Deana and I spent our early childhood in National Parks, as our dad was a Park Ranger. Our front yard had alligators in Everglades, bears in Yellowstone, and deer in Shenandoah. Life was outdoors more than indoors. Even after dad left the Park Service, the memory of Yellowstone continued to abide-a completely immersive, sensory, emotional engagement of roaring waterfalls, majestic lodges, cool clear refreshing rivers, pungent, vivid, sulfuric geothermal features- limbic responses triggered by each subsequent visit.
I met Kevin my second year of college, and since we met, he and I have day dreamed about living in Northern New Mexico. I went to St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, and he worked summers at Camp Stoney, so we share a yearning for pinon-juniper-alpine vistas. When we moved to California for a two year stint, we realized how important Northern New Mexico was to our identity as we engaged in escapism of hours spent pouring over vacant land listings, and pestering our our pals back in the 505 with emails inquiring if anyone wanted to go in on a parcel…
Years turned into decades in Albuquerque, with ongoing escapes North. Jacob flew the nest, and our passion for the North took over with the establishment of the Valles Caldera National Preserve- Yellowstone in our back yard! Privately held for our entire adulthood, it now became our playground. The pandemic compelled us to look even closer at this treasure in our backyard, and we found that there were 13 diamonds scattered about the perimeter of the Caldera- remote accesses beckoning us to seek them out. Deana and numerous other pals joining our adventure to enter the Preserve from all 13 remote accesses. Between 2018 and 2021 we circumnavigated the Caldera, tromping though rosebushes, aspen leaves, snow and time- pre-Columbian, Spanish Land Grant, the Dunigan proprietorship, the Trust era, and finally into the present. Wild raspberries, rose hips and strawberries, cool streams, abandoned bear traps, and gurgling geothermal features transported me back to our National Park childhood. And after each excursion, I found myself wondering why we were driving back to the city…. Why not stay?
Early in 2022, we found that the Continental Divide Trail skirted the north western slope of the Caldera , which it turns out is the area of New Mexico with the highest annual precipitation in the state. The area offers lush pygmy forests, cool alpine glades, miles of trails, ample water, and a constant flow of hikers, all proximate to the North Rim of the Caldera. And impossibly, there was a parcel for sale right there! It’s now ours, a place to go- and stay….
