Guardian of the Gila
PERCHED IN A STEEL LOOKOUT tower on Mogollon Baldy, Sara Irving has kept eyes on the Gila Wilderness for 42 summers. A hike along the Continental Divide Trail in 1980 prompted her to apply for a…
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Tag: Gila Wilderness
Find These Birds in the Gila
LOCATED AT THE NORTHERNMOST end of some birds’ range and the southernmost of others, the Gila Wilderness climbs from cactus-filled desert to steep, pine-covered peaks. Those features, combined with…
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Pinyon Jays Flourish in the Gila Forest
PINYON JAYS LIKE TO ANNOUNCE THEMSELVES with a chuckling kind of call, sung out while they fly overhead or settle into chatty flocks, often perched in the branches of the pine tree with which they…
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The History of the Gila Cliff Dwellings
“THIS WHOLE MOUNTAIN VALLEY wasn’t some wilderness nobody visited,” says Dana Dick, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument’s lead interpretive park ranger. “It was home to people. There’s evidence of…
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Editor's Letter: Wild Times
ON JUNE 3, 1924, THE GILA WILDERNESS became the first-of-its-kind wilderness area—a federally designated place with no roads, no cabins, no vehicles. Or, as Aldo Leopold—the Forest Service employee…
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The Gila Wilderness At 100
LESS THAN FIVE MILES into the nation’s first designated wilderness area, I scan the muddy banks of New Mexico’s last free-flowing river for animal tracks, wondering who else is here. Low sunlight…
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Why We Love NM: Our Wild Places Tame Hearts
ALMOST ANYWHERE YOU LIVE IN NEW MEXICO, a mountain range rises within beckoning distance. Our major cities all stand in their shadows. Their names ring with poetry: the Sangre de Cristos, the…
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In Relation to All Things
EVERY DAY, I drive the same highway into town. In a small community in the southwest corner of New Mexico, nestled in the foothills of the Gila Wilderness, my commute is a beautiful drive through a…
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Listening to the Land
IN THE MIDDLE OF A PIÑON PINE CLUSTER in the southwest New Mexico high country, Apache wilderness guide Joe Saenz was explaining traditional sources of Vitamin C in a voice so soft that I, a…
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