Testing the limits of human capabilities.
By Zach Hively

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Me, I don’t know what I am anymore. I’m whatever creature functions best for about three hours a day—from, say, just after a late breakfast until that lull just before an afternoon siesta.

During this time, I had best accomplish any and all laundry, errands, social engagements, and (time permitting) ignoring work-related emails.

Basically, I am neither an early bird nor a nighthawk. I am much more of a house pet. Not saying I could sleep fifteen or more hours a day. I’m just saying I have never truly had the chance to try. 

For the last couple decades, it sure has felt like I could use fifteen more hours of sleep. This exhaustion explains why it took so long for genius to strike, which it did recently, much like William Tell struck Newton’s apple: What if—stick with me here—I went to bed early?

Surely I would get enough sleep to wake up all on my own, no series of alarms required, in time for my leisurely breakfast. I could then give my actual best for those three hours a day. My hypothesis: I could ignore emails more effectively than ever!

The experiment is still in progress. Early results indicate, however, that I would make a most excellent house pet. No one would have to let me out for eight, eleven hours at a stretch. Because if I grant myself more time to sleep—this is empirical science, people—I will fill it.

I’m dedicated to seeing this experiment through. It might take decades of field research to pay off my sleep debt and discover what happens. In the meantime, more hours resting means fewer hours waking. The only pragmatic cuts I can make come from that so-called “productive time,” as the rest of the day literally has nothing left to cut.
​
So be it. This is why we have auto-reply; I’ll get back to you in about twenty years.

***
A quick and shameless plug: you have mere days left to pledge support to the Call Me Zach Hively Kickstarter campaign. This means it’s your last chance to get your name listed in the book.

For our dear, darling backers, we have ebooks, and print books, and exclusive hardcovers, and even private writing workshops. Heck, I will give a commencement address at any event you choose, if you pledge enough.

Most of all, this is nearly my last chance to get all sappy and thank you all for the support. Let’s see how far we can push this behemoth uphill before the campaign runs out.
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Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand.

I ask the pressing Questions I ask myself

By Zach Hively

​So I hear that adult-aged people have a ton of trouble finding other adult-aged people for romantic and/or sexy times. While I sympathize with the plight of the lovelorn, I think the whole can’t-find-a-date-for-Friday-night problem is overblown. Unlikely people fall in love in movies all the time. But I rarely see movies where people fall in friendship.

That’s because friends, unlike manholes, aren’t just strewn about on the street for people to trip into headfirst. At least the quest for love is filled with tried-and-true techniques, such as buying flowers, passing notes with yes and no checkboxes, and relying on established patriarchal expectations. Would-be lovers get personal ads and online dating services and local magazines running “Hot Singles” editions, all of which totally always work out.

For those of us seeking friendship, though, we’re adrift on a choppy sea, the rudder of companionship sheared off, holes torn in the hull of our confidence, with no end to this metaphor in sight.

Which is why I’m going to spotlight the most eligible friend I know—myself—in the first-ever-that-I-know-of Q&A Profile for Eligible Friends. Perhaps, by the end of this feature, you will want to be my friend!
​
Q: Tell us, Zach, why are you interested in finding long-lasting friendship?
A: Because I feel that life is like one of those popsicles with two sticks.

Q: And you want someone to share the other half of the popsicle with you?
A: No, I’ll eat the whole thing myself. I just want someone to help break it apart without expecting a foot rub in return, so I can go back to watching the Auto Manufacturer Snack Food Carbonated Beverage Sporting Event in peace.

Q: The prospective friends among our readers are all dying to know: what are your favorite activities?
A: Let me tell you, I am such an impressive potential friend that I have many favorite activities to list. These include reading, talking to my houseplants, and downing an entire bag of tortilla chips in one sitting.

Q: Those don’t sound like very friend-conducive activities.
A: I also play guitar.

Q: Excellent! That’s an activity you can share with friends. What style of guitar do you play?
A: Air guitar.

Q: Oh.
A: In the shower.

Q: Many people enjoy the great outdoors with friends. What are your favorite outdoor pursuits?
A: I enjoy yelling at chipmunks in my garden. And when they ignore me, I throw stones at them.

Q: That doesn’t sound very friendly. Why do you do that?
A: Because there are no children in my neighborhood to throw rocks at instead.

Q: Do you ski? Rock climb? Hike?
A: I ride a bike.

Q: Perfect! There are lots of avid cyclists who would love to be your friend! What do you enjoy most about bicycling?
A: I love that I can feel connected with nature, at one with the breeze through my helmet and the earth under my wheels. But my absolute favorite part is that I can go for hours and hours without having to talk to anybody.

Q: You do realize that the primary part of having friends is actually being around people, right?
A: Oh, sure.

Q: Well, is there anything at all that you enjoy doing with other people?
A: Friendships aren’t all about “doing things” with other people. I think you’ve confused me for one of those “Hot Singles.” Asking about someone’s day, striving to become a better person—that’s all mushy foreplay stuff. And it’s way easy, compared to making friends as an adult.

Q: How so?
A: Think about how you can be friends over literally anything as a kid—you both want to play with the same jump rope? Bam! Instant friendship. And that’s how we pick up on each other, too. “You like Gruyère? I like Gruyère! Let’s go on a date!” But it’s not like I, as a seemingly-grown-up individual, can walk up to another guy and say, “You drive on radial tires? I drive on radial tires! Want to hang out?” 
We are not doing this Q&A to find true love. We’re here to find friends. And unlike romantic interests who will lie about cheese preferences in hopes of ensuing kinky times, true friends will accept us as we are. I am a recluse. And it’s incredibly difficult for me, as a hermit, to put myself out there.

Q: Wow. I never stopped to consider the emotional fragility of someone like you trying to make friends.
A: Tell me about it. And I have it double tough, because on top of all that, I just don’t like people.

Q: There you have it! If you still think you want to befriend Zach, write a letter to the editor of this fine publication.
A: Or better yet, don’t. This bag of chips ain’t big enough for the both of us.

***

If you like what you see here—and even if you don’t—you can find much more like it in my forthcoming book, Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book is more than 180% funded, and they can’t all be suckers, right? So whether you like ebooks, or you prefer rare collectors-edition hardcovers, head on over there and find your next great bathroom read. (Plus, you can get your name ruined forever, as I will thank you personally in the book’s Acknowledgments!)
Support the movement!

By Sara WRight

Sixty years ago, scientist Suzanne Simard intuited as a child that the trees, plants, fungi, in the forests she lived in (and that she and her family lightly logged with horses) were all in intimate relationship with one another. It seemed to her that forests were complex interdependent cooperative living organisms. The forests were alive. The blood of the trees was in her bones, she often quipped.
 
As an undergraduate from UBC (University of British Columbia) her first job as a forester seemed daunting. It was up to her to determine why 20 percent or more of the tree seedlings died after the forestry industry stripped huge parcels of land compacting and scraping away the soil. The species chosen was one that would provide foresters with the fastest economical gain. No other trees were allowed to grow in these ‘plantations’ because according to the forest industry other trees and plants competed with the monoculture that had replaced what once was a forest that contained a diversity of trees, plants, mushrooms, and flowers.
 
 Suzanne suspected that there were two problems and one lay underground. She uprooted dying/dead seedlings and peered beneath the surface of the soil. She recalled her childhood when she was continuously digging up masses of colorful rootlets that seemed to be attached to complex underground webs in diverse forests where healthy seedlings flourished.
 
In newly planted strip logged sites the webs of tiny underground rootlets were missing.
 
Suzanne went back to school to become a ground- breaking scientist to prove what the child once intuited. The prestigious scientific journal Nature credited her with the discovery of the ‘Wood Wide Web’ in 1997 which posited the existence and importance of the mycelial network to forest health and regeneration, and by extension to all life.
 
The second intuition that Suzanne addressed and proved was the fact that removing all the other plants and trees like birches from a strip logged site invited in disease. All trees and plants work together to deal with pathogenic fungi, and she demonstrated through years of field work that birches, for example, protected trees if allowed to grow along with the cash crop.
 
Most important is Suzanne’s understanding that some Old Mother/Father Trees must be left in any forest that is logged to help seed future generations. If the ‘Old’ Trees are removed who will be left to pass on the wisdom of the forest?
 
 
 
Dr. Simard demonstrated through years of painstaking field research that all trees and plants are connected underground by way of these vast fungal networks. This fungal web provided seedlings with all the nutrients they needed to survive. Since her initial discoveries Suzanne’s work has been replicated by other scientists over a period of many years, although it is still considered ‘controversial’.
 
Not surprisingly the Forestry Industry did not want to learn that stripping huge tracts of land with giant machines that compacted the soil and destroyed the underlying networks might be an issue to be taken seriously.
 
After Suzanne wrote the story of her discoveries in a compelling memoir “Finding the Mother Tree” a few years ago she established the 100 Year Mother Tree Project where she and her students, many now renowned scientists themselves, continue this meticulous research, most of which is done in the field.
 
Taken directly from the Mother Tree Project’s site:
 
“The Mother Tree Project is a groundbreaking research initiative investigating forest renewal practices that aim to safeguard biodiversity, carbon storage, and forest regeneration as climate changes. The project assesses how seedlings from local, warmer, and colder climates respond to different levels of overstory tree retention, with a focus on seedling survival and growth.
 
Started in 2015 and funded by NSERC and FESBE, the Mother Tree Project is a large scientific, field - based experiment that builds on prior research with the central objective of identifying sustainable harvesting and regeneration treatments that will maintain forest resilience…”
 
Suzanne has incorporated Indigenous scientific scholars as well as well as their stories into her ongoing research.  She was as stunned as I was to learn that Indigenous peoples have known about mycelial networks for millennia. How did they learn, she asked some of her colleagues.
 
The plants told them.
 
In 2023 Professor Simard was the recipient of the prestigious KEW International Medal in recognition of her ongoing research that really is so broad in depth and scope that it’s impossible to condense.
 
I’ll end this essay reiterating key points and adding some practical information, ending with a question that perhaps some will ponder.
 
About 90 percent of all plants have underground symbiotic mycorrhizal (root fungi) relationships with other plant beings that are beneficial. These complex webs  branch and unite and are always on the move just below the surface of the earth creating a living skin that keeps trees, plants, grasses, fungi all connected to each other. Tubular networks keep plant life healthy by providing minerals, carbon, water, minerals etc. to vegetation through the rootlets. What this means practically is that overall plants cooperate with each other. (About ten percent of the fungi are pathogenic and kill trees and plants but this is not the rule).
 
If cooperation has been dominating plant relationships for 400 plus million years and continues to do so today, then how did we get the idea that Nature competes more than S/he cooperates?

By Jessica Rath

​Today, on April 19, the El Rito Library is showing the 2023 Oscar Winner for Best Documentary Feature Film, “Navalny”.* The film’s editor, Langdon Page, will be present to introduce it, because – guess what! – some of the editing happened right here, in La Madera.  The film is being shown at Northern New Mexico College, El Rito Campus, Alumni Hall.  Pot luck at 5:30, showing at 6:00PM.
​
I had watched the documentary shortly after Alexei Navalny was murdered at Polar Wolf, the maximum security corrective colony in Siberia near the Arctic Circle. To say it was gut-wrenching and  deeply moving is putting it mildly. I wanted to learn more about Langdon and his work, and he kindly agreed to talk to me.
 
Knowing very little about film making, I was curious – how does one become a movie editor? Are there college courses one has to take, or are there any special schools to attend? 

​Well, in Langdon’s case it was a very organic process. From an early age he was fascinated by movies, he had the “cinema bug”, as he told me. He’d watch films, read every book about movies that he could find, and spend every free minute learning about cinema and its many aspects. His brother had started a magazine in Chile together with some movie producers, and when he asked Langdon for help because of his obsession with  movies, that’s what happened: Langdon joined his brother in Chile, and together, they produced a few magazine issues – until the funding ran out. By that time, Langdon had established some solid connections with the small film community in Chile in the mid-90s.
 
“I started talking to some of the producers thereafter with an idea for making a little documentary about looking for dinosaur eggs in Argentina, and they thought it was a great idea”, Langdon told me. When he came back with the footage, they needed somebody to edit it, and Langdon bluffed his way  into the job. The producers had just acquired a top of the line Avid video editing system,  the first generation of digital nonlinear editing (I looked this up: while linear editing assembles a film  from beginning to end, the new technology allows the editor to work on any video frame or digital video clip, no matter where it will eventually end up). Langdon had the background and courage to figure out this completely new technology, was hired, and completed a number of projects in Chile.

A couple of years later, he moved to Los Angeles with his wife and their firstborn. For a while, he had to take any work that allowed him to support his family.

“The first place that hired me was actually a cable channel called E! Entertainment Television”, Langdon continued.  “They didn't care that I had made a series of films that had done very well in Chile, they just cared that I knew how to run an Avid –  the editing computer. So then I spent a while doing really boring television work, which kept us afloat as a family, but also taught me how to work with deadlines and within the confines of an industry that depends a lot of time on deliverables and strict formatting rules”.

“At the same time, I kept reaching out to independent producers, and ended up getting some films that were more interesting. And then people kept hiring me to edit even though I would be writing or producing or pitching ideas, but I kept getting hired as an editor. And so I ended up doing a lot of that for the last 25+ years”. 
​
I must confess that I’ve never really thought much about the editing process of a movie. When it comes to film-making, I know the names of directors and a few famous cinematographers, and that’s it – I don’t know any famous editors. That doesn’t seem fair. I’m a film buff, and the productions I enjoy most offer great acting, beautiful cinematography, and an intelligent, moving script – all seamlessly joined together into one immersive experience. Whether that’s done successfully or not depends largely on the editor, I think. Langdon’s words helped me to see this.
 
He elaborated: “When it comes to the making of a film it is often a year or more of editorial work. And that’s a lot of emotional energy, it's a lot of passion. If you're committed to it and are serious about trying to actually make cinema out of it the sensibility of the editor is inherently going to be reflected in the final film”. Yes, this makes total sense, especially in relation to “Navalny”. How did he get involved with this project, I wanted to know.

“It was right around the beginning of 2021. A producer that I had made four or five pictures with called me up and said, ‘we've got this thing, and I think you’d be great for it. It's confidential, nobody knows about it. We've got this very talented director who's got a lot of ideas; can you come and start working on it?’ The director and his crew were just starting to sort through the footage and see what they had. I often like projects to go through a phase before I come on board, so that the director can start to try out all sorts of different things and get an idea of what they want in their head, make all kinds of mistakes, whatever. And then I can come on board, and we can make a whole bunch of different mistakes. So that's how it played out: I came up from Santiago, Chile to  Santa Fe and set up the cutting room in La Madera. I was editing from there for the first six weeks”.

In La Madera? Of all the places? How did he end up in La Madera? 

Well, Langdon grew up in Denver, CO, but one of his grandmothers lived in Santa Fe, and throughout his childhood he spent much time there.  In 1994 his father, his stepmother, and some of her family bought a piece of land near La Madera, and this has been the family home ever since.  So that’s where he ended up doing much of the editing work, in secret, as he explained.
 
Obviously Langdon  needed the fastest internet he could get,  and also some gear, such as an extra screen. His father  suggested they ask the Bondys, because Brian has all this equipment. So Brian came over with a monitor and helped set everything up. Amazingly, the internet connection in La Madera, New Mexico is the fastest connection that Langdon has been able to get anywhere in the world – can you believe this!
​
“Navalny was a really fascinating project. It brought together a team of really strong voices with different perspectives, and we wanted to have all of that emotional, mental, cinematic firepower in the room together while working on this really challenging story.  It was obviously all being created in the shadow of heavy security risks. We were doing everything completely under the table, nobody even knew this project existed. At the time, Alexei was in prison, which added to the emotional pressure. We wanted to make the best film that it could be in the fastest amount of time, because we imagined and sincerely believed that the film would be in some ways a sort of life insurance policy for Alexei. The more the world and the international community and the general public were aware of Alexei’s situation, the harder it would be for Putin to have him disappear, knock him off. I think for a long time, that actually worked”.

​“The emotional stakes were incredibly high. There were lots of tears all the way through the edit. The director, Daniel Roher, had a very strong personal bond with Alexei and his family. He is  a young guy and was really emotionally distraught throughout the course of the edit. There was a time when I was working late at night, and he was asleep on the couch. And, he said, he woke up and I was just sobbing. I had just watched a part of it, and it just left me in tears. We would hug and tell each other, we’ll get through it, and then we kept on working”.

I asked Langdon whether he had met any members of Navalny’s family and inner circle.
 
“Well, I never met Alexei, because it was filmed before I came on board the project. We launched the film at Sundance Film Festival in January 2022. And it had not been announced that the film even existed. So, when we shared it secretly with the programming committee, they invited us to be a part of Sundance. But they billed it as a secret screening, which was the first time they had ever done that at Sundance. And everybody was sort of confused -- what is this secret screening?, and all this”.

“And then there was a COVID wave. It was kind of devastating for everybody because Sundance rightly decided to do another virtual Sundance that year. But there  was concern that if they announced our project, adversarial forces could undermine the streaming capability of the festival for the first weekend and actually shut down all access to all the other films. That’s why they decided  to continue to bill it as a secret screening through the first weekend. At the first weekend of the festival, all films that are premiering get at least one screening – that’s how Sundance works. And then over the course of the first week they start doing repeat screenings. So we would not announce the film until after the first weekend. They announced it on Monday morning, and tickets sold out immediately, and that evening, we did the premiere”.

By this time I was spellbound, listening to Langdon. To hear that the making of it was just as suspenseful and moving as the documentary was simply astonishing.

“That was the beginning of the next phase of the film”, he continued. “This was the whole roll-out, taking it on tour and going to different festivals. It was in the middle of a number of changes in CNN Films, the distributor, and the whole streaming landscape. So it ended up premiering on CNN in April or May of 2022. At the same time  we were going around showing it at festivals over the course of that whole year and leading up toward the Oscars. So there were a number of occasions when I spent quite a bit of time with Dasha, Alexei’s daughter, and Yulia, his widow”.

By this time of our conversation I was deeply moved, remembering Navalny’s untimely death. Dasha had lost her father. Yulia had lost her husband. But Langdon reminds us not to give in to despair:

“Yes, it is very sad. But I think we should continually return to Alexei’s message at the end of the film, which is that we can't be complacent. The force used by the authorities to try to shut down any sort of democratic movement in Russia, is an indication of how strong that movement actually is. As we know from history, the only way to break through this  is for the grassroots, the people on the frontlines to rise up. There's a lot of work being done. Most of the Anti Corruption Foundation has moved to Lithuania. They've reconstituted as a very strong force from outside Russia. When Alexei went back this was almost inconceivable, but since especially the invasion of Ukraine and the increased clamp down and censorship in Russia, a large part of the democracy movement has been forced outside of the country.  It still constitutes a very viable force. It's continuing to find innovative ways to get around sensors, and continues to expose the corruption of the Putin regime”.

I was quite shocked when I thought about the secrecy that had been necessary when working on the film. Were the people involved really in danger?

“One never knows what their actual reach is”, Langdon explained.  “Especially organizations like the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service), or the GRU (Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency). They've shown that they have the ability to assassinate or attempt to assassinate people throughout Europe. Within the United States we believe that we have a more solid firewall against some of those things, but not against all of them. In the 2016 election we witnessed significant online  infiltration by Russian forces trying to undermine our democracy, and it continues to this day. We took extraordinary security measures to keep everything encrypted and to stay as safe as we could, especially when we were editing in London, but the threat was very real. Christo Grozev (Bellingcat chief investigator) from the film has had a death warrant out for him for the last year and a half, which was not exclusively, but directly in response to his participation in this film. And Christo is basically living in the States at this point”. 

Some final words about Navalny: “Alexei’s courage and his humor, his inextinguishable spirit and faith in what he called the “beautiful Russia of the future” – this was amazing throughout his time in both prisons. He was subjected to isolation and immense torture at the first prison as well. For months and months and months they kept him in solitary confinement under horrible, horrible psychological torture conditions.  And yet, he was able to communicate with the outside world in a way that motivated people to take small actions, significant within Russia, and bigger actions, which are also significant on the global stage. We have to just take courage and inspiration from his indomitable spirit”.

Here is my final question: do you have a new project you're working on?
 
“Yes –  I've been working on a technology platform, to connect movies that have a strong call to action around an issue with direct actions that viewers can take after they watch that kind of movie. And this has been a fascinating and entirely different type of creative endeavor for me. So that's what I’m doing at the moment”.

Langdon closed our interview with these words: “It's a pivotal time for democracy in this country and worldwide. But, if you study history, it's always been a pivotal time. Democracy is an ongoing experiment. It's important not  to succumb to apathy. We have actually more tools now to strengthen our democracy and move it in a direction which is more sustainable than we've ever had before. So it's just about being inspired and having the courage to stay active”.
​
“Navalny” most certainly is inspiring. I want to thank Langdon for his important part in it, and for taking the time for this interview.

Backyard Diversity is a series of educational articles brought to you in partnership with In Light of Nature, the Carol Petrie Foundation, the Los Alamos Reporter and Chama Peak Land Alliance.  By highlighting the unique and special nature of our area, and in the hopes that a small drop in the water will send out waves of opportunity, we hope that each of us can and will improve our backyard with biodiversity. Photo by Ed MacKerrow

BY ED MACKERROW
In Light With Nature
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Photo by Ed MacKerrow
​
Pocket gophers are a constant threat to my orchard. They eat tree roots, starving the trees of water and nutrients. Setting gopher traps takes way too much of my time, and eventually, the gophers win the battle. The gophers are most active at night. They spend most of their time underground, only briefly coming above ground in the dark to move excavated soil from their tunnels. There must be a better way to find an ecological balance where the trees and gophers coexist.

Owls, hawks, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and snakes all prey on gophers. Since gophers and owls are most active at night, I pursued leveraging owls to help manage the gopher populations in the farming community of Nambe, New Mexico, where I live. We installed barn owl boxes on 12-foot-high poles in orchards and agricultural fields as a community. I would see and hear Great Horned Owls regularly and observe Barn Owls very infrequently. In the Central Valley of California, barn owl boxes populated many orchards, vineyards, and farms. I wanted to give them a try in Northern New Mexico.  

After a few years of not seeing or hearing any Barn Owls in my community, I finally listened to their “kleek-kleek” call (which sounds like a rusty bike chain) one night. On top of a barn owl box, I saw the tell-tale silhouette of a barn owl. In just a few weeks, fresh mounds of dirt from gophers disappeared. Barn owls are shy and will not come outside their box until darkness falls. I watched them through binoculars in the early evening, amazed at how many trips they made to the box with gophers in their bills. I set up a trail camera to look at their owl box and measured an average of over 11 gophers and nine mice per night delivered to the box over a month. Soon, neighboring farmers were wondering why they were not seeing gophers anymore.
​
The barn owls motivated me to build and distribute more owl boxes around the area. Eventually, I installed 26 barn owl boxes on many farms. The owls would use different boxes each year, and we would rarely see or hear the owls since they are so reclusive. Barn owls are “flight hunters,” searching for prey by flowing low over the fields. With a bit of moonlight, I would sometimes watch them fly silently like a giant moth. Great-horned owls are “perch hunters,” using a sit-and-wait strategy to listen for prey. Owls have incredible stereoscopic hearing, which allows them to hear the faintest sounds of prey in underground tunnels or under deep snow. 

The owls continue to help me manage gophers, mice, and rats. The Great-Horned Owls have a constant presence, whereas the Barn Owl population fluctuates. An ongoing challenge is that everyone in my neighborhood needs to refrain from using rodenticides (rat and mouse poison). When a mouse eats rodenticide, the anticoagulant poison causes a slow death from internal bleeding. The poisoned mouse wanders for water to quench the deadly thirst from the poison, making them easy prey for owls. The owl and other predators and pets succumb to secondary poisoning and also die a slow death of internal bleeding.

It takes cooperation and patience for a community to utilize owls for rodent control. Mice can become a nuisance in rural areas. I encourage neighbors to supplement our owl-based pest control with non-poisonous rat and mouse traps. If one person in the area resorts to unsafe rodenticides, then the efficient hunting owls end up dying from secondary poisoning.  
The success of barn owl rodent control in the agriculturally rich Central Valley of California gives me hope that, in the long run, owls will be our primary method of rodent control. Education and patience will help that happen.

Ed MacKerrow of In Light of Nature, is a nature photographer, scientist, and conservationist. He has a Ph.D. in Physics and specializes in studying complex adaptive social systems. He has provided scientific expertise to the US Government on various subjects, including forest ecology and wildlife conservation. Ed is the President of the Friends of the Nambe Badlands, dedicated to protecting sensitive BLM land in Northern New Mexico, a Board member of Katmai Conservancy for Katmai National Park in Alaska, and served as the Vice President of the Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Ed is dedicated to environmental conservation and ethical practices in nature photography. He maintains a blog called “In Light of Nature,” which explores wildlife, conservation, and nature photography.

For the Love of Books

By Zach Hively

This was a challenge I did not expect: Tell me what you’re good at.

A friend recently asked me this—to list ten of my top skills or abilities. That’s it. Just ten things. The hard part should have been limiting myself to ten. Limiting myself to ten is most definitely not one of my top skills. But I learned one of my top skills is also not remembering all, or any, of the very many things I’m good at.

So I asked my friend for a clue: What is something I can do well?
​
“Well,” my friend said, “you’re very tidy.”

This was not the sort of glowing clue I had anticipated. But I accepted it graciously—there, that’s one of my top skills, accepting underwhelming compliments with grace—even if it was wrong, because it is impossible for me to be tidy. After all, I love books. One human being contains multitudes, but one cannot contain both tidiness and book-love.

And I do mean LOVE books. One can HAVE books and demonstrate immaculately tidiness, in that Scandinavian showroom or Japanese spa sort of way. Each book, neatly dusted, right where it belongs. Shelved, more than likely, by color and height or some other preposterous aesthetic.

But loving books implies a particular comfy disarray. From where I sit, I see four stacks of books dislodged from any of the major bookshelves in my home: one stack on a stool stepping in as an end table; one by the front door; one by an armchair; and one on a kitchen counter, perilously close to where I do the dishes when a friend is coming over and I want to appear tidy.

Then there are the bookshelves themselves: fairly neat, by design, books stood in rows of colorful spines. But they exude a certain chaos, too—unalphabetized, for starters, though with a catalogue system I understand intuitively yet inarticulably. More than this, though, the books lurk rather airily: some leering, some lounging; a few might as well be heckling me to read them. They are like the crows that fill a leafless cottonwood tree, in full cahoots—and I keep bring more home. (Books, that is, not crows, though I am not opposed.)

The tidy thing to do would be to go digital, put every title I ever wanted on a device, linked to my account. But I do not want to be tidy. I want to be terrible at such tidiness—and terribly happy, here in the best little hoardhouse this side of Texas, surrounded by so many things I don’t yet know, so many things I might just yet get good at.

***Speaking of books: the Kickstarter campaign for Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name is in full swing. We have stretch goals—possibilities for an audiobook and collectible book editions among them.

This is also your first chance to get the ebook (if you’re that kind of tidy) and your only chance to get a hardcover (if you’re that kind of bibliophile).
​
Become a backer
But the most important thing is that the campaign has succeeded. We’re beyond 180% of our goal, which means that this book is getting published no matter what. Thank you all who have pledged support so far to make this collection a reality.

By Sara Wright

​Last night I feasted on button mushrooms just after finishing this article which didn’t have a title. Suddenly an ancient memory surfaced… I was about three when my great grandmother and I used to play a game with the above name.
 
I have had an intuitive sense that most mushrooms have similar medicinal values because they are all part of the underground fungal network even if they are grown on trees, grasslands or deserts. I decided to do a little research on the common button mushroom to support or refute my intuition.
 
 As I suspected button mushrooms do have most of the health benefits of those harvested in the wild. There are some differences but overall, they are minimal. If you are looking for a particular supplement it’s sensible to do your own research to find the mushroom you think has more of the benefits you need.

 Agaricus biporus is one of the fungal kingdom’s edible mushrooms that can be harvested at different stages of growth. When the fruiting fungi are young and white, we call these mushrooms buttons. At midpoint they become tannish cremini. At maturity the button becomes a portobello. All stages have the same medicinal/nutritional benefits.

These fungi are grown on a composted substrate that is traditionally made from wheat, straw, poultry manure, and gypsum. Of course, these substrates are attached to mycelial network underground.

My buttons thrive on compost heaps which are a blend of straw, and many other plant left overs. I don’t use any aged manure, but that’s because I don’t happen to have any. My  button mushrooms efficiently break down the organic matter as all good saprophytes do.

Unlike some people, I have no problem using any kind of manure as part of my substrate, because during composting microorganisms break down the matter producing a fiber rich, carbon containing humus with inorganic nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Scattering my compost is a new experiment I am presently engaging in, so I never know who is going to appear where.

According to mycologist Merlin Sheldrake less than five percent of fruiting fungi have been studied and almost nothing is known of the underlying mycelial networks that support the (roughly) 20,000 mushrooms that appear above ground that we know about. Yet some mushroom species are already on the IUCN Red List.
 
One of the ways mushroom spores function to support forest ecology is to rise into the atmosphere and bind with water molecules to create rain (Merlin Sheldrake).
 
 According to the New Scientist mushroom spores are also full of DNA that bind, re-combine, and mutate to produce genetic material that is diverse and adapted for changing climates. Other than these examples little is known about how mushrooms effect the ecology of the forests, grasslands, deserts they grow in. In deserts most mushrooms grow underground to avoid drought.
 
 With 33 million people in the US and the loss of a staggering number of forests, it seems prudent to forage in the wild with care. Please do not take more fungi than you need and allow some spores to seed woods and sky. Many small animals and insects love mushrooms, so I am assuming that removing too many fungi might also be a problem for wildlife.
 
 Most wild mushrooms including Oyster, Turkey Tail, Reishi, Shitake, Lions Mane and others can be grown quite easily. Many companies offer mushroom spawn and substrates for home growing as an alternative to foraging in the wild.
 
Watching mushrooms develop is not only fun but educational. The first oysters I grew a bunch of years ago were so astonishing that I chopped and sauteed them reluctantly. I’ve grown other mushrooms including Lions Mane a particularly beautiful mushroom that looks to me like a frozen waterfall. I love the process of growing fungi at home and am never disappointed by the edible results. In the forest I do not forage focusing instead on the relationships between the fungi and the kind of forest that they live in. Each species has its own niche. I eat some of my button mushrooms at home but leave many for the rest of nature to feast upon.
 
 Until recently serious research hadn’t been done on Agaricus b. because the fungal fruits were so ‘common’. Yet I came across a surprising array of articles that discussed the similarity of the substances in button mushrooms to other wild fruiting fungi.
 
 Scientists at Penn state recently identified a new compound in button mushrooms that probably benefits gut health in ways we didn’t know about. Mushrooms as a group including buttons aid in digestive health as prebiotics. Prebiotics and postbiotics are less well-known but equally important for gastrointestinal and systemic health.
 
Like wild fungi button mushrooms contain several different anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that may help improve heart health. They are an important supplement for anyone that suffers from heart disease, one reason that I am delighted that my dogs love them. My Lucy has an enlarged heart.
 
Button mushrooms boost immune systems naturally. They also have anti- tumor and anti-cancer properties.
 
Buttons also have a number of other nutrients that benefit anyone who eats them. A breakdown of these fungi reveals that in a one cup serving, Aagaricus bisporus contains just as much potassium as a banana and can deliver between up to 30 percent of the daily recommended intake of B 1& 2 vitamins that are essential for human health.
Regular consumptions of white button mushrooms may even improve mood by regulating hormones that also keep the brain healthy.

White button mushrooms are also rich in both vitamin C and selenium, so they contribute to immune function.

These mushrooms are one of the only plant foods that contain a natural source of vitamin D.
Perhaps one of the surprising health benefits of button mushrooms is that they are a good source of plant protein. About one and a half cups of button mushrooms equals eating one egg.
Recent studies have found that button mushrooms are particularly high in glutathione, an important antioxidant that helps combat free radicals. Free radicals attack important macromolecules leading to cell damage and homeostatic disruption. 

Other studies suggest that button mushrooms can improve immune function by increasing the production of antiviral proteins.  

Another benefit is that compounds found in button mushrooms called flavonoids have the potential to act as both antioxidants and pro-oxidants. Cells have a natural life and death cycle. We are constantly getting rid of old cells and creating new ones simultaneously. When cells refuse to die, they typically become cancer and tumor cells. The flavonoids work in two ways: when they are antioxidants, they help improve healthy cell survival, and when they act as pro-oxidants, they help encourage apoptosis, which is the natural cell death that helps prevent tumor growth.

All nine amino acids are found in button mushrooms.

Although this is hardly a comprehensive list of Agaricus’s virtues, it gives the reader a chance to reconsider wild foraging until we know more about forest ecology. And for those of you who are gardeners why not grow buttons on one of your compost heaps?

The main threats to wild mushroom collecting are loss of habitat, water, air, and soil pollution that create toxic conditions for collecting that are not obvious even to experienced foragers. Fungi are adapted to specific geographic locations as anyone who spends time in a particular biome already knows. Change that ecology and the mushrooms are gone. Many thrive on specific trees, animals, or soil. If the hosts go extinct, the fungi go extinct too. Of course, a wildly erratic warming climate is another primal threat with droughts discouraging fruiting. Extended periods of rain and wet weather create a feast for fungal plant pathogens since the latter are dependent upon moisture for spore dispersal and plant infection.
​
I’ll end this essay reminding folks that harvesting wild fungi for food and commercial use is a major factor affecting species survival. Please, let’s give the mycologists a chance to study mushrooms in the wild before we strip these places bare.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Miami, Florida, but spent my formative years in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2015, my spouse and I embarked on a bold move, relocating to Abiquiu, New Mexico, near our daughters who resided in Texas. My work as an artist entails creating figurative oil paintings and ceramic sculptures that explore feminism, mythology, and cultural heritage. The human form is the focal point of my works, frequently blurring the line between reality and surrealism. I aim to provide my audience with several possibilities, enabling them to engage, connect, and formulate their interpretations.

I find oil painting and clay sculpting equally challenging and exhilarating, so I often switch between the two mediums. Ideas come to me spontaneously, particularly while driving or in dreams. Once an idea takes root in my subconscious, I become obsessed and feel compelled to bring it to life.

My painting process often begins with creating a sketch, using art model poses, and modifying them with Adobe Photoshop until the composition, color palette, and theme harmonize. This sketch is transferred onto the canvas, and I begin a dialogue with the artwork. At this point, I may make modifications to the drawing until it accurately conveys my vision. Next, I apply layers of oil paint slowly, commencing with a transparent oxide red base color, which often enhances the nuances and gradations of the other colors used. Patience is crucial when working with oils, as it is essential to achieve a result that exudes the life, texture, and mystique I strive for.

In the latter stages of my artistic career, I discovered the art of sculpting in clay. A fellow puertorrican artist suggested I join a group of sculptors at a clay studio. What followed was a cathartic moment for me, and since then, whenever I feel stressed or drained from painting, I turn to clay for solace, or vice versa. I am more impulsive when sculpting than when painting. I usually do not begin with a sketch. Instead, I have a concept and dive straight into building the sculpture. I prefer using mid-fire stoneware clay such as Laguna’s Red Sculptural or Max’s Paper Clay. I construct the sculpture using coils and slabs, often using a mirror to ensure the figure’s features are accurate during the building process. Once the sculpture is complete, I fire it at cone 3, strengthening the piece and preparing it for glazing. I then glaze-fire the sculpture numerous times at lower temperatures until I am content with the surface treatment.
​
In my artwork, I am captivated by the enigmatic aspects of human nature, both internal and external, and how we navigate our emotions, desires, fantasies, and impulses. As a result, my focus in art centers around figurative pieces. My paintings and sculptures are unique and original, created using only the finest archival materials to ensure longevity. My home and studio are atop a Mesa in Abiquiu, NM, affording a breathtaking 360-degree view that includes the legendary Cerro Pedernal, a favorite of Georgia O’Keeffe. This ancient land, steeped in history and enchantment, has inspired my work to new heights. I am a member of the New Mexico Potters and Clay Artists and the Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association. My pieces form part of both private and public collections. They can currently be seen at the Nest Showroom in Abiquiu, as well as at the NOSA Inn and Restaurant at Ojo Caliente and at my studio gallery.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
​
In 2014, my spouse proposed relocating from Puerto Rico to the United States. He transitioned from managing a small business to working remotely and was eager for a significant change. My artistic career had only recently gained momentum in Puerto Rico, after a prolonged intermission. Consequently, I was keen on establishing myself further as an artist before any potential relocation. The primary incentive for the move was to be closer to our daughters, both living and working in Houston, Texas. We deliberated the matter for a considerable length of time and eventually decided to explore our options. In 2015, we sold our residence in Ponce, which was a significant event for us, having lived there for 28 years since our marriage. We visited Abiquiu, New Mexico, and were captivated by its serene locale, flourishing artistic community, and natural beauty. Although it was not Texas, it was sufficiently close to our daughters to facilitate regular visits. By the end of 2015, we had procured a plot of land in Abiquiu and relocated temporarily to Ojo Caliente while we constructed our home and studio.
​
The decision to relinquish the security of our home and family and start anew at our age was not without challenges. Residing in a small Casita without a studio necessitated considerable effort. The construction of our new home in New Mexico proved to be problematic, as is typical of all construction projects, and took us two years to complete. Finally, in 2017, we relocated to our new home. I was then tasked with establishing myself in New Mexico’s art community. It required a great deal of diligence, perseverance, and dedication to promote my name, but it has been an enriching experience. The encounter gave me renewed energy and made me acknowledge that it is always feasible to start afresh. I am now a part of a thriving artist community that is stimulating and invigorating.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

​As a late Baby Boomer, I find social media quite daunting, much like many of my contemporaries. However, with the assistance of my daughters, I have learned to utilize Facebook/Meta and Instagram. These platforms have allowed me to showcase my work, share pictures of my paintings and sculptures, and attract numerous clients. Additionally, I can publicize any upcoming solo or collective shows I will participate in.

My husband is very tech-savvy and helped me create my website using the Squarespace platform. To make my social media accounts eye-catching and easy to navigate, I had to learn Adobe Photoshop. This tool has been handy in converting my artwork photos into the correct format for uploading to different platforms. Additionally, I can design postcards, flyers, and other promotional materials for social media and printing purposes.

I am grateful to my daughters and husband for helping me navigate the world of social media as an artist. I advise other artists to take advantage of the accessible tools available to promote their work and not be afraid to use social media to their advantage.

Contact Information for Hebe
​

• Website: www.hebegarcia.com
• Instagram: hebe_garcia_finearts
• Facebook: Hebe Garcia Benitez

What do you think it should be called?

We’re all coming down from the eclipse this week. Here, where I live, out of the path of totality, the clouds padded the view (and that eternal temptation to peek without glasses for just a split second; the sun used to get in my eyes while tracking Little League pop-ups and I’m not blind from that, right?). But the dogs and I still took a walk and experienced that eerie light, the unexpected chill.
​
That light reminds me somewhat of the light on smoky forest-fire days. Which reminded me of this poem from the vault. Which reminds me that I have my next collection waiting for me to return to it 

This is the light of discovering
I actually do like peaches.
Of lithographic prints, '
of the inside of a paper lantern.

This is the light I imagine,
today, will frame the last
days of our world. So what
if I like it?

Hating it won't put out
the new wildfire, four hundred
acres since breakfast alone.
Feeling guilty for wonder

and delight won't put back
everything, everything,
everything that has just
gone up in smoke.

This poem has no title (yet) and it hasn’t shown me the right one (yet). What do you think it should be called?

Please feel free to share this public post with someone you think would appreciate it.
​Share

By Jessica Rath

​You probably know that Abiquiú used to be a Tewa settlement called Ávé-shú', meaning Chokecherry Path. So were Poshu-owingeh, the site 2.5 miles south of Abiquiú, and Tsi-p’in-owinge' near Cañones. In fact, traces of Tewa Pueblos can be found all throughout the Chama Valley. Some of these are access-restricted, like the Tsama Pueblo (Tsámaʔ ówîngeh, its Tewa name), an ancestral Tewa community along the Rio Chama.

​Landowners in the surrounding areas have donated parcels that were part of the Pueblo to the Archaeological Conservancy which owns and manages the site.  It is a non-profit organization which was created in 1980, with the mission to preserve, manage, and maintain archaeological sites which are part of our cultural heritage. Among the almost 600 archaeological preserves all across the United States which are maintained by the Conservancy are some preserves at Chaco Culture National Historical Park (the Conservancy has many Chacoan outlier sites in the Four Corners, but doesn’t manage the overall Historical Park),, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and – Tsama.
 
The current site stewards of the Tsama Pueblo are Greg Lewandowski and his wife Sharon, who moved here from Michigan  some twenty five years ago. They not only agreed to an interview, but also put me in touch with April Brown, the Conservancy’s Southwest Regional Director, and Mandy Woods, April’s assistant and Southwest Field Representative. They revealed some truly amazing facts about the site and its history. 

Greg and Sharon had a neighbor who moved away and who donated an 80-acres long parcel along with two other parcels (that each were around 20 or 30 acres)  to the Preserve. A few weeks back, April and Mandy came to visit the site, and they all went on an extensive tour.
​
“They have magic eyes”, Greg told me. “I don't know what else to call it, but they can see things on the ground that to us look like things on the ground. And to them, they pick it up and all of a sudden it's this incredible piece with all this really amazing history to it. Sherds and glass and tools and areas where you can see the outline of buildings. These were adobe buildings, going back about 700 years. You can see the outline of the buildings, but we never noticed these things before. We would just walk around and pick up a few sherds, but our experience with April and Mandy was really amazing:  they could see these things and teach us what was going on there. So we'll continue to be the site stewards for the entire property.”

April continues: “There's a large village site there on that mesa, and there were between 1100 and 1400 rooms in the Pueblo”.

Incredible! When I heard this, I wondered whether Tsama wasn’t more than a village!
I was curious to know when these excavations had started.

Mandy told me that there were in fact three main excavations. The first one  happened between 1929 and 1934, undertaken by Robert Greenlee and HP Mera. Mera was the first person who actually mapped out the site, and  a lot of what is known geographically is attributed to this 1934 report. The next  major excavation at Tsama happened in 1970,  and the most recent one was in 2008, but it wasn’t so much a full excavation –  they were doing mapping methods: high resolution micro topographic instrument mapping.

Come again – they were doing WHAT?

“It's like a form of LiDAR (an acronym of “light direction and ranging”), it's used like LiDAR, where they would take variable layers of imaging to construct or deconstruct what the actual topography is”, Mandy explained.  “It can survey archaeological sites and facilitate exact mapping”.
 
 April added:  “This technology is one of the reasons that the conservancy preserves properties in the first place. We preserve these sites so that as technology advances, we can allow more research that's even less invasive. In the future, excavation won’t be happening as much in American archaeology, especially at Pueblo sites. Native Americans do not want us digging up their ancestors and their artifacts, but they don't mind us learning about them now. Some Pueblos are actively investigating their own ancestral sites right now; Ohkay Owingeh is one of those Pueblos. But a lot of Pueblos don't really want you digging around on their sites anymore. And we definitely have to consult them when we do these types of work”.

​So with this new technology, one can explore what is underneath the surface of the  earth without having to disturb it. And that's absolutely amazing.

“On top of it, we have all these collections which people have excavated from the 30s to the late 90s. And they probably haven’t been researched extensively. So to go back and look at the material culture – we can go back to these older collections, and students fill those in and learn more about them. We don't need to really dig up more artifacts to understand what was there”, April continued.
 
 This makes a lot of sense because what one would find now is  similar to what has already been found. There is no need to dig places  up and disturb sites that are sacred.

​I was curious: How is the site being protected?  The Conservancy would like to close off the property to prevent ATVs and other vehicles from damaging the area, I learned.

“The neighbors are our best defense sometimes when we have sites like this”, Mandy explains, “because they're not only protective of their own land, but they also know the importance of the site. It benefits us when sites are in a residential area, even as remote as this one. You have neighbors who help out, who pay attention and look out for the site and they stay in contact.”

 Can you see how people lived at the time and what they did, I wanted to know.
April explained that yes, one can, because pottery is definitely diagnostic.  “It gives us a lot of information about when the pottery was made  and what kind of material it was made with.  We can pin down a timeframe based on the type of pottery. That's why it's so important that people don’t collect pottery shards. It may seem like, ‘Oh, this is just on the ground, nobody will miss it’. But it still has a lot of information, and, once you've removed it from a place, it loses its context. Every sherd that's picked up by somebody is one less shard that's going to tell us something about the site”.

Mandy added that they know from the work that was done in the seventies that people in Tsama were holding turkeys. They found  fragments and turkey bones. “They had an indoor turkey pen where they were holding the birds. We also know that they had craft groups. There was one group that was very specific with the manufacture and painting of arrows. Another one was dedicated to making pendants and necklaces and jewelry. We can imagine how these people lived here. They thrived here, they had ceremonies. Taking any of those artifacts removes not just the context, it removes any potential for learning. It removes the story. Every single piece on that property has a piece of history with its own story. And when it's removed you don't know anymore what that story is”.
 
This can’t be stressed enough. Picking up a sherd has repercussions that people don't think about. It seems so innocuous – one finds all these broken pieces, there can’t be any harm in bending down and taking one home. But this is a myopic view. Every piece of pottery is there for a reason, and if I remove it, I poke a hole in the intricate fabric that once was a settlement where people lived for many generations. It’s like picking words out of a book – eventually, it loses its meaning and becomes unreadable. April and Mandy made this very clear.
​
I asked about the Pueblo people’s food: what did they eat? What grains and vegetables? Is anything known about this?
“They were definitely growing corn, squash, and beans  –  the “three sisters”, April explained.  “And we’re  assuming that they were hunting, besides raising their domestic turkeys”.

 Greg shared an interesting observation: “When we were walking there they were finding pieces that were from other Pueblos, that were not native to this area. It indicated that they traded with other Pueblos in the area”.

“Absolutely,” April agreed.  “They were trading all the way down to the Galisteo Basin. We were finding glazes from the Galisteo Pueblos which means they were traveling up and down and trading with one another. We find biscuit ware and pottery from other sites too. So we know that they were trading in different areas”.

“All the Pueblos were trading amongst each other. You'll find, for example, that  they were getting their obsidian from the Jemez Mountains.  So, the Pueblos here were probably gathering the obsidian and trading it. And then you had the Galisteo Basin down there where they were mining turquoise, and they were known for their turquoise production. They were definitely trading turquoise, and you'll find Cerrillos Hills turquoise all up and down the Rio Grande”.

“They were also mining  volcanic rock such as basalt for certain things”, Mandy added. “And then there is the Pedernal chert (flint stone), an extremely hard mineral that they would use to make lithics. They would use it for expedient tools and the hammerstones”. 

I had one more question: how did this end? Why did they move away and abandon the Pueblo?  Was there a famine, or did the Spaniards drive them away?
​
“They left before the Spaniards came”, April told me.  “I don't think anyone really truly knows what happened.  There is some speculation that there might have been some fighting going on amongst the Pueblo people or between some of the nomadic tribes like the Apache, Comanche, or Navajos. Maybe they were fighting with each other so they all left. They lived in all these small Pueblos up and down the Rio Chama, and I think they all abandoned those smaller Pueblos and moved into a larger Pueblo, probably somewhere near Ohkay Owingeh”.

Mandy had additional information.  “In one of the earlier reports I read  that at one point, I think in the 1300s or 1400s, there were about 40 variable Pueblos up and down the valley. But by Oñate's 1602 census, there were only six Pueblos that remained. There was a lot less migratory emigration, and a lot more people were coming to these larger Pueblo communities versus settling in smaller ones”.

“There could have been a drought, and maybe they were pooling their resources together for survival purposes”, April speculated.  “It could have been a mixture of many different reasons, really. There's probably not one overarching reason why they all decided to abandon and I'm sure it didn't happen exactly all at the same time, either. It probably happened over 100 years or 200 years or something like that”.

Well, by now you may be dying to visit Tsama; I know I am, because this sounds so absolutely fascinating. However, as mentioned earlier, the Pueblo is not open to the public. If you are interested in seeing the site, please email April Brown (swdirector.tac@gmail.com) and/or  Mandy Woods (swfieldrep.tac@gmail.com)  and arrange to meet them. When they visited over the last few months, they have been developing a guided tour and kindly offer to show you around. With many thanks to Greg and Sharon for making this captivating conversation possible, and to April and Mandy, of course – I always find it inspiring to talk with individuals who are passionate about what they’re doing.