"Arrival" by Melissa Fu

Melissa Fu, Valles Caldera National Preserve's Artist-in-Residence, standing at the park entrance in September 2024.

NPS

It is astonishing to be here. I am at the gates of Valles Caldera National Preserve with Ranger Lauren Ray, on my way to start a three-week stint as an Artist-in-Residence. We pause and she shows me how to open and close the gate after hours. I’m listening, but I’m also distracted by the call of the valley below. As we drop down into Valle Grande, following the dirt road to the Entrance Station, a few miles from the highway, I keep exclaiming, “Do you know how amazing it is to be on this land? I can’t believe I’m here.” In awe and amazement, I repeatedly murmur, “I can’t believe it.”

Although I now live in Cambridge, England, I was born and raised 15 miles down the road in Los Alamos. Growing up, Valles Caldera, or The Valle as we called it, was always a place of seductive mystery. We loved it from afar, from the top of Pajarito Ski Hill, from the edges of New Mexico Highway 4, but never from inside its forbidden boundaries. Driving up into the Jemez Mountains and rounding that final turn on the twisty, curvy road to have, at last, the Valle Grande unfold at our feet never failed to take my breath away. Beyond barbed wire fences and “No Trespassing” signs, the grasslands stretched across a wide valley, dotted with grazing cattle, and then rose again on the opposite side to Redondo Peak. Although we couldn’t go in, I always longed to stop and stand at the edge. From there, I would travel in imagination across that vast expanse.

In school we had learned that The Valle was the crater of an ancient, dormant volcano and it was private land. I never could fathom the idea of one person or family owning all that land. It just didn’t make sense. I wasn’t alone in my disbelief. Talk to a few locals and it won’t take long to find someone who slipped beyond the “Private Property” signs up at The Baca Land Grant, as The Valle was also known, to cross-country ski, unable to resist the snow-filled valley in the longer, colder winters of the 1980s and earlier. In high school, we’d pass The Valle on the way to hikes at the East Fork Box Canyon or Jemez Falls, and however cynical, sarcastic or rebellious we may have been as teens, I always felt a moment of reverence as we drove by.

On the way to the Entrance Station, I’m looking out both windows, trying to lap up as much of the view as I can. I think about all the different people who have lived and worked on this land, each seeing it through a different lens, finding a different purpose. Humans have been active on this land for over 11,000 years, from the Indigenous peoples who have called this caldera sacred for generations, to the various landowners, loggers, ranchers, hunters, filmmakers, and miners through the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, to the present communities who work to protect and preserve it. I’m elated that Valles Caldera is now open for the public to visit.

In 2000, the Dunigan Family, the last private landholders of Valles Caldera sold their claim to the US government. Initially, the land was managed by a trust, and in 2015, Valles Caldera National Preserve was established as part of the National Park Service. Prior to that, it had been held in private ownership by various families since 1860.

Because it is one of the newest National Parks, the opening of Valles Caldera is informed by 100 years of previous National Park Service experience. To me, each phase of expanding access to Valles Caldera is like another stage in a flower’s bloom. It is something to admire as it unfolds and cannot be rushed. Over the years, more trails have been improved and opened for public visits. More provisions for back-country permits as well as fishing and hunting tags have been granted. Hand-in-hand with increased public use is extensive programming in education and outreach so that we use the park sustainably. But the remit of the preserve goes well beyond responsible recreation to encompass the preservation, protection and restoration of the animals, plants, waters, soils, air, artefacts and cultural sites of the whole 89,000 acres of Valles Caldera. It remains a site of cultural and spiritual significance for 38 Tribes and Pueblos in the greater Southwest region. It is a living laboratory for geological, biological, and environmental research.

A colorful illustration of the Otero Cabin by artist-in-residence Heather Heckel (2024).

NPS/Heather Heckel

After a quick stop, we leave the Entrance Station and head towards the Historic Cabin District, where half a dozen log cabins remain from when the land was used for ranching and logging. The Otero Cabin, built in 1915, is the oldest standing log structure on the preserve. Further down the road is the Foreman’s Cabin (built 1918), whose exterior was used in the TV series Longmire. We check-in at the Ranger Station, originally built in the 1990s as lodging for elk hunters. Now it contains offices, a space for workshops and programs, interpretive displays, and a small bookshop. Outside are picnic tables scattered underneath enormous ponderosa pines. Judging by their size and spacing, these trees must be some of the remaining old-growth forest, spared the extensive logging operations that occurred from 1935-2000. We have travelled across Valle Grande and I gaze back towards Highway 4, the cars glinting along the ribbon of road. I’m tempted to think we are on the opposite side of the preserve, but Lauren explains that Valle Grande, as vast as it is, represents only about 15% of the preserve’s acreage. There is so much more to this place than I ever imagined.

I crane my neck as we drive by the log and wood cabins. Each has a history, is filled with stories, and I’m curious to learn more. There will be time, I promise myself. We pass through a barrier into the backcountry to our destination, and my home for the next three weeks: an A-frame holiday home, built in 1963. It boasts picture windows and a new wooden deck looking out over massive ponderosas where I can sit, write, and watch the days progress over Valle Grande.

As I get settled in, another Ranger, Meg, gives me a tour and instructions. Fire extinguishers - remember: their main purpose is to get you out of the house safely, not to fight the fire; taps – use the Reverse Osmosis water for cooking and drinking, the regular taps for washing; trash disposal – take it down the road to the Facilities Operation Center and place it in a bear-proof trash compactor, recycling cleaned and separated into different piles; and a rat-zapper. Yes, a rat zapper. It’s early September, the nights are turning colder. A warm, dry cabin is appealing to all the critters. Ranger Meg shows me how to bait the trap, assures me that it electrocutes the mice immediately and painlessly, tells me what to do when the light blinks red, indicating a mouse or rat is within, wishes me good luck, and heads out.

I unpack as quickly as I can, stashing all my groceries in the fridge, whether they need refrigeration or not, figuring that mice can’t open the door. The previous artist-in-residence, painter Lisa Spangler, had tipped me off about the critters. I came prepared: I spray peppermint oil everywhere, having read that mice don’t like it. Now the cabin smells like a peppermint palace. I lace up my boots and go for a wander. Even if new surroundings are always a bit disorienting, I’m at home in the high mountain air and light. I walk until dusk.

The Old Barn in the Cabin District at night.

NPS/Stan Ford

I always find the first night in a new place tough. Are those sounds branches scratching, the cabin creaking, or mice scrabbling? I drift into a tossy-turny handful of hours of rest. When I know no more sleep will come, I tiptoe into the front room. Sure enough, the rat-zapper is blinking red, shouting at me that it has caught someone. I put on my boots, my headlamp, and take the trap down to a nice grassy spot under a tree and shake it out, leaving breakfast for the nearby coyote and owl population.

The dark feels immense. Like something I don’t know how to read. I want to admire the stars, but there’s cloud cover and I get skittish when I hear rustlings nearby. I go back inside, rebait and reset the trap, then sit at the table, deliberating what to do. My inclination is to reach towards comfort, towards the known: music, coffee, story. Armed with a mug of piñon coffee and Bach playing on a portable speaker, I pull out my journal to write towards dawn. I’m a little bit scared, to be honest. Awe-struck scared. “How am I going to do this for three weeks?” scared. When filling out my application and dreaming about the possibility of staying in Valles Caldera, I wasn’t thinking about these first morning jitters, alone in the cabin with the mice, an ocean away from family and pets in England. I’m waiting for the sun to come up. I’m waiting for the day and this adventure to begin.

Soon, the elk begin bugling. Their calls are a symphony of high-pitched whirring and ghostly whistles evolving through to whoops and grunts. Just outside the cabin, the silhouettes of centuries-old ponderosas are emerging. A low sea of morning mist cools the montane grasslands across Valle Grande. And finally, to the east, between the rounded tops of Cerro Grande and Scooter Peak, the sky is starting to pink with dawn.