There’s a sign hikers pass by on the Winsor Trail early in their ascent from the Santa Fe ski basin parking area to the gate of the Pecos Wilderness that offers an important reminder for those entering the forest. “BE HERE NOW,” it reads. It’s a message we can all use once in a while — a call to dispel distractions and be present and engaged in time and place.
Most march on with a mission in mind: Make it to Nambé Lake, Santa Fe Baldy, Lake Katherine or some other picturesque high-elevation destination. But in between points A and B, don’t forget to be and see. Sometimes while hiking I can get tunnel vision as I follow the trail, pounding out the miles without really taking in where I am or what’s around me.
Normally, the forest will reach out and grab my attention with a moment or object of beauty to focus my thoughts and activate a sense of wonder. Hiking is exercise, but it can be much more than that to the extent that we let it. As challenging terrain offers a test of our physical limits, nature offers infinite opportunities to appreciate a world teeming with life and fascinating processes.
There’s so much that we don’t see unless we slow down and make the effort. If you stop for just a minute and look closely around you, there’s always an abundance to learn. I feel like a child in nature, partially because of how small it makes me feel but also due to how little I understand of it.
As German author Thomas Mann wrote in the novel The Magic Mountain : “Born a stranger to remote, wild nature, the child of civilization is much more open to her grandeur than are her own coarse sons, who have been at her mercy from infancy and whose intimacy with her is more level-headed. They know next to nothing of the religious awe with which the novice approaches her, eyebrows raised, his whole being tuned to its depth to receive her, his soul in a state of constant, thrilled, timid excitement.” The opportunity to learn something new with each trip into nature is invigorating.
I’ll collect photos with my phone of a plant or creature and, through identification apps and the internet, be able to quickly become informed about what it is I found. Earlier this summer, I was hiking in the Jemez Mountains and had to duck below a fallen tree that was hanging over the path. The bark was stripped away, revealing a surface completely covered in intricate markings that looked like some sort of calligraphy.
I stopped to examine the tree for a few minutes, trying to deduce what could have produced these whimsical patterns. Perhaps woodland elves communicating in their own unique language, or an artist practicing delicate glyphs? I had seen similar markings on branches and trees before, but apparently had never thought to investigate their creators. In the end, the answer wasn’t hard to find and made a lot of sense.
The calligraphy was the work of bark beetle larvae as they fed on the inner layer of the tree’s bark. The patterns of larval tunnels are referred to as galleries. I’d known of beetle infestations in New Mexico, with drought-stricken trees unable to fend off attacks by the insects.
The impacts of large-scale mortality can be seen in forests across the Southwest. But apparently I hadn’t taken a close look at the beetles’ work, or realized what I was seeing. While researching bark beetles, I came across several artists who integrate beetle galleries in their projects.
One of the most interesting was by a microbiologist and artist named Eileen Ryan , who was working on transcriptions and speculative translations of beetle galleries. While the bark beetle tree was hanging over the trail right in front of my face, some finds come a little off the beaten path. Hiking in Santa Fe National Forest near Glorieta one late summer morning, I had gone off trail trying to climb to a higher vantage point to improve my view of a canyon.
I saw feeding on some oak leaves a bright, massive, spiny caterpillar. I later learned it was of a species of moth with a range confined to the mountains of Central New Mexico and the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas. The zephyr eyed silkmoth has brown forewings and hind wings with a large black spot in the middle of an orange patch.
I saw it in its caterpillar form, and it was the most striking caterpillar I’d ever encountered. The creature had a neon yellow back with black stripes running the length of its body, and its sides were black with white stripes. Sticking out all over it were patches of neon spines with black tips.
I’ve seen a few posts online that indicate the spines are mildly venomous. Not far from the colorful caterpillar, I encountered a lizard climbing up a tree. Its back was the same color as the tree bark, and at first glance, it appeared like any ordinary little lizard in New Mexico you might see scurrying around and doing push-ups.
As it moved around the tree, I noticed this lizard had a flash of turquoise along its belly and its throat. I think it was a type of fence lizard. Now I wonder how many more of those ordinary lizards I’ve seen in the past may have had colorful bellies.
There are also many surprises up at higher elevations. Whenever I hike to the alpine lakes of the Pecos Wilderness, I always take time to check out what’s in them. The first time I hiked to Nambé Lake, the closest lake to the Santa Fe ski basin trailhead, I figured I’d see some trout in there.
Instead, I saw the lake teeming with thousands of salamanders. Initially, I foolishly thought they could be axolotl, a critically endangered species of salamander that’s only found in Lake Xochimilco in southern Mexico City. Later, I found out they were neotenic tiger salamanders, and they inhabit at least a couple other lakes in the Pecos.
Rather than undergoing metamorphosis and developing lungs to live on land, neotenic salamanders remain in their larval form throughout their lives and retain the feathery gills on the side of their heads. This can happen when the salamanders find a permanent water source that’s absent of predatory fish. I’ve found thousands more of the salamanders in Spirit Lake and a small pond near Stewart Lake.
They’re mesmerizing to watch slowly wriggle in the shallow waters and occasionally snap up insects on the surface. I often push myself to climb to that mountain top or get to that lake. Sometimes, I need to push myself to stop for a minute and look around.
If you give curiosity a chance to guide the way, nature always offers something new to discover..
