"In the Eye of the Beholder" by Melissa Fu

Looking across the Las Conchas burn scar on the slope of La Garita.

NPS/Irene Owsley

Every time I venture on a new trail, I scan the mountains, looking for burn scars, trying to gauge the extent of the Las Conchas (2011) and Thompson Ridge (2013) fires. It’s one thing to study a color-coded map that shows severity and extent of the burns, it’s another to stand on a hillside among acres and acres of downed trees, then see similar damage miles away caused by the same fire. If I’m hiking with rangers and we pass through a patch of snags, my first question is always Which fire is this damage from? They are patient with me, but have come to expect the question, as I ask it again and again. I cannot get over the extent of the loss, still astonishing even though it’s been more than a decade. Walking the grounds where the fires passed and trying to make sense of what happened is a compulsion I can’t quite explain. I pace the perimeters of the burn scars, as if understanding could arise from my footsteps.

Because I wasn’t in New Mexico when the fires occurred and I wasn’t witness to the flames and smoke, a bewilderment persists in my imagination, a gap in the story. I am trying to reconcile what I see now with the thickly forested hills I knew as a child. I try to picture the land’s evolution from a moonscape of ash and char just after the fire to the present-day clusters of scrub oak or baby aspen groves. How do I fit together all these disparate images of the same place? I need to find a way to look at the land as it is, not project my memories onto it. I must learn to see differently.

The Pueblo and Four Winds Parks fire ecology crew.

NPS

My obsession with the fires and burn scars earns me an invitation to spend a day with a crew from the Pueblo and Four Winds Parks Fire Ecology Program, based in Bandelier. I jump at the opportunity to join them monitoring a plot in the Two Cabins area, in the northwest corner of Valles Caldera. The morning of our outing, I’m up early, sitting on a boulder as I watch their truck make its way up the dirt road from the Entrance Station to the Cabin District. With a packed lunch, layers, and plenty of water, I’m excited for the day. How, I wonder, do fire ecologists see the land?

As I climb inside the big Park Service truck, I’m greeted by a crew of three: Kathy, Bri and Ben. We head north, driving deep into the backcountry, then west through Valle San Antonio. When I see the north sides of Cerro San Luis and Cerro Seco, slopes untouched by any fires, my heart soars. “That,” I say gesturing at hills that look like dark green velvet, “that’s what Los Alamos used to look like.” I sigh, happily. “Looking at those trees, I could almost pretend for a moment the fires didn’t happen.”

“Mmm…” they nod, agreeing that it is, indeed, beautiful, but their appreciation is more muted than I expected.

One of the ecologists points out that it’s likely the trees are stands of second growth, sprung up after logging in the 1960s and 70s. The forest is thick, dense, uniform.

Soon, the gravel section of VC09 ends and continues as a rough single track. We leave the 4x4 truck behind, don hardhats, and pile into an ATV. Bouncing along, further into the interior, a memory surfaces: riding in a friend’s open-top Jeep up Pipeline Road, the thrill of transgression, of going beyond boundaries, being somewhere less easily travelled, less tamed. We rumble up the hill as Bri navigates us to the site, using a GIS map generated specifically for today’s outing.

A view across Valle San Antonio to an area of [recently] unburned forest.

NPS/Irene Owsley

Once parked, we exchange hard hats for high visibility vests. It is, after all, bow and arrow hunting season for elk and we’re in one of Valles Caldera’s active hunting zones. We then hike up a short incline to our destination, a 10m x 20m tract. The area was last monitored in 2017 and has since been thinned, but the debris hasn’t been stacked into piles ready for prescribed burning. We’re here to measure surface fuels and gauge tree health.

At first, I learn how to “read the trees” with Kathy and Ben. Every tree on the half-plot is measured in multiple ways. Among the data we record are the diameter at breast height, tree height, ratio of canopy to trunk, and any abnormalities in branch formation. We search for insect infestations or webbing on the bark or branches. Every tree is tagged, mapped, considered. Cared for. The measurements contribute to an overall picture of density, canopy cover, individual tree health, and forest health.

When we come across a tree that has died since the last visit from a crew, I murmur sadly. But Kathy reminds me that trees, too, have finite lifetimes and a tree dying isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It might have been old, it might have been time. A dead tree returns nutrients to the soil, provides nesting spaces for birds and homes for insects. “A dead tree can give as much as or more to its ecosystem as a live tree,” she says.

Meanwhile, Bri has set up the Browns’ Lines, two different lines crossing the plot along randomly generated azimuths, to measure surface fuels. As Kathy and Ben continue reading trees, I join Bri for the second Browns’ Line. “Basically, we count sticks and play in the dirt,” she jokes. Moving along the line, we record any surface fuels that cross the line at set intervals. We note everything from twigs and sticks to branches and logs. We also measure the depth of litter - pine needles, cones, leaves and other debris - and duff (the organic matter comprising the top surface of the soil).

I ask what the information will be used for. She explains that the measurements are a proxy for how an area might burn in a fire. Careful field work like this can be extrapolated to get a sense of fuel loading and risk levels. The data inform models that determine what areas should be scheduled for prescribed burns, thinning, or other treatments.

Decisions on forest treatments aren’t always straightforward, especially in Valles Caldera. Not only do they need to consider the most appropriate way to reduce excess fuels, but they also need to take into account endangered species habitat protection as well as cultural and archaeological concerns. There are multiple historical, ecological, and cultural priorities in the management of Valles Caldera and the more I learn about these many intricacies, the more a need for looking with a wholistic view emerges. There are no quick fixes, and balancing the interests of so many stakeholders demands as comprehensive an overall picture as possible.

After lunch, Ben points out one of the old stumps from when this plot was initially logged, likely in the 1960s or 70s. Though grey and partially rotted, the stump has a much larger diameter than any of the trees we’ve measured today. It must have stood at least a hundred years, likely longer, before it was felled. “Once you start to look,” Ben says, “you see these stumps everywhere.”

He’s right. I turn a slow circle and notice them in all directions. Frequently crumbling and much more widely spaced than the current standing trees, they are like a footprint of the ancient forest. For the rest of my stay in Valles Caldera, I make a point of looking for the old stumps, whenever I’m hiking through a forested area. They really are everywhere, a reminder of the grandeur that once was, a lingering presence still nourishing the forest as they rot and return their organic matter to the soil.

Twentieth century logging roads spiral up the slopes of many of Valles Caldera's lava domes.

Courtesy of Rourke McDermott

Much of Valles Caldera was extensively logged from 1935-2000. The most damaging clearcutting occurred from c. 1963-1971 after the Dunigan family bought the land but a separate logging company, Redondo Timber, still held the timber rights. Spurred on by a change in New Mexico law that allowed trees of 6-15 inches in diameter to be harvested (the previous minimum was 12 inches) along with the opening of a pulp mill in Arizona, aggressive logging stripped many of the hillside forests. Most of the roads in the preserve – more than 1000 miles worth – were bulldozed into the sides of the hills during this time, contributing to increased ecosystem destruction and soil erosion.

The trees that sprung up after the logging activity grew in thick, dense thickets, making the forest unhealthy and susceptible to future disturbances such as pests and fast-spreading fires. A more sustainable, less lucrative logging practice that left a selection of taller, older trees would have would have provided a balanced canopy for some seedlings to thrive into full trees and others to be starved of light and return to soil. But with a monolithic forest, that interplay between the young and old of a species is absent. Additionally, periodic fires from lightning strikes would have also thinned the forest, clearing out the undergrowth and maintaining a healthy tree density for the available soil and space. Unfortunately, a regrettable, century-long policy of fire suppression prevented this natural process of thinning and clearing.

Many of the intact, second-growth forests in the Jemez Mountains, like the ones I admired so nostalgically on the drive in, represent a high-risk backlog of excess fuel. Coupled with climate change and an increasing number of human structures in remote areas, we have a sobering and worrisome problem. We don’t need to wait for megafires to come. We can’t. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done now.

And who are the people doing this important work? I consider the crew I’ve joined for the day. I’d guess they are in their late 20s, early 30s. It’s clear how much they love the outdoors and the job. They are all Midwesterners who found their way to New Mexico through various internship programs. Kathy and Bri eventually accepted permanent posts with the Pueblo and Four Winds Fire Ecology Program. Ben, a little younger, is currently an intern. With all three, I’m struck by the intersection of passion, purpose and talents they bring to the field. At one point, Kathy speaks of the satisfaction of participating in a full cycle of work: data collection in the field, followed by analysis in the lab to design treatments, treatments executed, and then a return to the field for post-treatment measurements. How rewarding to make a tangible, positive difference for the landscape! Stewardship at its finest.

Fog obscures two forested slopes, one with standing dead trees and the other with live trees.

NPS/Irene Owsley

At the start of my residency, my eyes were trained on the matchstick trees and charred snags left behind from the fire, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the skeletal branches of the spruce and fir devastated by drought and bark beetle infestation. I looked at Redondo Peak and saw only swathes of slash, fallen trees pushed over in a windstorm, a visual memory of wind’s shove down the slope.

After nearly three weeks, I see something different when I look at the mountains. Miles of walking trails and reading and rereading the landscape has shown me the ways the mountain moves on after fire. Surrender is not a part of this landscape’s vocabulary. Instead, there is resilience, adaptation, and growth. Recovery is not a return but a response.

Instead of only seeing burn scars, I now notice areas where the forest has been thinned over time by targeted treatments. I see stacked piles of timber, ready for prescribed burns in the cooler months. When I ride a bike along the Jaramillo Trail, I see willow exclosures along rehabilitated wetlands, installed with the hope of eventually reintroducing beavers. At events and out on trails, I see visitors and volunteers who are elated that they have a chance to be here, who know what a special place this is. And working across the preserve, from the most travelled trails to the backcountry boundaries, I see teams of rangers, scientists, and naturalists who have dedicated their energy, minds, hearts, creativity, and muscles to a career of stewardship. They are the very embodiment of a land ethic. Despite the enormity of the tasks ahead, I’m optimistic.