Nothing Gold Can Stay

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Nothing Gold Can Stay

If you’ve followed New Mexicology’s weekly posts over the last few months (or just peeked at the “about” page), you know this blog has been the personal project of a writer who recently relocated to the state from the Pacific Northwest.

The move took some adjusting, both deep in my bones and on the tips of my taste buds. But the more I learned about New Mexico, especially through writing these two dozen mini-essays about its scientific side, the more I felt at home here. I knew I’d officially transitioned from Seattleite to Burqueña the night I passed tumbleweeds as I picked up tacos for a picnic in the Sandia foothills, where our dog chased lizards and got a few cactus spines in his fur.

Of course, just when I thought I’d acclimated to desert living, the Land of Enchantment surprised me yet again...

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Go Lobos! (We Hope)

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Go Lobos! (We Hope)

Meet the lobo, also known as the Mexican wolf or Canis lupus baileyi. This is the Southwest’s subspecies of gray wolf, and unlike its relatively stable cousins up in Canada, it’s struggling to survive. Although a Mexican wolf serves as the mascot at the University of New Mexico, there are more fans at a given football game than there are lobos alive on the planet. 

Lobo packs once thrived from Arizona through to Texas and down into Mexico, but Manifest Destiny had a different vision for that territory. In the 1800s Anglo pioneers cleared plains and forests of wolves’ natural prey (particularly ungulates like elk) and converted expanses of the Southwest into predator-free farms. In just a century, ranchers’ active hunting, trapping, and poisoning nearly drove the Mexican wolf to extinction; the species was completely wiped out of New Mexico in the 1920s. 

What now? Does does the lobo stand a chance of surviving in the years ahead? 

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Swamp-Cooling the Desert

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Swamp-Cooling the Desert

They warned me this would happen: it got really hot down here in New Mexico. High eighties in early May? A sunburn before the summer solstice? Six months in, this cold-weather northerner continues to adjust to her new home.

The latest step: flipping the switch on my apartment’s swamp cooler.

My apartment’s swamp cooler. That’s right: I moved to a city whose summer highs average in the mid-nineties only to discover that my new place doesn’t have air conditioning. Instead it has a contraption on the roof whose name makes it sound like it’ll seep muggy vapors to the sound of frogs’ chirrups. Suffice it to say I was skeptical...

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Beautifully Burnt Earth

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Beautifully Burnt Earth

It’s no wonder that Pueblo pottery is considered some of the most beautiful in the world: the Pueblo people have been refining their techniques for over a thousand years. These days there are nineteen Pueblo tribes with land strung like a beaded necklace across northern New Mexico, and each boasts artists who hand-sculpt and fire clay pots according to their own local (and personal) styles. How are they able to craft such a wide variety of smooth, matte, slick, and colorful pots using only materials found in the ground around here? 

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