Apache Mesa Ranch Resolved

I’ve been considering many options for the high arid mesa land I’ve owned for twelve years, twenty miles south and east of Las Vegas, New Mexico: 1320 acres, bounded by steep cliffs, with an almost infinite view south over the Gallinas River valley. A small road winds like a thread through this valley to the little lost village of Lourdes.

The barn house we built there—more barn than house—a few years ago stands empty now, the three horses gone to town, their owner busy elsewhere. Always uneasy about unused space when so many are unhoused, I’ve talked to friends about several possibilities: a retreat center? But the dirt and rock road up the mesa poses too many problems for large vehicles and is impassable once we have a few drops of rain. Goat or sheep farming? But these animals, while less destructive than cattle, tear up the scrawny grass. Organic gardening? The soil is so poor that would require trucking in potting soil and irrigation with water we don’t have. Someone living in the barn full time? But to what purpose? Very few people would tolerate the heavy wind, extreme heat and cold and total isolation of the mesa.

On a recent visit, it came to me clearly: I will preserve the land for the few invisible creatures that live there: snakes—the murdered rattlesnake’s eggs will be hatching out next spring; four elks who are managing to survive somehow off the water still standing in the once abundant ponds; the Fetid Marigolds whose delicious scent fills the air; a few flies; the bears whose den we discovered in one of the cliff faces. All these are the creatures of drought, of severe unrelenting extremes of heat and cold, of little food—but on the ranch they are not hunted, sprayed, dug, or euthanized like the 21 bears that wandered last year into town.

So the ranch is not really for us human beings with our thin skins and our need for comfort. It is for the creatures who have always lived hidden lives here. They are not threatened by development; no development is possible here. But as our world heats, as the storms rush in, as extremes of temperature becomes the norm, all living things are threatened, even those we don’t know or care about. And here on this lonely high place, they may have a chance of surviving.

In New Mexico New Mexico Apache Mesa 20 Favorites of 2022