Our Preserve, a sign in the Corrales Bosque Preserve, which is part of the Rio Grande Bosque, photo © 2009 by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
The Rio Grande supports a ribbon of green oasis along its length, from its beginnings in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, to its junction with the Gulf of Mexico. In New Mexico much of this oasis is a native bosque (Spanish for woods) of Rio Grande cottonwood, together with a few other shrubs and trees, alongside a burr-reed and willow marsh. The marshland was once extensive along the river, sustained by the yearly floods which replenished the water table and fertilized the soil. Now this marshland is rare, found only in places where mudflats persist and drainage from diversion channels keeps the soil relatively moist.
Winter walking in the Corrales bosque is cool and quiet—I hear only the sound of my shoes on the forest floor, and my own breathing. Wind vibrates faded yellow leaves hanging high above—now and then a leaf twists off, clatters down, bumping through branches to land in the path. The trails are private and winding, at times damp with snow in the shade, or most often deep, soft chalky dust, pocked by paw prints, hoof prints, bicycle tracks.
Horse – Bicycle – Pedestrian – who yields to whom? The triangular sign shows the walker yields to both.
Towering above are the textured trunks of twisted cottonwood trees, adorned with mistletoe, sometimes raucous with hundreds of crows, chanting among rattling old leaves.
On gravel bars along the river, the geese sun themselves, all facing south; a laughing duck, or the shadow of an intruder disturbs the peace. At once, a hundred Canada geese flap up in procession, wheeling into the western sun, their white breasts reflecting gold, dark wings working. Circling over the bosque, formations gather, call and respond—flying shadows ripple across the sunlit canopy.
Geese gather on the Rio Grande, photo ©
2009 by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
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Seasons change: a reminder that I have been here, walking and watching, for what seems like a very long time. At about age 40, I found out I could stroll out the back door without anyone hanging on my leg. I walk dogless these days.
Once in a wet year a giant hollow tree fell across the path, roots rudely exposed, grubs and ants and toadstools, stacked like dinner plates. Little kids clambered the slippery trunk: a mossy bridge, a balance beam. Now decades later a part of the architecture of the forest, silvery and smooth, the worn log is carved with hearts and names and charred like an old bone.
New green leaves of foresteria unfold, the orange-blossom scent of Russian olive penetrates. Cotton flies on the air, puffs and piles on the understory like a summer snowfall. We watch for signs of rain, we wish for rain. Glorious yellow Pecos sunflowers, multi-headed black-eyed Susan, preside over summer meadows, as brilliant purple asters endure long after frost has bleached the tall grass.
Here in the shelter of the bosque, the howling wind on the mesa is tamed to a smart breeze, tamarisk petals spray a soft pink glow in early spring, or, in autumn, Hallowe’en-orange flames contrast with black trunks silhouetted against the tangled underbrush. It is an evolving landscape, weeds and waters never the same for long. One flush spring I wade through high runoff to reach the small patch of silky sand, watch the clouds change and shadows slip across the face of Sandia—but now that wash is dry, a thicket of red coyote willow. The beach yields to mud and cockle-burrs, the sand shifts south.
Bending Cottonwoods, photo © 2009
by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
Rio Grande: a big nombre, this shallow stream does not seem worthy of, but it’s all we’ve got. Mud-olive brown, rippling with mystery, source in the clean headwaters of the Colorado High Country, way above Taos, up in the meandering creeks and bogs of Creede. All the way down to Mexico, it rolls on by us.
In winter, the mirrored surface gleams an ice-blue reflection of the sky. Sandia sparkles with new snow, while I soak up the white-hot light on a bright beach—safe, miles from anyone, minutes from home. “So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.” (Wordsworth)
The bosque is home to roadrunners and snakes, lizards, cottontails, turtles and peeping quail. Sandhill cranes, like feathered dinosaurs, walking absurdly on stick legs, clumsy taking off, and stunning in unlikely flight, wings creaking just overhead.
Rope swings out over the shallows, promising cool breezes on a hot day, sun and shadow, shadow and sun. Boys whack sticks, dogs chase sticks into the currents, chug smiling with a slimey log, shake on the shore. Step around coyote scat and green horse piles. Sleek bicyclists in their brilliant bodysuits speed by the slow walker.
(The rope-swing cottonwood tree, snapped and graffiti’d, lays on the bank now, with only the fading notes of children’s voices—the home-schoolers and the unschoolers and kids just let out of school for summer—reminding us that this was once a grand tree, to swing up, out and over a grande river.)
Rope swing by the Rio Grande, photo ©
2009 by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
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Last winter I was surprised by a locked gate at Romero Road, so I hiked in along the lateral ditch. A huge truck loaded with trees and brush drove by me, while from the north came the whining machine sounds of saws and chippers. What could be going on? I was afraid to ask.
Months later, on a March afternoon, I headed south on foot from the North Beach and was shocked and saddened beyond words at the recent clear-cutting and scraping of all non-native species, dead wood and brush from the bosque, for “fuel load reduction.”
In the dry Southwest, fire danger is a legitimate concern. Sadly, in the name of safety and conservation, an aggressive attack has been sustained against the ecosystem of the undergrowth…so much is gone.
At what price do we protect property, but abandon the beauty and peace of nature that sustains this fragile life?
Where have the animals and birds who lived here gone now? You can drive a semi through the woods; nothing but chipped mulch, stumps, and silence.
Cleared out (left) and Bridled weasel (right), a section of cleared bosque and recently dead wildlife, photos © 2009 by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
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At the Corrales Bosque Advisory Commission meeting last year, February 14, the mayor and several Village Council members heard pleas from villagers distressed by the excessive clearing of brush, dead wood, and non-native vegetative species in the preserve.
A temporary stop-work order was given based on public outcry, but has not halted this ongoing effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, despite the severe loss of habitat in what is supposedly a “nature preserve.” It seems the title is negotiable.
The jetty-jacks—those triangulated metal spikes linked by cable, installed in the bosque decades ago to protect the levees from debris in case of flood, are now ecologically unwanted, prevent big trucks from moving around, and it takes a “Little Giant” to remove them—along with all the vegetation that has grown up around them. Flood control has caused disruption in the natural cycles, so they say.
They say this old deciduous cottonwood forest is dying, anyway. That it needs to be flooded and managed, control-burned and levee’d, systematically scraped and rid of noxious trees and wildflowers. New cottonwood trees need to replace the aging generation, but the seedlings are not surviving. Councils clamor about waste-water, septic, sewers and salinization, as the bosque becomes a battleground for groundwater.
Beware of tree, photo © 2009
by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
They say that tamarisk and Russian olive are illegally drinking, and ducks have no business roosting in the cattails. That the cottonwood giants, lightning-struck and mistletoe-bedecked, will fall into shattered hollow logs, in my lifetime, if I live to see the day. Maybe my kids, or my grandchildren, will see this happen. Maybe they are right, I admit, I don’t know. I hope not.
This Rio Grande—it’s just a narrow strip of life through the wide desert, source of irrigation for the valley: Without it, there would be no apple orchards, chile fields, cornfields or lush pasture with beautiful horses. From the air, the bosque is a green snake in a sere, windy brown world—we call with irony, upon landing at Albuquerque: Planet Dune.
Clear ditch afternoon, photo © 2009
by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
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Via Oreada
Walking out through the south entrance to the Corrales bosque on a Sunday afternoon, I pass by a Mexican family with a KFC picnic, fishing the clear ditch; giggling children chasing a chihuahua; two lovers arm in arm talking softly in Tewa, on a bridge over a culvert of rushing brown water.
A cartoonish Roadrunner cocks his yellow eye and scolds me for getting too close to his perch on the business end of Little Giant, a yellow machine with a toothy maw: what we used to call a “steam shovel.”
I stop to look at the posted signs. “Flora and Fauna of the Bosque Preserve” illustrates an idyllic scene of happy co-existence—Coyote and Beaver, wild Turkey, Muskrat, Toad and Frog, Weasel, Hawk and field Mouse, Skunk and Owl … There is no human in the picture, I recall, except my own reflection in the glass.
The sign says:
Our Preserve is home to a fragile plant and animal community which needs our consideration. Please remember that these living things depend on us to leave their habitat undisturbed and unimpaired for future generations.
This area of thirty acres, Via Oreada, is slated for extensive clearing by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to start this spring 2009.
Ready to rumble, photo © 2009 by Linda W. Lupowitz. All rights reserved.
Linda Weissinger Lupowitz lives, works, and writes in Corrales, New Mexico. She has been walking in the bosque since 1982. You can see the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Fire Restoration map and plan for the Corrales Bosque Preserve here. And you can read more of Linda’s writing on her blog, C. Little, no less, or on the red Ravine post The Face You Wore Before You Were Born.
[NOTE: A shorter version of this essay will be published in an upcoming issue of the Corrales Comment, a local newspaper for the village of Corrales.]
redravine.wordpress.com 
Linda, I had Jim read your essay about the Corrales bosque. Just this morning he heard activity over on the south end of the bosque and mentioned that he thought the clearing had begun again.
He was moved by the essay, and even little Em asked if he’d seen the dead weasel. (She checks the blog every day, it seems.)
The very first place Jim took me when we started dating was on a mountain bike trip from Creede to the Rio Grande Pyramid, source waters of the Rio Grande. We crossed Stoney Pass, and in the distance we could see white dots that looked like boulders. They were sheep, which we figured out when we heard the tinkling of the cowbells. The mountains are ginormous there; we were also specks, just like the sheep.
We lived right next to the bosque when the bosque clearing started; it was both heartwrenching and maddening to listen to the sound of trees falling, and those earth movers. A tree ripped from the earth in the forest is one of the most anguishing sounds I’ve heard.
Your writing made me cry. Even after several readings, I could barely make it through without the tears welling up. The beauty of your writing is that you raise questions in such a gentle and compassionate way. You recognize the need for clearing while asking the question, But is this how it has to be done? That’s what I wonder. Isn’t there a more humane, a more sensible way to manage a wildlife and nature preserve? Is it a matter of practiciality and cost that leads those in charge to scrape the earth?
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Linda, a beautiful piece of writing. I felt like I was walking on the trail with you through the bosque. The sadness of the Corps of Engineers clearing out non-native species and devastating the ecosystem overwhelms me. When will we learn to quit messing with nature.
My father told me stories of the Missouri River with its meandering course and how the COE decided that the river should be straightened. They dug a new, straighter channel up around St. Joseph, Missouri and then opened it. The river sped through the new channel pulling rich soil from farmlands as far north as Nebraska due to the increased speed.
Thanks for this piece of exceptional writing.
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yb, Bob, thanks so very much for your kind words – knowing the sources, I am touched and honored. I ‘m also relieved to be done with this piece, to feel complete – even though the problem goes on without ceasing.
It is quite painful to actually care about the sad dilemma we are in, balancing the needs of too many people with the limitations of a rare and endangered ecosystem.
Current “land management” strategies, imposing ruthless domination, internal combustion engines and slash/burn policies – for “conservation”? More like radicalization of the environment, subjugation.
This is a war against nature. Beating back the bushes is one piece of a huge problem. But surely, it could be done more consciously. Why is a river, in the drought-scared southwest, used as a sewer? It’s crazy.
We should not ever resort to the kind of destruction that has been wrought, not just here in NM but all over the planet.
For example, witness the complete elimination of wildflowers along the acequias and the clear ditch – wildflowers of incredible profusion and variety, 6 ft high! – which were systematically wiped out by repeatedly mowing them down, just before they went to seed.
And that was on purpose. The kochia and thistle moved in and now that’s that. Gophers, etc. Not that pretty. But easier for bulldozers and the guy on the mowing machine. Hey, it’s his job. Clearing brush.
Thanks again, sometimes I think it is better to let the tears flow than to go to battle. It seems like everyone I know is crying about something. Bring it on. Let us give our tears to the cause.
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Linda, your writing is a gift that comes through you to us. I remember well when the Army Corps of Engineers manipulated the river, creating mechanisms to deter flooding to avoid damage to homes just west of the Bosque. Our poor Bosque has paid such a dear price ever since. This disregard for the natural world seems a part of the total de-construction we are experiencing now. And, it is a crises of spirit.
Thank you for your sensibilities, your creativity, your photos, and your wtiting
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Carmen, it means so much to me to hear you say this. I know, it is a crisis of spirit, to witness the changes you have seen in your lifetime in this valley. You know what happens when Coyote is trapped and relocated and shot, and a hundred cottontails go to town on your fields. You have preserved the faces and stories of the families here, the voice of the farmer, the grower, the salt of the earth. Pieces of the puzzle, we all are. We need all of us, not just one species + machines. I hope the changes of this coming Age will empower those who feed the body and the soul. Thank you, dear friend.
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ybonesy, I’m glad your daughter is concerned about the weasel…that is so sweet of her. As a rule I don’t share my writing widely, as it is often rather personal. This is a little different. I am sorry you had to endure hearing the carnage going on. My kids will tell you, I am the woman pursued by machines, esp the ones that go beep beep beep – they won’t leave me alone;>( lol.)
We did a fair amount of rambling around Colorado years ago and I remember Creede — a sinuous silver creek through deep grass, an end-of-the-road precarious, probably toxic gold mining shanty town under the steep hills beneath the Fourteeners. The birthplace of the rio that flows all the way to the sea. Quite amazing.
I’d like to add the link to your beautiful December photo and story about sandhill cranes:
https://redravine.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/sticks-for-legs-and-arms/#comment-42041
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I added that link, Linda. I think I swapped it out with the other Sandhill Crane website you’d found. But thanks for thinking of it. The cranes, btw, are still here most weeks.
We had a coyote in the field this morning. Rafael (our dog) chased it out of the field. Just now Jim took Em to the busstop and came back saying that he spotted the coyote walking down the ditch with someone’s chicken in its mouth. I kind of had to laugh at the image, although being someone who has lost many chickens and turkeys to coyotes and raccoons, I know how much the coyotes get me mad at times. But it’s our own fault for not keeping the poultry safe enough. (Last loss the coyote scared the turkeys, who were in an enclosed pen. The tom flew up and somehow managed to slip out of a small opening between the chainlink fence and the roof…the space is normally closed up with chicken wire, but the tom’s force against it caused the chicken wire to break open and the tom flew out the opening. I’m serious—it’s only about a 6″ opening. And into the waiting coyote’s mouth he flew.)
Jim is definitely in your corner, Linda, as it relates to being pursued by machines. I think perhaps living in a semi-rural area adjacent to urban is even worse than just going for fully urban. Why? Because you see how the pressures of industry/urban/machines/people all stress what remains of nature. It’s in our face. We see it daily. For sensitive people, it is heart breaking.
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Linda, beautiful, heartbreaking piece. I just took a moment to read it slowly, and Bob is right — it’s like taking a walk right along with you. The details of plants and animals, and the photographs add so much to the piece. I’ve never seen a weasel up that close before (part of the beauty of photography). Sad to think she didn’t make it.
Sometimes I hear statistics about how many species of plant, insect, animal we are losing on a daily basis on this planet and it scares me to think about it. A grim prospect of what continues to happen while we as humans are sitting here worried about everything else in the world except what keeps us alive on a daily basis: clean water, clean healthy soil, insects pollinating, animals helping to maintain the populations of other animals. All of this works in balance.
I like the Wordsworth. And the rope swing and photograph:
The rope-swing cottonwood tree, snapped and graffiti’d, lays on the bank now, with only the fading notes of children’s voices—the home-schoolers and the unschoolers and kids just let out of school for summer—reminding us that this was once a grand tree, to swing up, out and over a grande river.
I love the cottonwoods in New Mexico. They are like the wise old sages of the desert. Ending with that last photograph illustrates how stark the world will be if we don’t start taking better care of it. And when you read your piece about New Mexico, a place close to my heart, you can’t help but think of what’s disappearing in your own backyard.
We live in a 1st ring suburb outside of Minneapolis (after living in the city proper for 22 years), and even here we see things changing on a daily basis. There is something to what ybonesy says about living just outside of completely urban areas. You can still notice that things, living breathing things, are disappearing.
There are many bogs and drainage lands in Minnesota; it’s a very wet place. Yet every day, you see dozers filling in the drainage lands in order to build yet one more shopping center, office complex, or parking lot. This is happening only a few miles from us — For Sale signs in the middle of a beautiful drainage swamp with cattails, red-winged blackbirds, tadpoles, fish, blue heron, white egrets. And then there is no place for the water to go, and everything floods in the Spring, and people wonder why.
Thanks for writing this piece, Linda. And for caring so deeply. Writing and keeping these issues in the forefront are action steps toward continued awareness. I can see a follow-up piece in a few years. And keep documenting everything with photographs. Images are very powerful.
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Linda, your writing is stunning. I am walking with you as you name each plant, each animal … and each living thing which has disappeared. It is heartbreaking. You have captured the spirit and beauty of this place and preserved with words for all time and for all people, including me, who lives far away. If a heart were enough to save it from further destruction, yours certainly would. Thank you for loving the Corrales Bosque so much and so well and for sharing it with us, both the beauty and the horror.
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Linda,
What a privilege to read your beautiful tribute to the bosque and to be in the company of nature-loving souls on this page. It is some kind of solace to live in a community of those who find peace and value in nature and whose children have learned to love the treasure we have in this bosque. It has nurtured all our families and merits our diligence and care and appreciation for what it has given us.
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QM, I am at work but trying to fit in a suitable reply to your thoughtful comments. I think one reason this piece resonates with so many people is that the process we are witnessing, and feel frustration and anger and sadness about, is a universal experience. Your bogs and ponds and swamps are no less beautiful and important than the bosque. No matter where we live, we see our precious, rare and special places become just like everywhere else.
Maybe one hopeful result of the store-closings and construction downturn is that we might slow or even halt the relentless big-box mentality which has made this country a coast-to-coast parking lot. Maybe the last of our orchards will not be chopped down and sprout casas of absurd proportions. It is time to speak up for protection of the plants and animals that suffer from the ceaseless plunder of their environment, which only further impacts negatively our own survival, as you point out.
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Back again, hoping to finish this! — I am thinking about what QM and yb said, about living semi-rural, semi-urban – how there is a battle going on there…it is unsettling to be on the edge. Seeing what happened back east, we moved west – only to experience the same tug-of-war.
When I was 6 years old my family moved from the city to a brand-new suburb, a post-war social experiment of great scale, erected on the rich Pennsylvania farmlands, divided into sections by creeks and woods.
Queen Anne Creek, which separated our section from another, was a wonderland of tall trees to climb, thicket and meadow, berries and violets, lilacs, wild iris… shining rock-crossings, swimming holes, private hollows and hideouts.
By the time I was a teenager, going “down the creek” was grounds for grounding; but soon, the Middletown Parks and Wreck mowing machines reduced the deep green woods to shorn grass and a smattering of trees.
This was a microcosm of the continued suburbanization of all the farmland, even out further in the county, one Colonial per acre. It epitomized the repression of our society to me, to mow down a refuge and make it a park.
So it goes.
…and thanks so much, breathepeace and Laura …I am grateful for this opportunity. I especially want to say, ybonesy did a fabulous job taking my words and photos and making it into something ten times better.
“What you do makes a difference…..and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make”…..Jane Goodall
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Linda, though I’m not familiar with the Corrales Bosque, I also walked with you & found that your story strikes home for all of us. No matter where we live, these kind of things occur seemingly overnight. I see it happening every day. A case in point, is a lake that in 1973 the Army Corp of Engineers demolished over 8,000 acres of pristine land in western PA. Houses were flattened, trees flattened & a lake was formed. It is over 25 miles in length. Supposedly done so to keep that area from flooding. Ok, that sounded great at the time. My family & I spent many weekends fishing & camping on this lake. I mean serious camping. Tents, and at the time you could only get there by boat. Canoes & row-boats were commom then. Today it is a resort area, paddle boat rides, lavish restaurants, etc… A canoe or rowboat would never stand a chance of surviving the boats that now roam the lake. Boats that are more suitable to the ocean or bay. At what cost? Now 46 years later the whole thought sickens me. I haven’t visited that lake in over 20 years & never will again in my lifetime. I wish I had understood then what I understand now.
It is also quite evident in my own back yard. Nature has become plentiful, mostly due to the obsession of man to build more & more. The animals have been evictd from their homes, without notice. So, survivors come here.
I have found in your writing a great loss for the bosque. I feel for your loss. D
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Have you been in the bosque in the town of Bernalillo, Linda? I’m curious because from what I can see it looks like the big recent McMansions are built right on the river’s edge.
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No, I have never been down there in Bernalillo bosque – I know the subdivision you are referring to…I guess that they are not in a “preserve” or “conservancy” or whatever…but if you have ever been to the primo part of River’s Edge 1, the big ones are right on the river, just upstream of the RR sewage plant.
I wonder how the lucky owners felt about today’s headline in the Journal? “State Says Sewage Discharge Won’t Affect Drinking Water.”
OK – so the accidental release from Espanola into the Rio Grande of 350 times the federal acceptable levels of coliform bacteria, in January, is not likely to affect tap water in Albuquerque – optimistic though that may be – but what does that mean? Is that the only concern? No other consequences? Blows my mind.
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Linda, thanks. It does seem to be a Universal theme. And there are groups and foundations that form specifically to help heal the land. Or stop more of the destruction. I really do hope you keep documenting the process that is happening in that specific area of New Mexico. I had a prof at MCAD who went to Alaska for over a period of 10 years to document the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. She did many art installations on it over the years and tried to keep the devastation in the forefront of people’s memories. How soon we all forget ecological catastrophes like that if they aren’t in our own backyards.
diddy, your comment brings up a good point…that sometimes what is considered a good thing for the environment at one point in time (such as the ACOE projects) are sometimes later considered to have been harmful to the environment. The environmental movement is really pretty young, even though Rachel Carson was sounding the alarm way before her time with Silent Spring. I know Clarks Hill Dam was built by the Army Corp of Engineers by diverting the flow of water. And I’m reminded of projects like Lake Powell, a manmade reservoir on the Colorado River. I once camped there with a group of RIT students on a 3-week photo trip and thought the place was beautiful. Until I found out they flooded and covered the beauty of a whole canyon to create it.
These environmental issues are complex. And always seem to involve politics and money.
Linda, or anyone who’d like to chime in, I wondered if you had any thoughts on how, many times, environmental issues are harder to address when people are living in poverty in areas where they might need to reap the benefits of natural resources for their own survival. I thought about this last night when I was watching Diane Sawyer’s recent coverage of the children living in a poor area in Kentucky where strip mining is common. And I often read about how environmental issues are the last thing people can sometimes think about in some of our 3rd world countries where they need the resources to survive. Any thoughts on that? Is the environmental movement more one of privilege?
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QM, there is certainly an aspect of privilege to some environmentalism – I am reminded of the joke, humans – the most endangered species – and sometimes it seems insane to value the silvery minnow or a dragonfly over needs of people…But more often the environment is assaulted and the needs of poor people are last on the list. Those Appalachian strip-mining industries are case in point – only poor people can be taken advantage of like that, in the guise that jobs and the great corporate daddy will take care of them. The recent sludge spill proves that they don’t care at all what happens to the land, the water, and the people and animals that call that place home. I saw a heart-wrenching story on FSTV, about the native people in Peru, whose water was poisoned and they were unable to get any recompense or even recognition by Union Carbide or some corp. rubber-makers – a story that is centuries old. This is so that rich people (us) have tires. But none of it makes sense to me, I admit. As for Diddy’s tale of the lake – on the shining surface, we see only our own reflection. We don’t know what is underneath. I read a story awhile back in the New Yorker about a huge mountain valley in China that was being flooded slowly for a hydorelectric project, submerging ancient villages forever and everyone was forced to move to a new city far away. Powerlessness vs. power – it is a global syndrome.
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Linda, some great points. I was so saddened watching the Diane Sawyer piece. She’s from Kentucky and followed these 4 kids over a few years. It was gut wrenching to watch how these kids had talent, were articulate, and were trying to better themselves and just could not get a break. Some of their parents were drug addicts, or depressed, or there was incest going on in the family. This is all going on around us every day in our own country. The powerful. The powerless. It’s hard not to feel guilty for everything we have.
BTW, there was one mine owner who had gone away to school and come back to his community and was trying to make a difference. You got the feeling the odds were stacked against him though. Sawyer went down into the mine, deep, deep into a mountain tunnel. I once toured an old iron ore mine in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and, I tell you, I don’t know how these miners do it.
I wanted to mention one other thing about how political all of this is. I recently heard about the governors of the Great Lake States getting together to talk about how to manage the water of the Great Lakes. They were saying that as the dryer parts of the country in the South and West, from Nebraska to California, continue to not have enough water resources, diversion of water from the Great Lakes was going to become like a commodity, fought over like gold. And they were meeting to figure out several things — how to keep from destroying the Great Lakes in the process. And, I believe, also how to make it profitable. It’s always a double-edged sword.
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QM, you bring up a lot of good points & I for one can comment on mining issues. As you know, I come from a family of coal miners. My Grandfather owned 4 deep coal mines. At the time, strip mines were not even in the picture. When my grandfather would close a mine, I cannot begin to tell you the toxic chemicals, etc. that were taken to those mines before they were closed up. It became a dump area. Very sad. As far as strip mining, at least in the state of PA, the regulations have become very strict. I’m glad for that. I can remember a small town in our county where a lot of Polish immigrants settled to deep mine. My best friend lived next to a small stream that was clearly polluted with sulfur, the color orange, that smelled like rotten eggs.Many readers will know the county I speak of as the place that flight 93 went down on 9/11 & not far from that sight where the miners were trapped & saved shorty after that.
The lake I was talking about, the houses & trees are still underneath. It is a resort area now. So yes, on the surface folks enjoy it. But I wonder now how the fishing is. Surely, even they cannot survive what man has has made.Ok, my addition was off…it should have read 36 years later. I suspect that what may begin as a good thing, will in the end result in a money making franchise. It happens everywhere. D
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Linda, just using this forum in case you check in tonight to say that I’m feeling mucho better—give Dr. Lupo a big THANK YOU for me. There were several times when I came in to see him that I didn’t believe this sciatica would ever go away.
And I also wanted to thank you for allowing us to publish this piece on red Ravine. It is truly one of the dearest to my hearts, on account of the fact that it’s by you and about the bosque. We often feel so helpless by what is going on around us, things that are out of our control, and this piece makes me realize that by writing about the things we see, it allows us to give voice and power to the voiceless and powerless. Thank you for reminding me of that.
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diddy, your personal family experiences with mining seem very up close and personal. And I find it fascinating when people bring these global experiences to the level of local impact, the way Linda has done with this piece and the way you have touched the local issues of your area in your comments.
Linda, like ybonesy, I’m so appreciative that you shared this piece with us on red Ravine. Your passion and generous spirit come through in your writing and photographs. And the discussion really digs down to some of the deeper issues.
Thanks again for writing with us. And I look forward to more of your work in the future.
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Hi yb, QM, I am in Florida visiting my mother-in-law for her 84th birthday. Just checking in here on a cousin’s computer, only have a minute — let me say again, to both of you, and your community of readers, thank you for giving me this opportunity. I have had this story on my mind and in my heart for many years, and am grateful for the chance to express it and share my experience of a special place with all of you. Muchas gracias.
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I read this beautiful piece and it made me want to cry. I have lived in Corrales for 10 years and I love the Bosque. I had noticed everything they were doing and it made me so sad. I felt very powerless. But I feel more confident now and I think we should do something. I want to do something. I didn’t read all the responses so I don’t know if anybody is already doing this but I would like to form a group or join a group that has as its objective to protect and preserve the bosque. We need to do something! I am tired of just standing by and not doing anything to protect the bosque. If there is such a group, please let me know or if people want to start a group, please let me know too.
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Caresse, thanks for stopping by. I sent the link for this piece to three of the Corrales Village Councillors. One called me in response and said that she’d been closely monitoring the Via Oreada project, and that this time around the US Army Corps of Engineers is doing a more selective removal of non-native species than in the past.
I haven’t been out there since we first heard the chainsaws whirring (a couple of weeks ago) but I can report that we’ve had several coyotes in our field during the day since we heard the chainsaws. I do know that no matter how much they try to be selective in their work, it has an impact on the wildlife, and I imagine it’s the impact on the coyote’s food source that is causing the coyotes to head toward our place.
As for a group to contact, I would start with the Corrales Bosque Advisory Group. I don’t know who the head of it is, but I do know that if you contact the Corrales Comment or the Villages offices, they will point you to that person.
If you find out about a group, please drop a note back here. I’d be interested in learning about it. Also, feel free to pass on to any of your Corrales friends a link to this piece–spread the word.
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Caresse, I appreciate your caring response and totally understand the motivation to try to do something about this situation…
Selective clearing would certainly be preferable to turning the whole thing into a “park”…and what is the followup plan?
My sister-in-law lived in the South Valley -she tells me the clearing was extensive some years ago, because of fire danger…but she says the area was then left abandoned, and no new planting took, if it was attempted. All that has grown back is thistle and burrs and tumbleweed, which has to be mown or is impassable.
Thanks yb, I found the Bosque Advisory committee at this url – might be worth checking out, what they actually do:
http://www.corrales-nm.org/committees.htm
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Just a note here, according to Jeff Radford (Corrales Comment) the CBAC requested the clearing:
Another 30 acres of the Corrales Bosque Nature Preserve will be cleared of fallen trees, salt cedar, elms and other non-native plant species at the south end of the village in early February.
The latest clearing project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was requested by the Corrales Bosque Advisory Commission (CBAC) last summer. The area, between the Via Oreada entrance to the bosque and the Rio Grande, is considered to be excessively dense in fallen cottonwoods and other brush, constituting a wildfire hazard.
When advisory commission members toured the area with Corps officials last summer, it seemed agreed that this area would be the last clearing project here under the auspices of the Corps’ Bosque Wildfire Prevention initiative.
continue here —
http://www.corralescomment.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1167&Itemid=2
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I wonder if the CBAC was at all monitoring the first clearing. I have to think not, given the amount of public outcry when folks saw how wide and broad the clearcutting was. Do you know, are there any plans to plant new cottonwoods or other native species in the cleared areas?
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I found this –
http://snipurl.com/hummelpdf [agesvr1_nmsu_edu]
Looks all nice after clearing, optimistic about birds and wildlife, plans for revegetation and fire restoration.
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[…] Lupowitz has written a nice essay about the Bosque, with emphasis on the effects clearing underbrush and […]
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[…] grandmother is buried. Our guest Linda Weissinger Lupowitz writes about New Mexico cottonwoods in What’s Happened To The Corrales Bosque? And in Fourteen Dozen Roses: The World As The Jungle It Is, Erin Robertson shares her poetry and […]
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