The Santa Fe National Forest Site Stewards

Conversation with Wendy Dolci
​
By Jessica Rath

Signs are placed at cultural sites, informing visitors that the area is protected by state and federal laws. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boulder with petroglyphs. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards

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

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

Sharpening tool. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards

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

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

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

Boulder with cupules, which are human-made depressions on rock surfaces. They are widely believed to be the world's most common rock art motifs. Cupules are found in large numbers in every continent except Antarctica. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards

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

Site Stewards on a field trip with a Tewa ceramics expert. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards.

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

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

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

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

Boulder with grinding slick. Photo Credit: SFNF Site Stewards.

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

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

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

Spiral petroglyph. Petroglyphs are made by removing part of a rock's surface to reveal the lighter rock underneath. They are a form of ancient art and communication. Photo credit: SFNF Site Stewards

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

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

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

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