I'm going to take a big pay cut from the fancy tech job, but I'm going to be so much happier.”

What are some other goals, I asked her.

“My short term goals: over the next five years, I want to grow this department and bring it to the next level. During my first year I made a lot of changes, and I'm excited that I have the experience now to improve even further. And I'd really like to finish revising the novel I've been revising since last summer. Starting a new job takes a lot of energy, and I had less time to dedicate to the novel during this school year. I want  to find a better balance with that for the next school year. Revise the novel and find a literary agent who is aligned with me and my writing values. And eventually get the novel published. Plus, I have a lot of poetry that I'd like to compile and edit into a collection.”

​“And I want to do smaller writing projects along the way,” Santana went on.  “I have an essay that'll be coming out shortly with resilience magazine, it’s a creative non-fiction essay. I’d like to take on some journalism projects. I'd love to apply for artist residencies and make space for professional development in that area. And, personally, I love Santa Fe, I was born here. I went to middle school and high school here. I lived here for a little bit in 2019 before I moved to Albuquerque, and then came back last year. I'm excited to build my community here among my circle of friends.”

“I want to buy a house, that's a dream I have.  I'd love to have a place in
Abiquiú, but it's gotten so expensive there. It’s sad that people who grew up there can't afford to live there. Santa Fe is also very expensive, but there may be more opportunities.  I keep my hopes open and keep thinking good thoughts about it.”

​The revision process for Santana's current novel sounds very intense. She’s rewriting everything, a big task indeed. At the same time, she’s working on smaller projects, to keep her sanity, she said – essays, poems, maybe short stories. Actually, short stories are the hardest to write, she told me. One  has to be very efficient and precise, and that is really challenging.

After she got her Master's Degree, Santana did a residency, I read on Facebook. I wanted to hear more about this.

“I applied to the Aldo Leopold Writing Program early last year. They used to only have the Tres Piedras residency at Aldo Leopold's house, and last year was the first year that they added a second residency location which is in Lany in the Galisteo Basin. There was a casita there, donated by a wonderful woman who runs a Horse Sanctuary out there. Usually the Leopold residency program is offered to people into nature conservation, just like Leopold was. Non-fiction botanists,  or people who are writing books about birds or land conservation. I applied although I’m a fiction writer, because my whole story takes place in New Mexico, and the landscape is a big central theme of the story. So I applied, but didn’t feel confident about it. And then I was the first fiction writer they selected! That was one month last year, in July, that I got to just work on the novel, which was really special. I had never done a residency before, and I loved being out there.”

“You're really on your own out there, but I was, I am so lucky that the Institute of American Indian Arts program is so supportive, so loving. I still have great relationships with many of the teachers and can ask any of them for help. So I did reach out to some of them, asking, how do I make the most out of this time? And they gave me a lot of great advice.”

​I hope Santana will find a skilled and talented editor soon. I can’t wait to see her novel published. What a strong and powerful voice she has. I found a YouTube video from fifteen years ago, of Santana reciting one of her poems, which is deeply moving in the current political climate when children are snatched out of schools and babies are torn from their mothers. With poignant opinions such as Santana’s, maybe all is not lost…  Thank you, Tana, for talking with me, so that our readers can learn about you, your poetry, your life.

Interview with Maximiño Manzanares

By Jessica Rath

When I interviewed MariaElena Jaramillo in February, she told me about the Matachines Dances being revived in El Pueblo de Abiquiú, and later suggested that I get in touch with Maximiño Manzanares if I wanted to learn more. Several other people in Abiquiú mentioned the name – in connection with teaching music and art at the elementary school, for example, or: “what a kind, community-oriented person this is”, I heard. The perfect subject for an interview, I thought, and when Maximiño was kind enough to set aside some time for a conversation, we met at the Abiquiú Inn to talk. They’re the youngest person I’ve interviewed so far – they’re 24 years old. Maximiño uses the pronouns “they” and “them”, and because I strongly believe that everybody has the right to decide this, I will honor their wishes, of course.

Maximiño was born and raised in Santa Fe, which is called O’ga P’ogeh Owingeh (White Shell Water Place) in the Tewa language, as I learned. Maximiño comes from an intergenerational line of musicians, including their Dad David Manzanares, their Tío Michael Manzanares, their late Grandpa Herman Manzanares, as well as many more aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives.Music, singing, dance, and other artistic endeavors are embedded in their family’s genes and go back many generations. It was a delight to hear stories not only about Maximiño’s childhood, but also about their Tías, Tíos, Abuelos, and Bisabuelos [for our Spanish-challenged readers: Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and Great-Grandparents].

“Both my Mom and my Dad have amazing musical backgrounds, and they have immersed me in music my whole life,” Maximiño told me. “On the day I was born, my parents and I were joined by my Tío Michael, my cousin Peter, and all four of my grandparents. My Grandpa Herman brought his guitar, and all of my family who was there sang Las Mañanitas, one of our traditional birthday songs, for me. In my first moments of being earthside, my family sang to me to welcome me to the world. Part of the lyrics translate to: “On the day that you were born, all the flowers bloomed.” Las Mañanitas means “the early mornings”, and it's a song that we sing to honor people on their birthday. So, it was, is, and always will be a deep blessing for me that, on the day that I was born, my family came together to sing me into the world.”

What an absolutely delightful story, listening to the music your family performs for you the moment you are born! What a wonderful welcome. But there is more.

Maximiño continued: “When my Momma was pregnant with me, she and my Dad would play music all the time, even with headphones that they would put over her tummy so I could hear more clearly. I was surrounded by music, even before I was born!”

The residence of Maximiño’s great-grandparents and grandparents was built in a part of Abiquiú known locally as Los Silvestres. Over the years, it has come to be marked by an adobe wall and a rock retaining wall. I must have passed it thousands of times. That’s where Maximiño’s great-grandparents Maximinio and Rosana S. Manzanares raised their Grandpa Herman’s generation, where their Grandpa Herman and Grandma Ellie raised their Dad’s generation, and where they’re living now with their Mom and Dad.

“When I was little, before I started school in Santa Fe, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and familia as a whole in Abiquiú, and those are deeply cherished times in my life,” Maximiño continued. “In the spring, when the water was flowing through the acequia, my cousins and I would get little paper cups, and we'd catch tadpoles. And then we’d let them go, of course! Or, we’d race sticks down the ditch, or play around the apricot trees that our Grandpa Maximinio planted. There was no limit to our imagination. And there was always music, and so much love, and wonderful stories! All this made us feel so grounded.”

​After elementary school, Maximiño attended ATC, The Academy for Technology and the Classics, in Santa Fe, and after graduation matriculated into Stanford University in 2018. In September of 2019, after their first year of college, they moved from Santa Fe back to Abiquiú, together with their parents. Then, during Maximiño’s sophomore year, the COVID-19 pandemic globalized, and they took a leave of absence from school to return to Abiquiú and help their parents care for their Grandma Eleanor.

“We were with my Grandma Ellie from October of 2020 until she passed away on August 1st of 2022,” Maximiño went on. “We got to spend almost another two years together, and those were some of the most sacred experiences of my life. We shared so many conversations, so many meals, and so many laughs. And she shared so much wisdom from her childhood and her life as a whole, including stories about her parents, her grandfather, and her extended family. She forever forged, strengthened, and cultivated my heart and spirit. It was immensely special for me to get to live together with my Grandma, Mom, and Dad in this way.”

During this time, Maximiño and their family quarantined, masked, and practiced other safety protocols that the pandemic has necessitated in order to help keep everybody safe. After their grandmother’s passing, Maximiño started to participate more in the community doings while still continuing to mask and practice other COVID-19 safety protocols. For example, they and their Dad began participating with the choir. The Pueblo de Abiquiú Choir performs during masses for the community, whether for weekly mass, baptisms, weddings, quinceañeras, or funerals and burials. Maximiño’s Grandpa Herman led the choir for over 25 years, and now they and their father continue the tradition.

​“Actively participating in and leading the choir has constellated us to other musical doings in the Pueblo, including the Las Posadas, Christmas caroling with the youth, events with the Library and Cultural Center, and our Feast Days. Music is such a wonderful way to bring people together. You get to see everybody, you get to connect with the elders and the young ones and all the relatives in between, and you get to take part in feeling the pulse of the community and making memories together.”

I was curious: what’s Maximiño’s major at Stanford? What are they studying?

​“I have a bit more than one full year left of school,” I learned. “I started in 2018, but because of personal and family circumstances, I've taken multiple leaves of absence. I've had a very non-traditional path through college, and it's been so beautiful because I’m getting this parallel experience of schooling in California alongside the education from my family, my community, and the land here. They all coalesce in an amazing manner. I intend to go back to school as soon as possible, complete my remaining coursework, graduate, and then return to Abiquiú.”

“My major is in a program called CSRE, which stands for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity”, Maximiño explained.  “CSRE majors get to choose one of many different concentrations, and mine is called IDA, which stands for Identity, Diversity, and Aesthetics. The IDA concentration focuses (through the lens of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) on the ways that diverse racial and ethnic communities utilize various forms of artmaking and storytelling to perpetuate their cultures and to struggle for liberation of all people and the Earth.”

“It has been an immense privilege to get to learn about and participate in the various doings and lifeways in El Pueblo de Abiquiú. All of my tías and tíos, all my primas and primos, and of course my Dad, have been so generous and gracious to share their knowledge, teachings, and understandings with me. For example, mi querido Mano Dexter Trujillo has been teaching me the songs that are done for our feast days. I am also learning more about the songs and prayers that we do when our elders and other dear community members pass away.  I am forever grateful to every relative from the Pueblo for their teachings and their love. To be entrusted with these ways and with the responsibility of helping pass them on is such an honor.”

Yes, I understand the appeal. Those traditions can easily get lost.

Next, Maximiño told me about another project. “My Tía Victoria Garcia, who is the principal of Abiquiú Elementary, invited me to be a contracted Music and Art Teacher at the school. I enthusiastically accepted, and, between March and May of this year, I had the blessing and honor of teaching a little over 70 students from kindergarten to sixth grade.  It felt especially cosmic because so many of my ancestors were teachers. My great-grandfather Maximinio, who I'm named after, was a teacher here in Abiquiú and Barranco. My grandmother's mom, Cordelia Laumbach Maés, was a teacher. My Tío Benigno “Bennie” Manzanares was a teacher. My Tía Patricia Manzanares-Gonzales was a teacher, professor, and administrator. They were all school teachers, yet, as my Grandpa Herman would say, ‘Everybody can be your teacher!”

​Such wise words were common in Maximiño’s family, and they shared more quotes that were passed on through generations.

“My Mom has said: ‘It is not in the perfect moments we grow, but in the imperfect ones.’ My Dad has said: ‘Poco a poco, se anda lejos’ (Little by little, one goes far) and ‘We must live with respect, humility, consideration, and love’. My Grandma Ellie would tell my Dad: ‘If you can dream it, you can be it!’ And my Grandpa Herman told me, ‘If you want to be somebody special, be yourself!’ So, the wisdom that my parents and grandparents have shared with me has strengthened my roots, so that no matter where I go, I can be true to myself, true to where I’m from, and I can strive to move forward in my life with the utmost love for all of my present relationships; with the utmost respect for my ancestors; and with the utmost love and devotion for all future generations. In the words of James Baldwin: ‘The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.’ We are responsible for all of them, including and especially those who we will not physically meet during our lifetimes.”

​I was so impressed with the way Maximiño acknowledged the guidance and support they received from their family. And not only accepted it but internalized it, made it their own to pass it on to others and future generations. And then I learned from Maximiño one of the stories of where this sensibility came from:
​
“There's a story that my Dad has told me with regard to people’s ‘dones’ [gifts], and it’s about wisdom from the late Teresita Naranjo, an elder and incredible potter from Santa Clara Pueblo and a dear friend of my grandparents. One time Ms. Naranjo was over at my grandparents’ home when my Dad was about 14, and my Grandfather asked my Dad to play the guitar for her. So my Dad played for her, and she listened to him, and when my Dad finished his song, Ms. Naranjo said: ‘You have a gift, and that gift is not just yours. That gift belongs to your parents, and me, and the community, and the whole world. The Creator has entrusted you with this gift, and your responsibility is to make it the best that you can, so you can then share it and give it back to the world.’ My Dad and my Mom have raised me in that same way and spirit. All of the things that fill my heart, like music and dance and my family and our community and our culture, they are not just for me or for any one person. The gifts themselves are not solely ours, but, as I learned from my Dad’s story about Ms. Naranjo, what is ours is the responsibility to make them the best we can so we can share them back with the world respectfully, generously, and wholeheartedly.”

Maximiño shared another great story with me. “Back in 2018, during my first year of college, I got to be a part of an a cappella group on campus called Stanford Talisman. They were founded on campus in 1990 with the intention of sharing music with compelling stories from around the world. A lot of their original repertoire is comprised of struggle songs from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. So the origin of Talisman is rooted in struggles for Black Liberation, and over the past 35 years, the group has come to include music from all over the world. By the time I joined the group, a little before their 30th anniversary, we got to learn songs from Hawai’i, a song from Nicaragua, multiple Black American songs, and songs from India.”

​“Every year, Stanford Talisman goes on a tour for spring break,” Maximiño continued, “and for my freshman year, we went to India! So here I am, 18 years old, the first time I ever really traveled internationally… I remember being in awe when we were in Udaipur because its biome and climate are so similar to that of Abqiuiú. Even some of the homes in Udaipur reminded me of the adobe homes here. It was such a cosmic experience.”

“Then flash forward to this year, and one of my dear friends and fellow alum from the group reached out and let me know that the current group was going to come to New Mexico for their tour this year. So my family and I helped them coordinate their lodging and their itinerary. They stayed and performed in Santa Fe and Ghost Ranch. They also did an assembly at the elementary school in Abiquiú and shared some music in the Pueblo –– to me, it felt that everything came full circle. This coalescence of my upbringing, my family, my time at Stanford, my time with Talisman, and my time in the Pueblo, they all coalesced and got woven together.”

Maximiño is such a good storyteller, I could have listened to them for hours. Here is another one:

“I mentioned earlier that my Grandma Ellie would tell my Dad, ‘If you can dream it, you can be it!’ From my Grandma’s saying, my Dad and Mom co-created and co-cultivated the idea of dreamseeds.” 

“Just like we have seeds that we plant in the garden,” Maximiño continued, “so, too, do we have the seeds of our dreams that we can plant out into the world, and they each need their own tending in order to grow and ultimately come true. Of my dreamseeds, I have two in particular that I would like to share right now––one for El Pueblo de Abiquiú, and the other for the world as a whole. My dreamseed for the Pueblo is that our people, both individually and collectively, will do everything we can to learn as much as we can about who we are, about our truths, and about where we come from. It's from these truths that we can have a strong foundation and be the best relatives that we can be, not only to one another in the Pueblo but also to all our relatives in the greater Abiquiú community, and all of our relatives in the whole world!”

What Maximiño next told me made me happy. Maybe there is hope, after all.

​“My family and I are vehemently against all forms of oppression. I'm thinking of our relatives in Palestine and in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Sudan, and of all the people who are facing colonization and ethnic cleansing and genocide… So my dreamseed for the whole world is the liberation of all colonized and oppressed peoples and for me to do everything that I possibly can to help realize this collective dream.”

“My Grandfather would say (and my Dad continues to say) that every day we give thanks for the Breath of Life. I want to become so fiercely intentional such that  I live and act each day knowing that every breath I take is not just mine. With every breath that we’re given, may we all come to understand the next right things to do, and may we then do them, even when they are scary, uncomfortable, or new.

​“May I become more grounded in my body. What is my whole body feeling? What is it receiving? What is it giving, and how does it fit into this beautiful, intricate, infinite multiversal web that we're all a part of?”

Important questions indeed, worthy of contemplation, and somehow surprising to come from a young person. More wisdom and less Ego – that’s what I usually expect from older people, and often I’m disappointed. To meet somebody who isn’t preoccupied with their own success, who doesn’t dream of becoming famous but of serving their community – this doesn’t happen all that often. And yet, I’m not surprised to find such a person in Abiquiú, which has plenty of unconventional, community-oriented people.

​We will continue this conversation at a future time; I’d like to learn more about the traditional Matachine dances, and Maximiño will consult with the elders who have made their revival in Abiquiú possible about what can be shared, as well as the most respectful and considerate way to share these stories. And I definitely want to hear more stories from Maximiño’s abuelitos. It was such a pleasure to listen. I know you have many commitments, Maximiño, and I’m grateful for the time you gave me. May all the flowers keep blooming for you!

Countless visitors from all over the United States come to Ghost Ranch every year, either to spend a few weeks during the summer, staying at a cabin and participating in one of the many programs offered, or for a day of outdoors adventure when they’re driving by on Hwy 84. For many of us who live in or around Abiquiú, Ghost Ranch evokes recollections of exceptional hikes. I’ll never forget the first time I made it to the top of Kitchen Mesa, all by myself, and the exhilarating views that took my breath away. I could see my minuscule car in the parking lot, an impressive testimony for the height I had climbed. It’s a region of glorious beauty which has captivated young and old for many years.

​Now imagine that you spent many joyful summers  as a kid at Ghost Ranch, and you return as an adult lots of years later, to work there. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it! That’s what happened to David Evans, who started as Ghost Ranch’s new Chief Executive Officer in January 2024. He was kind enough to meet with me recently, when he told me about the long journey that brought him to Abiquiú.

David grew up in Salina, Kansas. The first time he came to Ghost Ranch was when he was five years old and his mother taught a photography class here. And then he and his parents came every summer for years, sometimes they would drive here from Kansas, and sometimes they would take the train to Lamy. While his mother taught photography, his father took all sorts of different workshops.

“So I grew up playing here every summer and had lots of wonderful first experiences here,” David told me. “The place has been really special to my whole family for years. My sister later worked on the college staff here. Professionally, my career has been in international relief and development, and so I lived in the Middle East for a long time.”

How exciting! I asked David to tell me more.
“I lived in Lebanon for a while, then in Iraq and in Jordan,” he continued. “I moved to Iraq in 2008 and I was there for about five years, and then I worked in Lebanon, and for a shorter stay in Jordan. I met my wife in Iraq, she's Scottish, and we were both doing aid work there.”

I asked David to define what that entailed. What does it mean to do aid work? How did you help?

“When we were in Iraq, the biggest program I worked on was designed to help Iraqis engage in local government,” he explained. “It was a program to help foster deeper engagement in the decisions that were affecting them through the government. It also supported local nonprofits, and then there were a number of different ways we would help people engage with their local leaders. Also, it involved  delivering basic humanitarian needs, such as water, to different communities. We had a number of educational programs, programs to teach girls how to read, for example.”

“Later, when I was in Lebanon, I had a regional position, and at that time, the Syrian war was in full swing,” David continued. “Lots of people were being driven across the border. And so the organization I worked with had operations in all the surrounding countries to help with refugees.”

Now that the U.S. government stopped all support for overseas aid organizations, you must feel particularly bad because you were involved with some, I commented.

“My wife and I both were just devastated, because the communities that we were working with desperately needed assistance. The result of years and years of effort was just wiped out. We all helped, and those communities will be suffering for sure,” David confirmed.

​That's really too sad. I didn’t want to dwell on this and asked whether he came back to the United States with his wife, after their time in the Middle East.

“No, first we were in Southeast Asia for a while, for about five years,” David corrected. “We were in Myanmar, in Burma, and then Thailand. So we were working in Myanmar, and then after the coup, we had to leave in a hurry, and we moved to Thailand. Then we were working in Thailand, and I was eventually working for EarthRights International,  a human rights and environmental defense organization. We lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand.”

“We moved from Chiang Mai, Thailand back to the United States in January 2024, so a year and a half ago,” David continued. “I've got two boys, they're in second and fourth grade at Abiquiú Elementary. The move has been a big transition for them. Most of their memories are from Thailand and Myanmar!”

What was different for them, I asked.

“Well, I had to show them how to tie their shoes and wear jeans, for example,” David told me. “They were wearing flip flops and shorts their whole life.”

I’m convinced that it's good for a young person to be exposed to many different cultures and languages and David confirmed that they're doing really well,
playing basketball and soccer and things like that. Abiquiu Elementary is a lovely school, he said, so they're doing just great.

​And how did he end up at Ghost Ranch, I wanted to know.

“When I was working in Thailand, the Chair of the search committee to fill this position emailed me out of the blue with this opportunity,” David told me. “He is a good friend of my mother, and I was very excited and applied for it. I really wanted this job, and when I got it we made the move back to the US.”

And what does it entail to be the CEO of Ghost Ranch? What are your obligations and responsibilities, I asked.

David’s answer was impressive. “Well, we're an education and conference center, and we offer wonderful programs in the arts, spirituality, and social justice. There are more than 100 rooms here, and we have guests all year round, but we're especially busy in the summer. We also offer a wonderful youth program, and part of that is a community camp for Rio Arriba County residents. In the summer we offer swimming lessons for kids who live around here. And we have a wonderful dining hall and a library. There are two different museums, an archeological museum and a paleontological museum. We have great hikes here. We've got a staff of about 55 people year round, and that goes up to 85 in the summer. We expand a lot in the summer in order to take care of all of our summer guests, and so my job is to oversee all of that.”

He continued: “One of the main things we're doing right now is the construction of a large scale solar array. We'll be breaking ground with that soon, and then about 10% of our electricity will be solar. We're really excited about that. It's very important to us that we're good stewards of this land. For example, we're taking care of this field right out in front of us here.” David pointed to the big lot outside, in front of his office. “We got that ready to plant so that it's lovely and green soon. Taking care of our environment is top priority, and people learn that while they are here, that's just part of the whole experience.”

My next question had to do with continuity and innovation. As the new CEO, what is his vision for the future?

David mentioned a number of exciting ideas. “We're really committed to adding in more social justice work that helps us embody our values. We're an inclusive place. We care a lot about the sustainability of our land and our resources, and we feel that this is a place where people can gather a lot of strength from. We want to make sure that we give people ways to move that strength with them, into their own communities. That's been an important focus for us. And over the last few months we've been looking for new and better ways for people to experience the ranch. We're opening a café in about a week, and that'll be up in our headquarters building. Right now we have a wonderful food service, but it's only for overnight guests. With the café we'll have a place for day visitors to join us for lunch and coffee.”

​“What other changes can I talk about? We want to add new rooms, so we're embarking on a fundraising drive to build new rooms. We have more people who want to visit than we have rooms, and so that's an important project for us on the horizon. And we are really focused as a team on making sure that we're a very welcoming place for everyone. It's been a big, big focus of ours for the last year.”

I asked about the flood in 2015, when heavy rains washed some of the buildings away.

“We did a lot of work to restore that waterway,” David answered, “and we've trying to make sure that we've got the space to continue our primary classes. The classroom where we did our pottery classes was washed away, so we've been working to replace that.”

Where does the funding for all this come from, I wanted to know. Is Ghost Ranch an independent organization, I asked.

David explained: “The Presbyterian Church owns the land that we're on, and the National Ghost Ranch Foundation runs all of our programs. It's independent, but has a really strong and close working relationship with the Presbyterian Church. They have seats on our board and are the land owners. They're wonderful landlords and it's a very close collaboration, although the National Ghost Ranch Foundation is independent.”

“We really appreciate and respect our Presbyterian roots and values. We want to maintain alignment with those values because those are our values as well. We want to make sure we're looking for ways to bring those values to life.  We are open to everyone. We want to be a place for everyone.”

​Ever since my first hikes at Ghost Ranch in 2001 I’ve been impressed by the generosity of the Presbyterian Church to allow people free access to their land. There were no “Private Property” signs, no fences.  This is so kind.

There is Chimney Rock, Box Canyon, and Kitchen Mesa. Have you added any new hikes, I wanted to know.

​“Yes, we have the Piedra Lumbre Trail, out in the Painted Desert, which is beautiful. And then we have a great trail called ‘On a Lark Trail’ and the ‘Matrimonial Trail’. So those are some wonderful hikes that we have. All the trails you mentioned are on forest service land, we've got a really good collaboration with Carson National Forest who work on those trails, together with an AmeriCorps team. We just restored a significant portion of the Chimney Rock Trail.”

When I was driving north on Hwy 84 to Ghost Ranch, looking at the gorgeous rock formations, I started musing. They look so static, always the same. But they do change too over the many thousands  of years, we just don’t notice it. Do you have classes about geology, I asked.

​David responded: “Yeah, we do. We have some great guided hikes that focus on teaching people about the geology of the area.”

“We invite all of our neighbors from Rio Arriba County to come and visit,” David added.  “We have a daily use fee, but Rio Arriba County residents don't have to pay. I want to make sure that everyone knows that we’re open to all, and I'd love to have all our neighbors come visit, check out our hikes, and join us. We like for people to sign in when they use the trails, just in case there's an emergency, but people are free to use the trails.”

​How many people come to visit in the summer, I asked David.

“We had about 8,000 visitors so far. We often have over 20,000 day visitors a year,” I learned. “We now have programs year round. It's a really cozy place in the winter, and we’re working on expanding our year round offerings.”

“Most recently, we had programs in the middle of January, and those are mostly art focused. It’s really a lovely time to be here. And then we host the Blossoms and Bones concert in September, so that'll be in the Fall, it's a three-day Music Festival.

(Please click the link above for more info.)

Also, David wanted to make sure people know about the Summer community camps for kids, one in June and one in July (again, check out the links for more info, low cost for Rio Arriba residents).  And they offer swimming lessons this summer, where kids learn to swim – he learned to swim here, David told me. No more foreign travel for him and his family –  he loves being back, and I bet that’s great for Ghost Ranch in terms of stability and continuity. David is very busy, and I’m grateful he took the time to talk to me. Make sure you visit Ghost Ranch this summer, and bring the kids!

Compared to busy Abiquiú, Barranco is pleasantly sleepy and, yes, one could say dreamy. Everything proceeds at a slow pace; except for the paved road, things look much like they did 50 years ago, one could imagine. The perfect setting for an artist who has an intuitive connection to everything around her, animals, trees, birds, plants…

​I remembered Kathie Lostetter from many years ago when I participated in the Abiquiú Studio Tour and she was the board president or whatever she was called then. She kindly agreed to an interview for the Abiquiú News, which gave me the chance to learn more about her and her art.

Kathie grew up in New Jersey where she lived until she went to college in Florida, at the University of Miami. Her family lived near Newark, New Jersey, and then they moved to a lake in Sparta. Because of that, she has many happy memories of her childhood spending the summers in nature, swimming, running around through open fields, meeting wild animals.

​After she finished her university studies Kathie stayed in Florida for a number of years  and then moved to Michigan where she met Al, her husband, who was teaching art there. That was in 1975, just at the time when he was headed to New Mexico. She decided to meet him there, after she had packed up her things and closed that chapter of her life.

“He bought this place where we're right now, in 1975,” Kathie explained. “Since then we've added but the main core of it was a ruined adobe. And then we restored the ruin of the Torreon [tower] of the village, which was just a piece of wall. We rebuilt it, and that's where my husband’s studio is now. When we started with the Studio Tour we had lots of people who stopped by, and it was a really nice place to have both of our artwork at the Tour.”

She continued: “I studied art when I was in college. I studied mass media and art, and my idea was to do animation  in film but ended up doing sculptures in clay that are somewhat animated. When in college I did some work in clay and I realized I liked hand building, but I didn’t go too far with it then. After I had moved out here to Barranco, we built all of this. Al and I rebuilt the adobe buildings and then when our sons were bigger, they helped us too. So we started with our home where we’re right now, then we built a bird house for macaws, and then we rebuilt the torreon. And then there was another ruin which we eventually bought and restored. Owen, one of our sons, was living there for a while.”

“When we moved here, we knew we wanted to build passive solar. So then we slowly built this over time, and in the meanwhile I got a job teaching at Head Start, because our little boy was in the program. At first I was the assistant and then I became the teacher. I did that for about eight years.”

But what inspired her to create these beautiful, mythical creatures, I wanted to know.

​“Well, after living here for a while, I wanted to do my artwork again,” Kathie told me. “When I wasn't working, I was interested in folk tales and things like anthropology and petroglyphs and so on.”

“In the midst of that time I had a dream about an eagle. It was a skeleton covered with something like a buffalo robe. It was really scary! You can imagine, if you see a skeleton in your dream, it's pretty scary. But then it changed into a bald eagle. And so this being with the robe became my first sculpture. It was the Eagle in the Buffalo Robe.”

​Kathie went on: “It became this anthropomorphic thing. When I studied art in college I looked at modern art and I tried to connect to that world, even tried to do art like that. But I guess that I just had to find it myself with the animals. And so that’s what emerged, an anthropomorphic look at animals. The next one I think I did was a bear. So I had the eagle and the bear. And then I started doing any animal – this year, I did three belugas, not together, but three separate pieces of belugas. My granddaughter was so in love with belugas, so I made her one for her birthday. It's such an unusual animal to put in a robe that when I studied it, to sculpt the animal for her, I decided to do one for the gallery as well.”

What exactly do you mean when you say anthropomorphic, I asked Kathie. Do you mean that an animal is kind of equal to a human being?

She emphatically agreed. “Yes, they are standing like a human being. If you look at Egyptian art, you see for example the head of the Jackal on the body of a man. I just got fixated on portraying animals that way, and it may seem strange but I just proceeded with it.”

I strongly relate to that. Many humans, and especially science, treat animals as inferior, when we’re actually all connected. Of course, we humans have more advanced intellectual faculties, but babies don't have them either, and yet we don't treat them badly just because they cannot put one plus  one together.

​Again, Kathie agreed that she has a similar view. “When you look at ancient art, you realize that they had animal teachers, and that they were given priority over images of humans. Some of them were in the wild, like the painting of a horse running in the caves of Lascaux for example. But then, very early on, they mixed the attributes. I think there's one that's 30,000 years old of a lion man. The head is the lion, and the body is a man. And so that is just what came from inside me. It kind of worked for me. And then I expanded on it, and I was affected by what people liked, and that influenced me.  But my sculptures are always about the fact that it is a sacred animal.”

I had seen some of Kathie’s sculptures but I never really understood what they were about. Her explanation makes a lot of sense and I feel I'm on the same page with her artistic vision.

My next questions: how do you promote your art and display it in galleries, and also: I wanted to know more about the Studio Tour, because Kathie was one of the first artists who actually started it, if I remember correctly.

​“So maybe let's start with that,” Kathie answered. “I was with the Abiquiú Studio Tour for twenty years. I started showing at a gallery in Santa Fe 35 years ago with just a couple of pieces like a coyote and a bear and now show at The San Francisco Street Gallery. And then Lori and Richard Bock started the Studio Tour, we joined and were so amazed how many people came all the way out here to see our work. And actually, I had some pieces at the Abiquiú Inn pretty far back.”

“My smaller pieces go there, and my larger ones are going to Santa Fe to the gallery. And so, yes, we were excited about the tour, both for me and for my husband who is a painter. We set up a place where people could come and visit in the round building, the torreon. The Studio Tour was great for us. For many years I was the chairperson. In the beginning the whole idea was to keep it going, because I knew it was so good for all the local artists. For some of them it was the main avenue to sell their art.”

​“It was great for people of all levels, artists who are in a gallery and others who were just starting out. It was and is for all different types of art. The tour has been a wonderful thing, and the only reason I quit was because my work takes so long to do. Once this gallery I was in moved to a better location, I just couldn't have any more work, I couldn't keep up with what they wanted. This became too stressful,  plus, at the same time, I was a tour guide at the O'Keeffe House for seventeen years, so I also had a job.”

Kathie continued: “And so, it all added up: there were not enough hours in the day, and people would come up to visit. They love it up here, Barranco is sort of different, you know!”

At the beginning of the Studio Tour, how many artists did you have, I enquired.

“It may have been about twenty in the beginning, something like that,” Kathie told me. “Maybe even less for the very first tour. Somehow the number twenty four comes to mind, but it was quite small.”

​She continued: “The tour became rather successful, because different people would step up to help keep it going. You know, that was always the hard part, to get people to help run it. Sometimes we met at the Abiquiú Inn, and once we met outside the Parish Hall of the Church, and we had our meeting outside in the Plaza. And then the Clinic was a good meeting place for a while, we got a room there to have our meetings. So it really turned out great. I've still been with it since the Event Center became the place to have the meetings, and that was a really great place for meetings. I totally think it's wonderful. And over here, Tamara is still showing at Nest, and you see the people really showing up.”

And did you place your pieces in galleries, I wanted to know. How did that develop?

​Kathie’s answer was a bit shocking. “I was in this one gallery in Santa Fe for about eight to ten years, but then it burned down and I lost a lot of my work in the fire. They weren't even insured. Just last night I looked at the article from when it burned. It showed one of my sculptures. I had a piece that was just  laying there, with the firemen behind it, because when they hosed everything down, all the pieces broke. One white deer survived because it was in the back room. The gallery that burned down was on Canyon Road. But then I went to another gallery which  accepted me.”

Next, Kathie showed me around her home and studio, which was filled with many of her standing animal pieces:  owls, deer, a leopard, a bear. Many of them were mothers with a tiny baby safely tucked into the enveloping robe. She explained the process of creating her sculptures, using the unfinished piece below:

After it’s built by hand in clay, Kathie fires the sculpture in her kiln. Next, it will be painted with oil, which gives the piece its luminosity and vibrancy. She then uses feathers, semi-precious stones, beads, twigs, pieces of leather, and other objects to give each sculpture its stunning personality which has so much warmth but also majesty. Her creations are both playful and awe-inspiring, emanating a deep love for and understanding of the animal depicted. Each one  touches within the viewer feelings which all creatures share, and evokes an eternal wisdom which humans can only hope to attain. Thank you, Kathie, for taking the time to share your beautiful art with the Abiquiú News’ readership.

Interview with Katherine Eagleson, founder of Abiquiú Lake Amigos.

By Jessica Rath

When you think of a beautiful lake, what comes to mind first? I bet it’s swimming, maybe kayaking, or sailboarding, or some other recreational water activities. That’s the image most of us would conjure up. However, a lake has a lot more to offer to those who are interested: the birds and the insects one can see, the water quality, or checking boats for invasive species. Abiquiú Lake Amigos, a group with about twelve dedicated members, concerns itself with these more scientific projects.

​Katherine Eagleson formally started the group in 2023. She was kind enough to meet with me and explain what they do, and also, how she got into this: she’s a biologist who grew up in Iowa but has lived in northern New Mexico for 35 years. From around 2011 onward she did volunteer work for the Army Corps of Engineers, and when she retired, she started the Amigos group to continue with the survey of the water quality. They added bird surveys on the lake and down the Chama River for three miles below the dam,  and also began to do pollinator studies: bees and butterflies.

“Butterflies are the easiest to identify,” Katherine continued. “Generally, bees are hard to identify, but they're very important pollinators. Pollinators in the United States have decreased by 45% and when such a large part of a population is declining, it affects the birds that are insectivores. It’s definitely going to have some impact on warblers and fly catchers, and we are monitoring both of those.”

​The decline in abundance and diversity of insect pollinators due to habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and other factors has been observed worldwide. Bird populations in the U.S. are declining too at an alarming rate, and bird watching/surveying is a critical part of recovery efforts, according to this Audubon article.

“There’a a book about where to find birds in New Mexico,” Katherine told me. “The last version I had basically said, don't bother with Abiquiú Lake. There's nothing happening there. This was some years ago, but it’s wrong, because the lake is part of an important migratory route. The birds that we see in April on the lake are migrant birds. We even had a loon last year. It's an important stopover, and that's becoming more and more important in people's consciousness. It's not so much about what birds are here right now, but where they're going. Are we part of that journey? And if we're part of that journey, then we have to make sure that these animals, the birds, the insects, mammals, the reptiles, that they have a place of refuge and can fuel up for the next stage. Every step of the way is important, not just where they breed and not just where they winter. But every step along one way
is a continuation of their journey.”

“We have three kestrel boxes. Kestrels have declined 45%, nearly half of kestrels have been lost in the United States, and it's probably their nest sites. They're cavity nesters. So we've put up some nest boxes, and we're monitoring those. We put up boxes for Juniper tit mice, because they're also cavity nesters. That work is important. You know the old adage, ‘Think globally and work locally.’ ‘What can I do in my backyard?’ Because we're one of the steps in the birds’ journey.”

I love this idea. For the Amigos the Abiquiú Lake isn’t an independent, isolated location but one step in the journey back and forth. It’s part of a larger, dynamic  picture.
​
Katherine illustrated this wider view with an example: “We don't have very many nesting bald eagles in New Mexico, but we have a lot of bald eagles that migrate into Mexico in the winter time. So we keep track of that. How many are coming in, how many are staying, does the lake level have anything to do with how many eagles we have? Does the icing level have anything to do with the number of eagles we have? And now we have quite a bit of data, because we've been doing this for quite a number of years.”

When did you start, I wanted to know.
​
“I think I started in 2011 with the Army Corps of Engineers,” Katherine replied. “I started with a few of my friends here, and they have friends; they're all outdoor people, and they've become interested. And some of them, a couple, Ann and Willie, are really good birders, and Susan's really getting up to speed on water quality. We have some new members who are interested in various aspects of it. So, we're not out trying to get a hundred people in the group. We're trying to get a cadre of people who are really interested in participating on a regular and sustained basis because that's how you can collect data. We started with about six, and at the last meeting we had maybe twelve, so it is growing.”

“We have ten stops along the Chama River where we do a bird count every month,” Katherine added. “Now we will do them almost every week for the next three months, because it’s breeding season. We have all kinds of warblers and fly catchers coming in. We have migrants going across. I saw an osprey yesterday moving through. So we have set times, but we also say, if you're out there and you happen to see something, or if you can’t do all ten but you do the first four stops, send me your data. Because, you know, I'm not interested in keeping the data from a certain date, but we want to know what's moving through here, what's nesting here? What bird has successful nests? That's the data we want. Anybody can go out and send me their data once they learn what we're doing.”

How often do you have meetings, I wanted to know.
“On average, we have about six meetings a year,” Katherine answered. “We have more right now, because we will be working with the Army Corps of Engineers on Earth Day for the Earth Day activities. A couple of times a year they have activities at the lake that we help with. We built the titmouse boxes last fall on the Public Lands Day, and we put them up this spring. A number of activities are planned for this year’s Earth Day celebration.”

​“We're also going to help with checking boats for invasive species, the quagga mussels and zebra mussels. They're very short staffed at the lake. The Army Corps of Engineers is making a great effort up there. They care about the environment, they care about their impact, and they want to engage the public.”

Next, I asked Katherine about the poisonous blue green algae. I remember reading the warnings, especially for young children and dogs, because the water can become highly toxic. Katherine corrected me by stating that we’re talking about cyanobacteria, not algae, and that almost every lake gets them at a certain temperature. But  when they reach a certain level they can become toxic. Cyanobacteria are not toxic at every level, Katherine explained. When they start to die, they deplete the oxygen level in the water, and that’s when they can become fatal for birds and mammals. Warming temperatures cause those blooms to happen.

​“Pretty much every pond water in the southern United States is going to have cyanobacteria. But how much circulation is there? How much fresh water is coming into the lake, what is the temperature of the lake, all those things can have an impact.”

“The Army Corps of Engineers has a pretty robust water quality testing process now, it collects samples, checks for oxygen, checks for turbidity, checks for conductivity. And they collect samples to check for invasive species, mainly the quagga mussels and zebra mussels. Because they're microscopic when they come in, you have to collect the samples and send them in. You can't see them at that early stage. When we check the boats we're not looking for mussels. What we're looking for is, is there standing water, and has this boat come from a place where those mussels are prevalent. New Mexico doesn’t have them, but they’re in every state around us, Texas has them, Colorado has them, Utah has them.”

What do they do, I asked.

​“They completely clog up everything,” was Katherine’s answer.  “They’re highly invasive on other species and you can't get rid of them. You really can't get rid of them.”

“Right now we're meeting every month because we're setting up a whole summer schedule,” Katherine added. “Everybody's doing everything at this point.”
Earlier, she had mentioned  an osprey platform. I was curious: what’s that?

“Many years ago, I was there when the Army Corps of Engineers put up an osprey platform, like they had up at Heron Lake,” Katherine told me. “It's a very tall pole with a platform on the top where ospreys can build their nests. But no osprey has ever used it, I think it's too barren. Maybe they don't know what it's for. But I have often seen a bald eagle perched up there, and some other birds. As I said, there was a bald eagle yesterday when I needed to check the Kestrel box. There was a bald eagle sitting right on top of the osprey nest box. The ospreys come up here for the summer from further south, from the Gulf of Mexico and from below Mexico. They come up here in the summer to breed along the lakes where they can fish, because they are obligate fish eaters. So they breed, have their little chicks, and then they fly again. They can't fish here in the winter because it's frozen,”

The eagles stay here for the winter, but where are they in the summer, I asked.

“Well, these days bald eagles are almost everywhere,” Katherine told me. “They were an endangered species till 2007 because of DDT and some other impacts. They were seriously endangered, along with peregrine falcons and a number of other birds. But they've recovered marvelously, and now they're all over the place. But they will be here mostly in the winter, and in the summer they will be further north from here, up in Canada and Alaska. But Colorado has nesting pairs, and we have a few nesting pairs here, but not too many.”
 
“At different times in the year we have different numbers of birds. In the winter we have a lot of waterfowl. We'll go down to the river in January and get 26 different species of birds, and maybe eight or nine or more species of waterfowl. In the summer and in the spring we're trading waterfowl for warblers and fly catchers, and the birds that are coming in to nest. Things will really be popping in the next two months.”
So over the years that you've been doing this, did you see any kind of fluctuation in the numbers, I asked.

“The lake habitat is difficult because the lake level varies so dramatically. A couple of years ago when it was unprecedentedly high, birding was just so much fun because there was so much habitat. But it fluctuates very much. For instance: the grebes build these mats along the shores to nest. When the lake level frequently goes up and down, those mats can't survive, and so we have many fewer grebes.  The river fluctuates a great deal too, but the habitat has improved so much in the last 30 years. From being a straight sort of ditch that didn't have willows and didn't have salt brush and other growth it has changed dramatically. A few years ago they put in some structures to help slow the water down in certain places, so it didn't just rush through. It slowed the water down, so more water moved to the side, and you have little wetlands. There are more amphibians down there,  and frogs start croaking. I heard them just the other day. And there are a lot more willows now, just a great variety of vegetation. So we're going to get more insects, and we'll get more birds, and it's just just greatly improved. We have river otters there now. They've migrated up and they're actually nesting there.”

So we talked about the birds and the water quality, but what about the pollinators, how do you count them, I asked. DO you count them? How many butterflies? How many bees?

Katherine explained: “We probably won't get to the species of bees, that's pretty hard, but we can get the family possibly.The important thing is not only what bee do you see, what butterfly do you see, but what plant are they on? Some adult butterflies may be nectar feeders and and visit a lot of different plants, but most butterflies are very specific about where they will lay their eggs, and that will be important. Do we have the plants so that they can multiply?”

“The monarchs, famously, lay their eggs on milkweed because that’s what the caterpillars will feed on. Many other butterflies are just as specific. Just mallow plants or aster family plants or mint, because the caterpillars are very specific.”
​
The Army Corps of Engineers has started a pollinator garden in the campground, and the  Abiquiú Lake Amigos are helping with that. Katherine clarified: “We do some cross referencing, what butterflies are we likely to see in a grassland kind of area, because that's what it is up there? What native plants can we plant there to attract them? One of the  activities this Sunday will be to work on a pollinator garden.”

“We want to get really good with these two groups, the Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths) and Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, etc.). Then we can spread out into Coleoptera (beetles), and there's a lot of interest in lightning bugs – fireflies. It's only a couple of weeks that you'll see them up at the lake, and there's one place in particular at the river where I find them and we want to monitor them as well, because they’re also in decline.”

​I remember the time when I lived near the river. There were two weeks in June when the fireflies would provide an absolutely magical spectacle at night: like tiny, sparkling stars, they would blink around the bushes close to the water.  I’m so grateful that there are people who are concerned about these fascinating insects and try to preserve them. Actually, everything Katherine and her Abiquiú Lake Amigos do is immensely important and may help to stop the further decline of all these creatures which not only deserve to live in peace but also play a significant role in humanity’s food security. Thank you, Katherine, for sharing this meaningful endeavor with the Abiquiú News.