Former Health Secretary, geriatrician David Scrase discusses New Mexico’s aging population

By: Leah Romero
Courtesy of Source NM

Courtesy of the Los Alamos Reporter
BY KATHLEENE PARKER
White Rock

What amazes me, 25 years after the Cerro Grande Fire, is that so many living in Los Alamos today—the young and newcomers—have no recollection of the days of endlessly howling winds, an enormous cloud of smoke obscuring the entire western horizon, both Los Alamos and White Rock evacuated and wildfire burning so violently that it sounded like giant helicopters overhead.

Perhaps worse, many who do remember those days of fire and wind, believe—wrongly—that Los Alamos no longer faces a threat from wildfire.

Today, many new residents have no clue what a “Cerro Grande” was or that the mountains west of town looked vastly different—heavily forested—in April 2000, or that by mid-May 2000, they were a blackened wasteland, devoid of any touch of green, from Cerro Grande, that rounded nub in the distant southwest, to nearly Abiquiu in the north.

That nub, incidentally, has a history of its own. It was to Cerro Grande that Manhattan Project workers drove, parked, smoked cigarettes and visited nervously in the pre-dawn hours of July 16, 1945.  Finally, a blinding flash of light told them that the first atomic bomb—their bomb—had successfully detonated at White Sands.

Cerro Grande’s other legacy was a disaster—long warned of, including another fire that almost burned Los Alamos—that left over 400 families homeless, did $1 billion in damages and launched Los Alamos into wildfire history as the site of the first “mega fire.”

Yet, “our” wildfire was soon, as also long-predicted, dwarfed by subsequent fires in what some researchers are calling “forests of gasoline.”

Nor are we grasping that today’s forests bear little similarity to the same forests 75 or 100 years ago, or that they must be lived in differently than the forests of 75 or 100 years ago, especially considering the ongoing “modern megadrought,” with that worsened by climate change.

More, we are failing to ask why insurance companies, more than government, are leading by demanding better building codes—or, in their absence, denying coverage—because towns should do more than face a fate similar to Paradise, California, in 2018, when wildfire killed 85 and destroyed 11,000 homes or when another one nearly wiped Pacific Palisades, in January, off the map.

And, those fates, but for a fluke, would have been Los Alamos’ fate in May 2000!

I became a correspondent, helping to cover Los Alamos, for the Santa Fe New Mexican in 1991. By 1995, I was being assigned stories featuring U.S. Forest Service Forester Bill Armstrong, who saw—he said it haunted him—that unnaturally high densities of sick, dry, often dying timber between Cerro Grande and Los Alamos Canyon were the equivalent of a fuse leading into the Atomic City.   He, on several occasions, took a New Mexican photographer and me into the Jemez Mountains to show us the danger.  Often, he said (back before the drought began), prophetically, “With the first hint of drought, this entire region will be on fire.”

Key is that mid-elevation forests—predominately ponderosa pine—in the American Southwest should average, at most, a couple of dozen trees per acre. Instead, due to 150 years of timber mismanagement—heavy livestock grazing, aggressive fire suppression, logging for profit rather than forest health—changed our forests over the span of several decades. By the 1990s, timber densities south and west of town (and in many of the Southwest’s mid-elevation forests) exceeded 2,000 trees per acre and those often tangled, sickly thickets of small, highly flammable trees.

Los Alamos first stepped into wildfire history when, in June 1977, the La Mesa Fire erupted on Bandelier National Monument’s west side. It blew explosively northeast (driven by a strong prevailing wind) as crews drove frantically along N.M. 4 trying to get ahead of it.  In the turmoil—in the “sheer horror of the situation”—a firefighter died of a heart attack. A Descanso still memorializes him at Bandelier’s entrance.

The fire’s advance slowed as it encountered N.M. 4, and there, Park Service, what was then Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory crews and others, managed to hold it. It ultimately burned 15,444 acres, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, but what was more defining was its off-scale intensity as a firestorm.   That launched research that determined that livestock grazing, fire suppression and logging had, without our realizing it, transformed the region’s forests into something unnatural and profoundly dangerous.

With the arrival of the railroads, thousands of sheep and cattle arrived in the 1880s and rapidly began to graze away grasses and brush, the small “fuels” that had long sustained essential groundfires. Research showed that groundfires, usually ignited by lightning, often burned along forest floors until the first winter snows.  They removed deadfall and forest-floor rubble but, most critically, they removed millions of tiny tree seedlings that sprouted in “pulses” during wet years, from seeds in cones dropped by the giant ponderosas—trees that rivaled today’s giant redwoods in size and fire resistance.

Tragically for the Southwest’s forests, after a deadly wildfire in the Pacific Northwest in 1911, the U.S. Forest Service implemented aggressive fire-suppression, meaning even fewer fires in forests desperate for fires.

Within decades, the tall, old, fire-resistant trees—the few that loggers hadn’t cut for their high wood yield—stood in seas of small trees and those, increasingly, in snarled, tangled thickets. Those millions, billions of small trees rapidly became “ladder fuels,” tall enough to carry fire into the treetops. “Crown fires,” “blowups,” and firestorms, rather than the essential groundfires, became the norm.

From 1995 to 2000, Armstrong was outspoken—via the news media, public meetings, and speaking to whomever would listen—and then, in 1996—at the very beginning the current megadrought—the Dome Fire exploded, in late April, on Bandelier and U.S. Forest Service lands just west of the Dome Wilderness.

What began as an apathetic plume of smoke, by late afternoon, transformed into hell on Earth, as the Dome Fire went into full blowup, to trigger one of the largest fire-shelter deployments in Forest Service history, as 32 firefighters fought for their lives in fire shelters. Nearby, a brand-new Jemez Springs fire truck was reduced to melted metal and plastic coating a blackened frame.

For those of us looking down from a nearby Forest Service road, it was an other-worldly sight. Trees simply vaporized or twisted and writhed like breathing creatures, as forces larger than human comprehension inspired inevitable descriptions of hell on Earth.  (That day I saw something that few humans ever see, and I’m also vividly aware that, today, journalists are kept at a distance from fire, perhaps much of why the public doesn’t adequately understand wildfire or what a firestorm is.)

As we watched, several huge airtankers furiously dropped fire retardant, not to extinguish the fire—mortals don’t extinguish such fires—but to keep the fire out of heavy timber directly north, near Cerro Grande.

Thanks solely to that effort and Los Alamos’ first small miracle—an unusual shift in the wind off prevailing, with it blowing eastward into Bandelier—Los Alamos was spared the fate it instead experienced four years later.

In 1997, Forest Service crews under Armstrong’s direction, thinned timber to what he believed were historical norms on several hundred acres north of Santa Clara Canyon, northwest of Los Alamos. The trees left standing were mostly mid-sized—the giants are mostly gone from the Jemez Mountains—but forest-floor rubble and small trees were removed. Then, in 1998, in 100-degree temperatures, the Oso Complex Fire ignited, but as it exploded out of Santa Clara Canyon, it encountered the thinned timber and quickly transformed into a gentle groundfire.

Armstrong saw that as Los Alamos’ only hope.  There are, literally, millions of acres of timber desperate for thinning but the obvious priority must be to protect populated areas. To that end, Armstrong wanted, in early 2000, to thin timber along the town’s borders with heavy timber, especially along Los Alamos Canyon and along Los Alamos’ western edge.

However, some Los Alamos residents vehemently opposed cutting trees—any trees, even in sick, dying forests—so, instead of timber thinning, Los Alamos made fire history.

On Friday, May 5, after a prescribed burn was ignited the evening of May 4, Los Alamos residents noticed a small chimney of smoke rising, lethargically, over Cerro Grande, but then—with a predicted “red flag” event—an enormous pyrotechnic cloud mushroomed skyward as the Cerro Grande Fire, on Sunday, May 7 made its first several-mile run—at speeds of over 50 mph—north, toward Los Alamos Canyon, where crews were frantically constructing lines and igniting back burns. There it stopped, late evening, to linger.

Only in areas closest to the fire were residents evacuated, until midday, Wednesday, May 10—another red-flag event—when the fire deftly jumped the canon and—as 11,000 townsite residents fled in the first modern fire evacuation and as national T.V. networks interrupted programming to provide coverage—Los Alamos began to burn in a firestorm driven by winds sometimes exceeding 80 mpg.

Nonetheless, Los Alamos caught a break.

Armstrong—based on our prevailing northeast wind—had predicted that as fire crossed Los Alamos Canyon, it would burn everything between Pueblo Canyon and the mountains—schools, churches, businesses, houses.  Instead, a miracle happened.

Just as the fire hit town, the wind shifted slightly off prevailing to blow due north.  This meant—rather than 65 percent of the townsite burning—the fire mostly brushed Los Alamos’ west side, although it did major damage along the town’s west side, and it drew a direct bead, south-to-north, straight up Arizona Ave., taking nearly every house. And it spotted into several other areas, igniting a wooden porch here or a picket fence there, to then burn houses.

Although “only” 235 structures burned, because many of those were duplexes, triplex and fourplexes, over 400 families lost their homes.

Now, the stark reality of numbers: Cerro Grande, nearly two-and-a-half times bigger than the 1996 Dome Fire, burned 43,000 acres. Two years later, in 2002, the Missionary Ridge Fire near Durango, burned 73,000 acres and generated winds that tossed large RVs about like toys, while southwest of Los Alamos in 2011, the Las Conchas Fire, was double that, at 156,593 acres. But that was soon dwarfed by the 2012 Whitewater-Baldy Fire at 325,136 acres (another doubling), followed by the 2022 Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon Fire at 341,735, while a California fire in 2020, exceeded one-million acres.

So, why, despite so many starkly dramatic lessons from wildfire:

1.      Does Los Alamos still allow residential developments in heavy timber and with only one point of egress, something long illegal in Colorado, including the new clusters of high-density apartments along Trinity, uphill of heavy timber in Los Alamos Canyon?

2.      Why does White Rock remain as vulnerable to fire from the south as Los Alamos was in May 2000 and where is county leadership for “landscape-sized” solutions (fuel break and thinned timber) for the landscape-sized fires of today? In White Rock, that would mean thinning overly dense pinon and juniper—across White Rock’s entire southern edge—to densities like those in Santa Clara Canyon, or sense “p-j woodland” is so dangerously flammable, perhaps even fewer trees.

3.      Where is education—not through meetings, which few attend—but, ongoing, through media, social media and county fliers, until “fire” becomes part of our thinking and we understand that we live in “forests of gasoline?”

4.      Why, 22 years after Los Alamos burned from an escape prescribed fire, did similar factors contribute to the Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon Fire?  When are we as citizens going to stop blaming low-ranking people “on the ground” and demand federal leadership, at the highest levels, to transform prescribed burn from being the forgotten, underfunded, backward stepchild of federal agencies? We need prescribed fire brought into the 21st century and conducted solely by professional “national” crews—more than the Hot Shots, people with the highest possible training in fire dynamics, physics, weather, fuels, legal requirements of prescribed burn and, most of all, independent of local pressure to “just get it done?”

In short, 25 years after Cerro Grande, are we sure we are adequately learning to live in the dangerous forests of the 21st century?

Editor’s note. Kathleene Parker was a correspondent for the Santa Fe New Mexican, covering Los Alamos, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and timber and fire issues, for 13 years.

Why be good when you can be loud?

By Zach Hively

You all, I’ve just had an epiphany on my Epiphone.

​I shouldn’t be surprised. My old man had an Epiphone guitar when I was growing up. That guitar taught me a lot about reading. For instance, I couldn’t figure out for years and years how to pronounce what looked to me, as much as anything, like a backwards number three.

“Three-piphone” didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then again, nothing else about that letter made sense either. It didn’t look like any letter I knew, and I was a precocious reader: I saw letters EVERYWHERE.

I figured out that this was a stylized E probably right around the same time my kindergarten class went on a field trip to the church next door to the school. I, sat in a pew, asked my teacher why they had a large lowercase T on the wall. You can extrapolate that Pops didn’t play a lot of hymns on that Epiphone. I didn’t know the word “heathen” yet, but it sure has an accompanying facial expression that I could read all over my teacher’s attempts at playing it cool.

Nor did I know the word “epiphany.” I don’t know when I heard that word for the first time, but I’m confident it was not the same day I learned that Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior died for my sins by being stapled to a lowercase T on the wall. (I might have been shorted on the context clues.)

But naturally, when I heard of an epiphany, I put backwards-three and backwards-three together and deduced that this new word made as much sense as anything else for a brand name for a guitar. It was also a reasonable pronunciation of E-P-I-P-H-O-N-E and sure sounded like it might start with a stylized letter E.

The truth is quite possibly that I carried this spelling/pronunciation combination with me until I purchased my own electric epiphany at age eighteen and said something about it, out loud, with my face, to a music store employee.

Anyway! With pronunciations sorted, I had this actual epiphany while playing my Epiphone. I hadn’t played it in a long time. Years, really.

There are reasons for that. Not least among them is that not playing makes it daunting to play. Everyone (by which I mean both me and the guitar) will use the occasion of me playing to point out all the times I didn’t play, so it’s easier and cleaner for us all if I just pretend none of this exists.

But then, something stupid and minor happened—so stupid and so minor that it’s not worth the not-ink to tell you just how stupid and how minor—and I needed to burn off the excess stupid and minor energy. I needed to play some music. And I needed to play it loud.

The Epiphone, once I scraped the dust off its case, was ready, waiting, and close enough to in tune for me.

​And this was the epiphany, written in stylized Dantean letters but without abandoning much hope:

NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE FINISHED TO BE WORTHY, YOU KNUCKLEHEAD.

Does the guitar actually care that I abandoned it? No. Would I be a virtuoso if I had played every day in the interim? Heck no. Will my fingertips hurt tomorrow? You bet. But will that feel good? No. And also yes.

For once, I didn’t get caught up in something I did needing to Be Good. Fit for Public Consumption. Not an Embarrassment to All My Ancestors (In Case They Really Are Up There Chillin’ with Jesus).

This freedom made guitar-playing fun again. More importantly, it made it loud again.

I need more of this letting-go-of-results business. To let go of expecting perfect conclusions from everything I do.

​Including the end of this piece.

Time escapes
Drawn from this place,
Pulled from my mouth,
A yawn.
A clock ticks,
Wound by a key,
Measuring back what is given.
Perpetually late afternoon.
 
There are boxes of pictures, hundreds.
Each holding us by a string, so
Fanned out like cards, we encircle
Deciphering tensions,
Plucking the chords,
Possessing in memory
And translation.
Conjuring ghosts.
 
Hundreds.
Dirt houses, pitched tin roofs,
Hollyhock, geranium, lilac,
The unhuggable girth of a cottonwood.
An orchard.  A windmill.  The river.
Chili Ristra garlands hang side by side,
Roof to ground, cascading,
Dwarfing house and man.
An impossibly bountiful summer.
 
Stories rupture forth.
“I remember when it was like this…”
I bring it close to my face as if to enter it,
This wellspring.
I study the washed gray that red produces
When rendered in black and white,
As if it has already
Left this world, uncontested,
Triumphant in it’s brilliance.
 
Hundreds.
Here my great grandfather stands beside ‘Carl,’
The surrogate son for lack of another
Who is also my grandmother ‘Carol’
They are smiling or squinting in the sun.
The blue of their eyes does not absorb the light,
But casts it out, the brightest white of the picture.
My great grandfather’s name was James Percy,
It was also Santiago.
Out of respect.
 
Grandmother, mother, I
All daughters and mothers now.
My daughter, hand over hand passes,
Our knees her guiding posts,
Amazed by her own shuffling feet,
Sacking stacks of photos before her
With gleeful shrieks while
A calloused hand guides her gently
To unfamiliar knees.
 
Hundreds.
Here’s one of me
Walking for the first time
On a dirt path leading from the old house,
In tiny moccasined feet.
Tired, perhaps, of the goatheads that
Stick in my palm,
Which I offer up tearfully
To be plucked.
​
I am small and delicate
Wearing a dark dress
To contrast my paleness.
A faint birthmark on my forehead
Between my eyes tells me
God had to push my head down
Into my mothers womb.
I didn’t want to come quite yet.
 
Here is my mother
Walking for the first time
In the exact same place.
She is darker, moonfaced, radiant.

Here’s another in which she beats a drum
Half her size.
Pursed lipped and wide eyed, she reveals no foresight
That she will smooth the bed of my river with her laughter
That she will, for a time, be her mother’s keeper.

The clock confirms the shadow
Of the cottonwood as it stretches,
Magnificently over the courtyard.
My grandmother is drumming the arm of her chair
Softly with her fist,
Trying to recall the identity of a woman
Standing self-possessed on a boulder above
The river.

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.

By Karima Alavi

​We’ve followed the adventures of selecting the location of the Dar al Islam Mosque and retreat center, along with the arrival of Egyptian masons who taught traditional methods of building domes, arches and vaults. Let’s move on to the days when the halls of Dar al Islam rang with the cheerful voices of school children.

Seeking education is a religious obligation on every Muslim, if they have access to schooling. The first revelation from God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel began with the word “Iqra.” This word is translated as both “Read” and “Recite.” That Qur’anic verse, translated below on Quran.com, references not only reading and teaching (reciting to others,) but also writing, and the pursuit of knowledge:

Iqra (Read. Recite) in the Name of your Lord who created--
created humans from a clinging clot. (of blood)
Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous,
Who taught by the pen--
taught humanity what they knew not. 

At the root of Islamic education is the emphasis on Qur’anic verses that tell the listener/reader to take note of signs in God’s creation, in the biological, social and spiritual world around them, and reflect upon what these signs mean. The Qur’an mentions the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the day and night as a reminder that everything that exists is a gift from a creator. There are verses about stars, mountains, trees and fruits, the ocean, even bees— all presented as something to consider before also taking stock of ourselves and our humble relationship as humans with all that surrounds and sustains us. With these verses in mind, children are taught to be aware of the pain one can find in the world as well, among both the earth (ecological exploitation and destruction) and among fellow humanity.

The importance of education for all Muslims is also supported by the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, my favorite one being: “Seek ye knowledge from the cradle to the grave.”

Creating a space for a school
Dar al Islam had made two purchases, the first one of land only, the second consisting of both land and some properties that included structures. Supported by donations, the small elementary school first opened, not at the Dar al Islam site, but at the building on County Road 155 that most locals now refer to as the “Hunt Hacienda.”
The first section of the Dar al Islam facility to be built was the mosque. Because the madressah (school and retreat) segment of Dar al Islam took a few more years to complete, the school, called The Khalid Islamic School, had to find another site. The hacienda offered an obvious choice. Bedrooms became classrooms, the dining room became the cafeteria, and another space was used for prayers.
Of course, stories of the “Haunted Hacienda” spread quickly and still send chills up some spines, though when I asked for specific “sightings” people just chuckled. Except for one former student: Jasmine Kemp. She told me that two young brothers, Adam and Daniel, claimed they had been dragged down a stairway by a Jinn.
Like the Nicaean Creed in Christianity, Islam states a belief in both the seen and unseen, those elements of the created world that can sometimes be crossed. In the Qur’an, Jinn are presented as spirits that differ from humans and angels. Like angels, they can interact with the human realm, though they are capable of doing both good and evil acts. After Adam’s and Daniel’s experience, no students wanted to be left alone in that building. Ever.

Several women from the Muslim families of Abiquiu already had teaching certificates and experience when they arrived in New Mexico. Nadina Barnes, who moved here from Arizona, had started an Islamic school at a mosque in Tempe. She mentioned that at one point early on, Dar al Islam hosted a two-week training program for educators who teach at Islamic Schools. Most attendees and trainers came from Sister Clara Muhammad Schools.

Abiquiu’s Muslim teachers were encouraged by the school principal to travel to the College of Santa Fe to obtain teaching certificates. One of those women, Ayesha Jordan, drove to the college between teaching, and raising five children. She also served as the school cook for a time, as well as serving as a Kindergarten teacher.

​Even swimming was taught at the school when one of the mothers, Rabia van Hattum, noted that the children loved playing in the river and were in need of formal swimming lessons to assure their safety.

“We lived in a bubble here, assuming the rest of the world was just like what we had in Abiquiu. We didn’t appreciate what we had until we left, and that makes our memories more precious.”​
Former Khalid Islamic School student, Jasmine Kemp who now lives in Santa Fe. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she’s an elementary school teacher. ​

Courtesy of Alyssa Armijo, Presbyterian Healthcare Services

The Same Day Care Clinic at Presbyterian Española Hospital provides convenient care when you need it. When your provider is unavailable, our family medicine providers are available to provide same day care for minor and non-life-threatening conditions.

The clinic is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to treat minor injuries and illnesses, such as colds, sore throats, sprains and strains, minor broken bones, and allergy flare ups.

​The clinic is located on the second floor of the Presbyterian Medical Group Clinic at 1010 Spruce Street. If you have a medical need that requires attention, please call for an appointment at 505-367-0340. For more information visit, phs.org/espanola.

Courtesy of Carolyn Calfee, Grand Hacienda

Elizabeth K. Anderson, P.E.
State Engineer
May 5, 2025
RE: OSE Approval of the 2025 Rio Chama Sharing Agreement

Greetings:

The Office of the State Engineer (OSE) has approved the 2025 Rio Chama Basin Sharing Agreement, enclosed. Implementation of the sharing agreement shall be triggered by daily average flows at USGS gaging station 08284100 (La Puente) as follows:

• For post-1907 surface water diversions located above La Puente: Sharing will begin when the daily average flow at La Puente reaches 70 cubic feet per second (CFS), consistently.

• For all other diversions: Sharing operations shall commence when the daily average flow at La Puente reaches 50 CFS, consistently.

OSE staff will engage with mayordomos or other representatives of pre-1907 acequias and ditches located above La Puente to encourage voluntary reductions in diversions when flows range between 70 and 50 CFS.

The following Rio Chama subbasins are excluded from participation in the 2025 Sharing Agreement due to the absence of sufficient subbasin data: El Rito, Ojo Caliente, Cañones y Polvadera, Canjilon, Rio Gallina, Rio Cebolla, Rio del Oso, Rio Puerco, and the Rio Nutrias.

OSE is appreciative of your participation in the development of the 2025 Sharing Agreement. Staff will reman in contact with the sharing parties and mayordomos as native Rio Chama flows decline and implementation of the agreement becomes necessary.

Respectfully,
Lorraine A. Garcia
Deputy District Manager
Water Rights Division
[email protected]

CC:
John Romero ([email protected])
Ramona Martinez ([email protected])
Cindy Stokes ([email protected])
Myron Armijo ([email protected])

2025 Shortage Sharing Agreement and Schedule

Parties

Ohkay Owingeh
Rio Chama Acéquia Association member acéquias
Acéquia de los Salazares, Acéquia de Abeyta y Trujillo, Acéquia Valentin Martinez,
Acéquia de la Puente, Acéquia de Tierra Azul, Acéquia de Jose Ferran, Acéquia de Jose Pablo Gonzales, Acéquia Mariano, Acéquia de Manzanares y Montoya, Acéquia de Quintana, Acéquia del Rio de Chama, Acéquia de Jose V. Martinez, Acéquia de los Gonzales, Acéquia de los Martinez, Acéquia de los Duranes, Acéquia de Chamita, Acéquia de Chili y la Cuchilla, Acéquia de Hernandez, Acéquia Barranco, Acéquia Suazo.

Acéquias Norteñas member acéquias
Acéquia de Los Brazos, La Puente Community Ditch, Ensenada Community Ditch, Parkview Community Ditch, El Brazito & Lateral Acéquia, Acéquia del Bordo, Acéquia del Llano, Acéquia del Brazito, Acéquia de la Otra Banda, Acéquia el Pinabetal (Canjilon), Acéquia de Pinavetal (Cebolla), Cebolla Acéquia Madre, Acéquia de Tierra Amarilla, Cañones Arriba Ditch #1, Barranco Community Ditch, M-B Community Ditch, Plaza Blanca Community Ditch, Porvenir Ditch, Village of Chama Community Ditch, Willow Creek Community Ditch and the Valley Ditch.

Basin Wide Rules

1. The Water Masters will administer the sharing schedule in accordance with the included schedules. The Water Masters may suspend curtailment in whole or in part as basin conditions allow.
2. Any diverters on the shortage sharing schedule that are non-compliant with the agreement may be suspended for a week from the schedule at the Water Master’s discretion.
3. For diverters that are not included in the sharing schedule, the Water Masters will administer according to AWRM.
4. For the 2025 season, because of anticipated very low-flow conditions, the Water Master and the Sharing Parties may hold weekly meetings once higher flows from spring runoff start to subside (perhaps as early as May). The purpose of the meetings may include sharing of information on hydrologic and irrigation conditions, and to determine and take additional measures and cooperation that are needed to provide for equitably sharing and to carry out the intent of the shortgage sharing agreement.

Lower Chama Sharing Party Rules

1. Ditches can alter the schedule by trading allocations with approval of both ditches and the Water Master. Any alterations to the RCAA base schedule must be submitted to the Water Master the Sunday before the group start day for the ditches requesting an alteration.
2. RCAA Ditches and Lower Chama diversions may turn on no earlier than 7 am on the first day of their scheduled period and must turn off by 7 am the morning after their last scheduled day.
3. Ohkay Owingeh may use any tailwater that is available on Acéquia de Chamita’s days.
4. Ditches that cannot divert their full allocation shall notify the Water Master immediately. The Water Master will notify Ohkay Owingeh of any available surplus water for its bosque use first. Ohkay Owingeh will no more than 1 hour after being notified of available surplus water notify the Water Master that it intends to use all or some of the available surplus water. Ohkay Owingeh will make every effort to respond promptly. The Water Master will make any remaining surplus water available to other diverters by priority, as available.
5. The Water Master shall shut off diversions to the Acequia de Chamita if, due to a violation by a Chamita Parciante of the water sharing schedule, flows at the State Engineer Yungeh Gage drop below the cfs rate allocated to Ohkay Owingeh under the water sharing schedule after reasonable carriage losses have been subtracted. The curtailment of the Acequia de Chamita diversions based on the flow rate at the State Engineer Yungeh Gage will remain in effect for the remainder of the week in which the schedule violation occurred. Diversions shall not be resumed until Ohkay Owingeh’s next turn on the water sharing schedule. If Ohkay Owingeh uses an alternative point of diversion, the Acequia de Chamita must reduce its diversion at the direction of the Water Master to balance total diversions serving Ohkay Owingeh for the rotation. Ohkay Owingeh, the Water Master, and RCAA may agree to alternative enforcement measures, as appropriate.
6. If there is an active carriage agreement, there will be no restrictions in the Lower Chama. The OSE shall be provided with a copy of the 2025 carriage agreement at least one week prior to commencement of curtailment. The OSE shall be notified three (3) business days prior to when the carriage agreement is no longer active.

Upper Chama Sharing Party Rules

1. Post-1907 diversions will reduce diversions to 50% of their allocated administrative flow rate at 70 cfs and to 40% of their allocated administrative flow rate at 50 cfs. Pre-1907 diversions will reduce diversions to 50% of the allocated administrative flow rate at 50 cfs. See table 2.
2. The Water Master will work with mayordomos or other representatives of pre-1907 and post-1907 diversions located above La Puente to make voluntary reductions between 70-50 cfs at La Puente in an attempt to delay curtailment for more senior diversions in the Lower Chama.
3. At the determination of the Water Master, diversions may be reduced to 50 cfs limitations any day instantaneous flows at La Puente fall under 50 cfs.
4. Irrigation ditches will be limited to livestock use only after July 31 if La Puente is less than 50 cfs.
5. The Water Master may restrict livestock diversions based on basin conditions. Livestock flows will be determined by the Water Master based on livestock need and water supply.
6. Diversions shall bypass livestock water to support downstream livestock demands within their sub-basin. The Water Master will inform diversions of downstream livestock needs and determine the minimum bypass necessary to meet those needs.
7. No diversion shall take all the available water at their point of diversion and dry their stream reach if there are downstream irrigation diversions or livestock needs within their sub-basin.
8. Diverters may voluntarily work together to allocate the supply among themselves (for example by employing ditch rotation), so long as the total diversion of participating ditches does not exceed the total maximum diversion allowable to those ditches. In addition under low-flow conditions, a single ditch or ditches may aggregate their cfs allocation over fewer days per week rather than diverting seven days per week, based on a schedule approved by the Water Master.
9. For the 2025 season, when the flow at Cañones Ditch #1 diversion falls below 4.0 CFS, daily diversions on Cañones Creek located upstream of Cañones Ditch #1 diversion will be limited to livestock use only. Irrigation by upstream diverters will be allowed every other Sunday unless further restricted at the discretion of the Cañones Ditch #1 Mayordomo to ensure all parciantes for Cañones Ditch #1 are able to adequately irrigate their properties. Diversions into ponds will not be allowed at any time when the flow at Cañones Ditch #1 diversion falls below 4.5 CFS.
10. For the 2025 season, all diversions on Tierra Amarilla Creek located upstream of the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion will be limited to livestock use only when the flow at the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion first falls below 2.00 cfs. When flow at the Tierra Amarilla Community Ditch diversion is between 2.0 and 5.22 cfs, irrigation by upstream diverters will be limited to Sundays.
11. For the 2025 season, the Sharing Parties have identified the likely need to include additional triggers for further reduction, for example when the allocated administrative flow rate drops to 35 cfs, post-1907 diversions will be further reduced; and when the allocated administrative flow rate drops to 25 cfs, pre-1907 diversions will be further reduced. These additional measures will be the subject of the weekly meetings described above.​

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2025 Lower Chama Sharing Agreement