This week I had the exceptional opportunity to fly over the proposed 1/3-million-acre El Rio Grande del Norte National Conservation Area (NCA) in a Cessna 210. The flight was courtesy of Lighthawk, “a volunteer-based environmental aviation organization that provides donated flights to make the aerial perspective freely available to conservation groups.” The conservation area runs south-north along the Rio Grande from Ranchos de Taos to the Colorado border. Parts of it range as far west as Highway 285. Both San Antonio Mountain and Ute Mountain will contain small wilderness areas within the NCA.

The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA) and my good friend, environmental activist Carol Johnson, invited me on this flight above the mesa west of Taos. I in turn called local photographer Ana June to join us and document the round trip passage. We departed from Santa Fe at 8 am, followed the Rio Grande Gorge north, and returned along the west slope of the Sangre de Cristos. Our Lighthawk pilot, Merry Schroeder, flew us so lightly above the Earth that I truly felt like I was a hawk on the wing.

I soon realized we would be flying over my former home on the high desert mesa west of Taos, located just south of the proposed NCA but also embraced by public lands. Like so many colonists of the American West, I had moved there to escape the dis-ease of civilization only to encounter a discomfiting mystery embodied in this abused land. The west mesa palpably throbs with the failures of humans to tame it: such as the crumbing Mormon dam under Tres Orejas, doors banging open in abandoned half-built homes, roads that end in sand dunes. It’s a hard dry place yet you regret begging for rain because, when it finally comes, it bears down on human thumbprints like a sky-born tsunami, consuming roads, walls, roofs, gardens…and then it’s gone, leaving you longing for both less and more.

Of course there are elements that burst the heart: Jicarita Peak, Taos Mountain, Wheeler Peak, and Latir Peak bless the mesa from the west; Ute Mountain calls from the distant north; brave purple spiderworts break through parched soil; at night a universal chorus of lights spins through the Milky Way;  coyote families giggle under a full moon; wafting scents of pinyon sap, juniper berries, and sage cleanse, cleanse the air.

From aloft, even the morning sun is so bright that the land lacks contrast and contour. East of the river, the unprotected landscape is a lattice of dusty roads, isolated homes, and ravaging mines, all there by the grace of money and dreams construed elsewhere. West of the Rio Grande the high desert mesa still seems pristine from 10,000′ feet above the ground. It clearly has been and always will be best suited for wandering and gathering, not taming.

On the ground, pinyon provides firewood and nuts. Mormon tea will soothe your throat, and prickly pear offers nourishing fruit. Elk and rattlesnakes are wise enough to make it only a seasonal home, leaving behind mere traces of scat or skin. Obsidian chips and potsherds sprinkle these traditional hunting grounds. Rock art maps show the ways in … and out. Let’s do the same: wander in and wander out, leaving only a trace.

Preserving this area as an NCA respects this history of appropriate use and wanderers and gatherers may follow their traditions of hiking, hunting, fishing, rafting, and grazing sheep and cattle. Most importantly, preservation prohibits more roads, mineral extraction, and development. It honors the wonders of ecological fragility, the tenderness of desert, and trusts the miracle of First Nature to emerge again and again despite droughts, deluges, development, and misplaced dreams.

To join our efforts to preserve the Rio Grande del Norte National Conservation Area, support the current campaign of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.