Life, culture, ritual and drought along the northern Río Grande
Above the 13,000-foot peaks that shroud Southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, one of the longest rivers in the continental U.S.—the Río Grande—begins its 1,900-mile journey downstream. It trickles down through forests of spruce, fir and aspen, churns in gorges and meanders through centuries-old, hand-dug ditches that branch out across the land. Just as veins transport life-giving nutrients across the body, the Río Grande and its tributaries have nurtured Indigenous communities in Northern New Mexico since time immemorial.
For more than a century, a U.S. Geological Survey stream gage located just below the Río Grande's headwaters has tracked the river’s disappearance. Once named El Rio Bravo del Norte or “the fierce river of the north” for its violent summer floods, the Río Grande’s flows are now at crisis levels. Analyzing 50-years-worth of streamflow data, researchers projected that the Río Grande basin, which includes the river and its tributaries, will lose up to a third of its water by century’s end.
Faced with a rapidly-drying climate, vulnerability to catastrophic wildfires and outside interests encroaching on water supplies, how do Northern New Mexicans connect with the river and its tributaries? How do they maintain their centuries-old stewardship of the waterways and reinvigorate the land for generations to come?
River's Edge documents how waterways shape the communities that live and work around them—from food systems and social structures to spirituality and identity. This work aims to honor how the people of Northern New Mexico display their love for the water, through passion, commitment or reverence.
We tell the children tales
of thunderstorms. Each May we drop
rose petals into trickling acequia, invoke
San Ysidro for good harvest, good rain
pray these petals seed clouds. We remember
summers of fire, haze over mesa, sunset behind a scrim
of smoke, torches in the Jemez, torches in the Sangres
kindling night roads from Santa Fe to Santa Domingo.
What if it never rains again?
What if
it never rains
again?
—Michelle Otero, "Bosque: Poems" published by University of New Mexico Press
Ecological responsibility and reciprocity with the Earth are values that Jacquelene McHorse and her husband, Angelo McHorse (not pictured) hope to instill in their 5-year-old daughter, Judy. The husband and wife team bring Judy along to harvest marigolds and chamomile, rose petals, yucca root, sage and mint from the wilds around their home on Taos Pueblo. These local and wild foraged products are then used to make soaps and lotions for the family’s business, Bison Star Naturals. “The local ingredients carry with them the memories of the land on which they are grown,” Jacquelene said. “We honor the land and it nourishes us.”
Taos community members cast rose petals into an acequia to invoke a blessing from San Isídro Labradór—Northern New Mexico’s patron saint of farming, water and acequias. The annual “blessing of the waters” ceremony included offerings of prayer to San Isídro for monsoonal rains and reprieve from the region’s unrelenting drought.
Taoseños Julie and Mike Gonzalez share a kiss at the conclusion of their wedding ceremony on the Río Grande Gorge Bridge in El Prado. About 650 feet above the river, the canyon was formed when the North American and Pacific tectonic plates scraped against one another some 29 million years ago. The river flows down the center of the vast rift. “I want you to think of this location as a metaphor for what marriage is,” said Judge Jeff Shannon while officiating the wedding. “It’s two worlds coming together.”
The Río Hondo meanders through the village of Arroyo Hondo, nourishing eleven acequia systems and sustaining meadows and farmlands on its way to the Río Grande. Flowing from melted snow pack in the Sangré de Cristo Mountains, the stream is one of several Río Grande tributaries in Northern New Mexico. “If you’re my neighbor on the acequia we have to work together,” said Miguel Santistevan, an ecologist and farmer in Taos. “It’s not a ditch. It’s a culture. It’s a people.”
Left: Community members representing Taos’ diverse cultures pilgrimage to a confluence of acequias outside the village of Arroyo Seco. The annual procession and “blessing of the waters” ceremony is one of the fundemental religious traditions of Northern New Mexico that has continued for centuries. Through San Isídro— Northern New Mexico’s patron saint of agriculture, water and pastoral lands—the faithful prayed for good harvest and to ease the uncertainty created by a drying climate.
Right: Taryn Switzer, of Enid, Okla., washes her daughter’s towel in the Río Grande near Taos Junction Bridge north of Pilar. Six million people rely on the river and its tributaries for water, crops and livelihoods. Each year, decreasing snowpack, irrigation infrastructure and prolonged droughts cause large stretches of the Río Grande to run dry.
Left: Currents swirl in the Río Grande near its confluence with the Río Hondo in Arroyo Hondo. The river’s violent summer floods once earned it the names “El Río Turbio” or “turbulent river” and “El Rio Bravo del Norte” or “the fierce river of the north.” Studying the past 50 years of stream flow data, researchers projected that the Rio Grande basin, which includes the river and its tributaries, will lose up to a third of its water by the end of the century.
Right: Father Dino Candelaria blesses the San Francisco de Asís Church with holy water following the “enjarre”—the annual ritual of re-applying fresh mud to the hand-sculpted walls of the 208-year-old adobe church in Ranchos de Taos. The earthen walls subtly change shape over time as the elements wear away its skin. The labor-intensive practice of mixing dirt, sand, straw and water for building material is unique to the Southwest and dates back to the 17th century.
Cleansed by an obsidian stone and contained in a mason jar, water forms the center of a community altar of fruits, flowers and mementos during a ceremony attended by Taos Aztec dance group Izcalli In Nanantzin at West Side Community Center in Albuquerque. “The center of the altar is a powerful place,” said Fernando Ortega, who led the songs, dances and praises during the gathering of Azetc dancers. “Without water, there is no life.”
Tibetan Monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery conduct a memorial ceremony at the Río Grande Gorge Bridge for those who ended their lives there.
In the Valle Vidal Unit of Carson National Forest, hatchery-raised Rio Grande cutthroat trout acclimate in Costilla Creek during one of the largest-scale native trout restoration projects in the world. Community volunteers joined state and federal officials to release approximately 1,000 catchable-size trout, 9,000 fingerlings and 80,000 fry into the creek and its tributaries. The cutthroat trout holds the title of the state fish of New Mexico for good reason: it is indigenous to headwaters in the Sangré de Cristo Mountains and thrives in the cold, clear, highly oxygenated water found in high elevation streams in New Mexico. Over the decades, this habitat has been severely threatened by mining, logging, development, non-native restocking and ash from megafires. Today, the cutthroat occupies less than 12 percent of its historic range. According to the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, of the 24 fish species that were historically native to the Rio Grande in New Mexico, only 15 remain.
Left: In the northernmost reaches of Sangré de Cristo Mountains, Doc Thompson, of Taos, braces against the blowing snow as he wades into a stream to gently acclimatize hatchery-raised cutthroat trout to the snow fed Costilla Creek. For more than two decades, Thompson, an avid angler, fishing guide and director of the Enchanted Circle chapter of Trout Unlimited, has helped restock waterways across the region with Río Grande cutthroat trout. He is among many who have seen the native trout populations decline over the years, but taking part in efforts to restore the fish to their native habitat fills him with adrenaline. “We need to make sure species like this don’t vanish,” he said.
Right: Taos Integrated School of the Arts third graders react to a net full of Rio Grande cutthroat trout before they are restocked into Costilla Creek and its tributaries in the Valle Vidal Unit of Carson National Forest. For the last two years, Arthur Coleman’s third graders have been participating in the “Trout in the Classroom” program, which educates youth about trout and aquatic ecosystems and culminates in a field trip to public waters.
Painted by Española residents Roger Montoya, Arlene Jackson and Alejandro Lopez, a mural on the wall of a former car dealership depicts the Acequia de Santa Cruz, as a celebration of the agricultural legacy of Northern New Mexico. From ditches to dams, the waters of the Río Grande have entwined with cultivation for centuries. “I think of acequias in this region like the canaries in the coal mine,” said Sylvia Rodriguez, an anthrolopologist and professor at the University of New Mexico who considers herself a “student of the acequias.” “I continue to learn from the acequias and the people who use their waters. Today it’s not so much that everyone is economically dependent on farming, but their sense of community, their sense of responsibility and mutual trust is essential. That is what’s missing in our larger society.”
Left: A staff gauge in the Río Grande at Embudo provides visual reference for water levels and flow. In 1888, U.S. Geological Survey Director John Wesley Powell chose this site to establish the first system of streamflow monitoring gauges in the country. It was at the Embudo gauge site that the now-familiar terms “runoff” and “acre-foot” entered the language and provided essential information for settling the arid West.
Right: Lloyd Garcia of Valdez has been farming since childhood; he raises alfalfa and runs about 10 head of cattle on his property in Valdez. Garcia is mayordomo of the Acequia de San Antonio in Valdez Valley, where he oversees all work done on the acequia, regulates water delivery and ensures the democratic operation of sharing water is fairly applied.
Taoseñas Corilia Ortega and Aimee Lynn Stearns greet a feline visitor, named Caramelo, while working in the lower field of Ortega’s family’s farm in Arroyo Hondo. Ortega and Stearns are part of a renewed local food movement that’s been steadily growing across Taos County. As more farmland is subdivided and lost to development in Northern New Mexico, communities are worried about the long-term impact on the region, from the loss of water rights to the end of centuries-old agricultural traditions. “Something I’ve learned,” reflected Stearns, “especially while growing a garden for the first time, is that while there may be times in your life when you feel like you’re lost and you don’t belong to a ‘people,’ you’re always going to belong to the land.”
Left: “Growing up, I remember hearing stories from my relatives, especially my grandpa, about how big of a farming mecca Taos Pueblo really was back in the day,” said Tiana Suazo, director of Red Willow Farm on Taos Pueblo. “Our relationship with the land and plants has always been shaped by water. I tell my students that we have to listen and observe water, rather than trying to control it. I try to have the water teach me things. At Taos Pueblo, we see first hand the effects of climate change because we pay closer attention.”
Right: Taos County Economic Development Center intern Daniel Martinez holds up braided corn prepared by youth from Taos Pueblo and other villages in the farm from which it grew. The people of Taos Pueblo and other Pueblo cultivators drew water from the river and arroyos into fields of corn, chile, squash and beans.
Left: Students Tomas Duran, 8, and Gabby Hernandez, 9, assist visiting artists Chris and Debi Taylor in creating a mural, titled “Flight of the Magpie,” in the cafeteria of Enos Garcia Elementary School in Taos. When the Taylors began sketching designs for the tile mosaic mural four years ago, they solicited inspiration from 1,250 Taos County students. “We asked them, what does nutrition and tradition mean to you? Every picture tells a story of their answers,” Chris said. Both Duran and Hernandez come from farming families and help their parents grow vegetables and irrigate the land.
Right: Ten-year-old Kelly Jackson watches her uncle, Dean Archuleta, plow agricultural fields that have been in their family for three generations in Des Montes. The Archelutas are among many families across north and central New Mexico who rely on a centuries-old network of irrigation ditches, called acequias, to divert water from rivers to their nearby fields. Because acequias are not below dams, they are victim to thinning snow packs and early spring melting that have been observed throughout the arid Southwest.
Three-year-old Hazel Switzer, of Enid, Okla., plays in the mud with her cousins and siblings near Taos Junction Bridge north of Pilar during the family’s first visit to the Río Grande.
Top: Walker Lee, of Montrose, Colo., and Steven Morrison, of Taos, fly through the air after backflipping off the Taos Junction Bridge into the Río Grande.
Left: Dozens of handmade crosses nailed to trees outside El Santuario de Chimayó, a small shrine located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Chimayó. For generations, faithful parishioners have travelled to the site to ask for healing for themselves and others.
Los Rios River Runners founder Francisco “Cisco” Guevara has run the Río Grande well over 3,500 times in 51 years. He knows every inch of the river’s curves, boulders and rapids in the way that he knows a longtime companion. While Guevara has made a living from the river, he has also been one of its staunch advocates and defenders. “Moving water releases energy that has the ability to positively influence human health,” he said. “There’s the adrenaline rush, there’s the rush from just the sheer beauty. When you’re floating down a calm, beautiful, peaceful part of the river, especially at sunset when the light is changing, it’s sublime.”
Smoke from the 2018 Ute Park Fire billows above a firefighter as he replenishes tanks of water. The fire burned a total of 36,740 acres and created its own weather pattern above the mountains. Often resembling thunderheads, pyrocumulous clouds are formed by wildfires when heat rises so fast that wind can’t push it away.
Left: Taos water activist Buck Johnston climbed to the top of 60-foot-tall well drilling rig to protest the drilling of a deep water well in El Prado and the implementation of the Abeyta Settlement, a complex water sharing agreement affecting Taos County. Johnston stayed up there for four days before being escorted from the premises by New Mexico State Police. The water sharing agreement involved representatives from Taos Pueblo, the Town of Taos, the Taos Valley Acequia Association and domestic, state and federal water authorities. “If there’s a devil,” said anthropologist Sylvia Rodriguez, “one of the things he created was paper water.”
Right: Moises Trujillo, of Taos, boils water for dinner preparations on the third night of Buck Johnston’s four-day water protest in El Prado. A couple hundred people gathered at the roadside camp, singing and praying in support of Johnston and his cause. Johnston and other activists aimed to draw collective focus to some worrying aspects of the agreement—the impact of drilling more than a dozen wells and potentially fueling growth in the valley that is unsustainable.
Marissa Romero checks the levels in water storage tanks during her night shift as El Prado Water and Sanitation District Clerk and Water Operator. Each evening, she turns on the valve that redirects water from an El Prado’s well to Taos’ water supply. In the weeks since two of Taos’ aging pumps failed during a severe drought, the neighboring water district sent approximately 430,000 gallons of water each day to the town. Romero and her team of three took turns every morning and night to accommodate the increased water volume. “We are doing the neighborly thing because that’s what’s most important to us,” Romero said. “This is our community too. Our friends and family live here. It’s who we are.” Due to increased strain on the El Prado water system, the district voted unanimously to shut off water to the town. The El Prado board felt the town was not showing enough sense of urgency given the severity of the drought. Snowpack and precipitation in the Río Grande Basin were at or near historic lows. Though the headwaters of the Río Grande, including the mountain streams around Taos County, had the highest forecasted streamflows in the state, they were only between 25 and 45 percent of average.
Forming a ribbon of forest along the Río Grande, cottonwoods and willows of the bosque have adapted to the variable water flow over the years. "The Earth has limits," said Miguel Santistevan, a farmer and ecologist with generational roots in Northern New Mexico. "The desert definitely has limits. And we’ve known about these limits for a long time. I’m just trying to figure out how to adapt and anticipate the changes. ... But I’m hopeful. I’m as hopeful as the little sprout of a lentil. The most humble little plant, that won’t freeze, that won’t dry out, no matter how bad the weather."