On the first morning of my residency, I stroll half a mile along an old dirt logging road towards History Grove, a 125-acre stand of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. These are some of the oldest living trees in Valles Caldera, ranging from 250-400 years. To visit History Grove is to start to understand the many layers of story in Valles Caldera.

I’m grateful to be among these giants. I sit and listen to the wind ruffling the boughs as morning light stretches the shadows. Simply being among them, sensing their magnitude brings a sense of calm and perspective. I’m awestruck, too, considering how long they have stood here at the boundary of the foothills and the montane grasslands. Through centuries of winter snows, spring thaws, and summer monsoons, they have witnessed parades of creatures — human, mammal, avian, reptilian, and insect — pass by under their canopies.

I especially love the ponderosa pines. When they have sufficient space, as they do here, ponderosas boast full canopies. Their branches can stretch out for sunlight in all directions around the trunk. The self-pruning scars from dropping low branches in their younger years have been absorbed into the thick, red, bark that smells of vanilla and cinnamon. Their canopy from base to crown is maybe half to two thirds of their full height, sometimes over 100 feet. Ponderosas host bluebirds, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, flickers, owls, and a whole array of insects. Their shade shields the understory, home to mice and other small rodents. At their feet, a blanket of leaf litter and duff patiently mixes and decays with the perennial grasses and pinecones, returning nutrients and minerals to the soil for new growth. They are the most magnificent creatures.

To walk among these giants in History Grove is to feel completeness, humility and wisdom. It is a cathedral, a sacred space.

To my knowledge, these trees have been saved twice.

Many of the domes of Valles Caldera were once covered with forest like this. Along with the band of trees in the Cabin District where I am staying, the trees in History Grove are among the few ancient giants not lost to the logging that took over 95% of the majestic forests that stood in Valles Caldera for centuries. I wonder about the decision to spare these trees.

In the early and mid-decades of the 20^th century, Valles Caldera was not an easy place to live or work. Isolated location, harsh winters, few amenities, rough dirt roads, and the fear of bears, mountain lions and coyotes were just some of the challenges. Those who stayed here must have found something to keep them from retreating down to the cities of Santa Fe or Albuquerque. I imagine that to stay here, people must have liked it, even loved it. Something kept the logging company from knocking down all the old trees. Maybe despite all their acquisitiveness, they, too, thought the trees were beautiful. There must be a story there.

For all the past practices that sadden my modern-day sensibility, I am grateful that at least this grove was left intact. I like to think it points to an affinity and fondness for the land beyond economic utility. Even if the primary impulses were to work and exploit the land, perhaps this remaining section of forest indicates a deeper instinct at work, holding back from complete destruction, suggesting that some things should be left alone.

The second time History Grove was saved was more recent. A century of fire suppression, high-density forest growth, extended periods of drought, and climate change all contribute to the megafires that have become increasingly common, especially in the American West and Southwest. Unlike historic and prehistoric natural occurrences of wildland fire or modern prescribed burns that serve to clear out the undergrowth and promote the balance of healthy ecosystems, many of these megafires burn quickly and at high-intensity over large areas, leaving the forest scorched and the soil stripped of its life-sustaining nutrients and microbes. The Jemez Mountains and Valles Caldera have seen too many of these megafires in recent history.

On May 31st, 2013, a downed power line ignited the Thompson Ridge fire which ultimately burned 24,000 acres, most of which was in Valles Caldera. History Grove and the Cabin District were nearly lost in the blaze. Less than 100 meters from the cabin where I am staying, fire fighters started a backburn to prevent the fire from engulfing these historic areas. It is bewildering to realize how close we came to losing these stands of wisdom and magnificence. The Granite Mountain Hotshots, a crew of interagency, elite type-1 wildland fire fighters based out of Prescott, Arizona, were instrumental in saving the Cabin District and History Grove. They worked furiously through the night of June 6^th to keep this old-growth grove and the cabins safe. Because of them, History Grove still stands.

Shortly after their work on the Thompson Ridge Fire, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were called to duty on a fire closer to their homebase in Arizona. While they were fighting the Yarnell Hill fire on June 30, 2013, erratic fire behavior and a sudden shift in the weather patterns cut off the crew’s escape routes. Nineteen of the twenty crew members perished. The lone survivor, Brendan McDonough, had been posted remotely as a lookout.

I first learned of the Granite Mountain Hotshots’ work at Thompson Ridge and the subsequent tragedy at Yarnell Hill in Laura Paskus’s book At the Precipice, New Mexico’s Changing Climate (2020). The Granite Mountain Hotshots were certainly heroes. They were also brothers, sons, fathers, husbands, partners, friends. They were complete, complex individuals, and their profound loss will always be felt within the firefighting community. Their stories are told in depth and with great compassion in Fernanda Santos’s book, The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots (2017), and Kyle Dickman’s book On The Burning Edge (2015). I found both books to be invaluable in presenting comprehensive pictures of the lives, families and communities of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

Though I didn’t know any of them, I feel immense gratitude and sorrow when I think of their work here in Valles Caldera. Laura Paskus pauses in her book to include their names. It seems fitting to echo that gesture of remembrance and respect:

• Andrew Sterling Ashcraft
• Robert E. Caldwell
• Travis Clay Carter
• Dustin James DeFord
• Christopher A. Mackenzie
• Eric S. Marsh
• Grant Quinn McKee
• Sean M. Misner
• Scott Daniel Norris
• Wade S. Parker
• John J. Percin, Jr
• Anthony M. Rose
• Jesse James Steed
• Joe B. Thurston
• Travis Turbyfill
• William Howard “Billy” Warneke
• Clayton Thomas Whitted
• Kevin J. Woyjeck
• Garret Zuppiger

Throughout my residency, I frequently return to History Grove. Each time I pass through, a part of me feels the urge to stop for a moment of silence, of thanks. Both to the trees and the Granite Mountain Hotshots who saved them in 2013.

One visit, I notice a section of fallen trees in the middle of the grove. This surprises me, I thought the grove was mostly intact. While some of the fallen show burn marks, most still have thin branches that aren’t burnt, but are gray and brittle. I later learn from Ranger Adam Dean that these trees were not victims of fire, but of a bark-beetle infestation through the early 2000s, exacerbated by drought. The trees gradually died, but remained standing, ghostly skeletons suggesting the shape of their former magnificence. When a fierce windstorm howled through the grove in 2019, their dried roots could no longer hold and many of these trees tipped. My next visit, I take a closer look and notice how these trees have blown over, the lateral root systems upended and exposed, the tap root snapped off and left somewhere underground. While fire, wind, and bark-beetle infestations are all natural disturbances in a healthy forest that could help to mitigate overgrowth and keep the canopy from becoming too dense, the combination and severity of these combined effects along with a warming climate have left many of the trees struggling. There are so many ways our forests are vulnerable.

What will the future hold for these trees and the larger forested areas of Valles Caldera? Climate future models predict two possibilities, one classified as Warm Wet and the other as Hot Dry. Among other things, the models differ in the amounts, frequencies, and forms of yearly moisture predicted (snowfall or rainfall). But both predict a high probability of warmer temperatures and less snowpack in Valles Caldera. Will these shifts lead the forests of Valles Caldera to change from mixed conifers to species better adapted to hotter, drier climates? It’s hard to know and sobering to contemplate. Still, predictions and models like this can inform stewardship and preservation choices. I’m grateful for this research.

That the forest will reach for recovery after a disturbance is inevitable, but whether it will return to the forest it used to be or undergo a “type change”, becoming home to different kinds of flora is less certain. Each burned or wounded area heals differently, depending on multiple factors including burn severity, health of surrounding microclimates, and direction of its exposure to sun and wind patterns.

Gazing again at the grove, an area of tufted green catches my eye. I carefully climb over massive trunks lying on the ground, some dry and naked of their bark, some still with bark intact. They lie across one another like pick-up sticks. I creep closer. In the middle of the area of fallen trees, there is a grove of baby trees. They are Douglas firs, the size of Christmas trees. Off to the sides stand some sapling ponderosas, maybe 1.5 meters tall. In the shadows and under the careful watch of the older giants of History Grove, a small new forest grows defiantly, proudly among the grasses. They look like a band of brothers. They look like hope. Maybe, just maybe, these trees have a future, springing from the heart of History Grove.