Adaptation

The big event in our neck of the San Luis Valley is the sudden cold. It’s snowing and the leaves aren’t all down. It went down to twenty-two degrees last night. But I shouldn’t complain—up in Denver they have a foot of snow. This storm is going to dump about four feet in the Rocky Mountains, the biggest “snowmaker” to hit Colorado’s Front Range in October since 1997, says Byron Louis, a National Weather service Meteorologist in Boulder.

Here in Northern New Mexico we had two or three inches of slush on the mountain roads. The snow let up for the day, but this evening it’s coming down again. When I went down to feed the horses this morning, the stock tanks were frozen over; I had to break the ice with a rake and do it again this evening. (So what ever happened to global warming?) The horses are growing out their coats as fast as they can. The humans are scrambling for gloves, boots and snow tires. It’s called “adaptation.” It’s easier if you have time to ease into it.

The weatherization people came last week—God bless ‘em—and caulked all the cracks around the windows and under the vigas (rafters). They also weatherized our front and back doors so that they’re tight. Then they wrapped the gas water heater with insulation and told us that would bring down the cost of hot water by 27%. They even changed all our old light bulbs for thirteen-watt, spiral compact fluorescents that are supposed to save 80% on energy we normally use for lights. The bulbs last up to nine years. Though they are 900 lumens, they seem a bit dimmer than regular bulbs. In fact, my first thought was that as civilization runs out of gas and oil, we’re going back in time. It took me back to my childhood during World War II in London, Ontario in the yellow clapboard house on Byron Avenue where every room was lit by one dangling, overhead bulb.

But—anything to save a polar bear.

On the way to town this morning I saw a coyote trotting across the road, all bushy and swa-vay. (Suave.) Not skinny and sly like the ones in the cartoons. On the way home in five o’clock traffic, close to the same spot, I saw a coyote—the same one?—dashing lickety split across the road between speeding cars, streaking through the fence on the other side, leaping over sagebrush. I always pay attention when I see Coyote. Two coyotes in one day—running in the same direction in the same place. Maybe it’s a sign. Of what?? The Trickster. Duality.

When I turned onto the dirt road that leads to our driveway, I was delighted to see nine does grazing in my neighbor’s field where alfalfa grew in the summer. No bucks in sight. I stopped, killed the engine and rolled down the window. Some heads came up and ears turned to me, but they went back to grazing. One of the does squatted and peed. Hmm. Never saw that before. Then she lifted her back hoof and scratched behind her ear.

When I went out an hour later to feed the horses, there were only two does in the field. I wondered where the rest had gone. All summer the rio was a mere trickle, but tonight when I crossed the bridge I heard the liquid rush of water. The mayordomos in charge of the acequias on both sides of the valley will shut down the ditches before they freeze over and turn the water back into the river.

Coming home half an hour later, I saw two does and a yearling up by the ditch behind my house. I stopped, rolled down the window and sang to them. Not words, just notes: “Oh oh ohhhh ohhh . . .” They stood perfectly still, their ears tuned forward. And me without a camera. (It’s in the shop.)

Once when I was driving in the mountains around Chama near the Colorado state line, I noticed a small herd on a wooded hillside. I happened to be playing a Rolling Stone tune, “Gimme Shelter.” I thought they might like the wordless intro in a minor key that croons like the autumn wind. I stopped, rewound and played it over and over. They kept munching and drifting down the hill toward the car until one of them was about five feet away. Some animals won’t be charmed no matter what you do, but the deer fall for it every time.

Intertwined

This evening I lit the first fire of the season in my small, airtight wood stove. There's something so comforting about lively orange flames, the crackle and scent of piñon wood, the warmth of a wood fire.

I learned a lot about the P/J Woodland today in my class on Taos Ecology. (P/J stands for piñon/juniper.) We went on a field trip in Taos Canyon, up a trail called Divisadero to 7,400 feet. Our teacher, Sylvia, said that piñon is very vulnerable to climate shifts and retreats in times of drought to re-colonize later. If the temperature goes up even one degree, the heat shuts down the life processes and kills the tree.

Piñon is our most important source of firewood around here, though we also burn aspen, cedar and "red pine." Aspen burns hot and fast and cleans out your stovepipe. But a log of piñon will burn all night and the stove still be warm in the morning. The piñons around here and as far south as Santa Fe have been taking a beating for the past decade. Plagued by drought and infested with ips beetles, they have died by the thousands. Cutting the dead ones for firewood isn't an option because of the danger of spreading the beetle. The past couple of winters we've had several days of below zero temperatures, which is what it takes to kill the beetles. And deep snows to replenish the watershed and fill the irrigation acequias in spring, but no one is saying that the drought is over yet.

The aspens are affected too. Aspens reproduce by sending up suckers. A whole stand of aspens may be connected at the root. Ancient aspen clones, some of them thousands of years old, are threatened by a lethal combination of disease and insect infestation that destroys even the roots. The good news is, in Flagstaff, Arizona where stands of aspens are struggling to regenerate, the forest service has succeeded in protecting new suckers from browsing elk by fencing off the parent trees.

Today we students are trying to understand how everything in the environment affects everything else. We stop to look at a juniper tree infested with mistletoe, great olive-green clumps of it thriving on bare branches, sucking nourishment from the wood and leaving black fungal spores. Sylvia notes that it is not advantageous for a parasite to kill the host. Which also applies to our own species. She points out a mountain mahogany bush that has been grazed by mule deer. "Deer ice cream," she calls it. They have devoured most of the leaves, but the stems seem fine. The deer leave piles of "deer duds" that help fertilize the ground. Periodically, we are startled by the blast of a high powered rifle from the opposite hillside. Hunting season.

We identify five different kinds of grasses and talk about the partnership between specific fungus and specific algae that paint the sides of the rocks pale green. Fungus absorbs water and keeps the algae moist; algae is photosynthetic, creates food from sunlight, and provides nourishment for the fungus. They are intertwined and can't survive without each other. Together they help weather the rock and break it down into soil.

Near the ridge we do a fifty foot, radial vegetation sampling, identify and count the number of different kinds of trees and note what condition they are in. Where dead juniper and piñon have fallen, dozens of saplings are springing up, some in the protective shelter of clumps of grass and sage. They look bright and healthy and give us hope the way all young things do.

Driving home at dusk, I slow down in the driveway but don't see the deer until I come to the bridge. Two of them have already crossed--one of them a buck. The does are browsing on the other side of the bridge, in the field and above the stone wall. I stop in the middle of the road and wait. A car rolls up behind me. Slows down, dims the lights. Someone else enjoys watching them, too. I proceed with caution, turn on my brights and count eight deer--and yes, there he is--the other buck. One buck hasn't driven the other away and no one has shot them.

Yet.

It gives me hope.

Autumn in Taos

It’s autumn in Taos, New Mexico, my favorite time of the year in the high mountain desert. We live in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in an old adobe house on four stony acres of land. A rio runs through it. (The land, not the house.) We are right on the edge of the national forest at the mouth of a rocky canyon, so wild animals wander through here every day.

In the past month I’ve seen a raccoon sleeping in the crotch of a cottonwood tree down by the river, a bobcat watching me from the top of a cliff, a big blue heron fishing in the rio, a large black bear standing in the driveway, a great horned owl, hawks, ravens, flickers, magpies, wrens, stellar jays, vultures and many other kinds of birds. Not to mention mule deer and mice that are called deer mice because of their protruding brown eyes and big deer-like ears. I catch the mice in live traps and release them several miles downstream, almost to the confluence of the Rio Hondo and the Rio Grande.

Life here is never dull. Yesterday a storm swept in. It rained, hailed and snowed. I didn’t want to drive ten miles to Taos to have dinner with a friend. I just wanted to hunker down in bed with a good book. But okay . . .

Driving out I was startled to see, on a hill overlooking the dirt driveway, not one but two mule deer with dark, stately racks of horns. It’s rare to see two bucks together. I wondered if they were in battle. I glanced down into my neighbor’s field and there was the whole herd--or had two herds combined? About eight or nine does and yearlings looked up at me with dark eyes and big ears forward, all curious. Maybe the storm drove them down before dusk. I hope those two bucks don’t end up in someone’s freezer.

I always feel blessed when I see a deer. I hear them outside my back door at night blowing out their breath, “Uhh! Uhh!” like Santa stuck in the chimney. The other night, driving out in the dark, my headlights picked up a doe wandering in the road between barbed wire fences. “Hi, Bambi!” I said, and braked to watch. The deer was in no hurry. “I know you can jump right over that fence,” I said, “because you have such springy legs.” Sure enough, the doe backed up a step and in one fluid motion floated over the wire like Michael Jordan making an effortless shot.

I drove on. Half way to town, it happened. (It used to happen more often when the air was really clear.) The sun broke through a cloudbank close to the horizon and glorified the landscape with a rich translucent light like some melodramatic painting. In the center of a field three dead cottonwood trees glowed amber, surrounded by a herd of black cows, framed by whale-blue clouds, and above that, veils of snow sweeping across white peaks. Along the highway, gold-leafed poplars shimmered with rain; the road was bright with scattered leaves.

As the Earth rolled away from the sun, the sky colors deepened to tangerine, royal purple, turquoise, magenta and an embarrassed blush. I pulled over, leapt out of the car and tried to film the drama with a slow video pan, but my sleeve caught in the barbed wire fence and the light faded.

I sighed and climbed back in the car. Oh well, I’ll go home and write about it.