Night Weave

By Joanna Keane Lopez

Turkey Creek/Gila

October 19, 2015

Being in the Gila Wilderness was really beautiful. There was so much life along the river. The first day there I saw javelinas running across the trail at sunset. At night I could hear them walking around my tent, along with other creatures like deer and skunks. We worked and learned from local artisan, Orien Macdonald to learn about local natural materials and the art of basketry. We harvested and processed willow whips from the banks of the river to make our own individual baskets and then as a group we collectively created a four-foot olla. The last day in the Gila we carried out a collaborative performance where we carried the olla to the river and wove it in and out of the water to a site on the bank where we planted it into the ground to root and regrow.

Local ecologist Carol Fugagli explained to us the importance of “wild rivers” and how their natural rhythm of flooding is elemental to creating habitat and the health of a riparian system. She explained to us how rivers are living organisms and how they need room to swell and contract. This is how they breathe. The Gila River is the last undammed river in New Mexico. Currently there is a proposal to divert and dam it in order to provide drinking and irrigation water to the surrounding communities and counties. One thing in particular that Carol mentioned, that has especially stayed with me is that we as humans have a moral obligation to allow the right of other creatures their own evolutionary process. This includes allowing rivers to remain wild and undammed.

Gila River Collaborative

Gila River Collaborative
By Sarah Molina
October 15, 2015

Land Arts of the American West (LAAW) is an interdisciplinary field-based studio art program at the University of New Mexico that engages with the ecology of place across the American West. This is a trailer of what we have done to draw attention to the the Gila River Diversion. The Gila River as been home to us for the past week. We walked the rivers and enjoyed all that is accompanied within and around it. Collecting local willow that is freely growing by the banks and sotol that spreads widely across the hills, we, together, built a structure that would be used to contain the Gila River water we have grown so close to.

Willow Olla Voices

Willow Olla Voices
By Paula Barteau
October 15 2015

Many Hands picked my myriad twins
They walked up and down the banks looking for those of us they could use
These banks are the walls of our veins
Life within life
Maybe too large for them to see
We are the cells and the organs of our home
Every population is a different system
Equally important, equally alive and individually aware
Though we are all dependent

Though they hold water
Water is the blood of place, it constitutes the blood of creatures, all of us
They would not pour all of their blood into a pool and build pipes to take it away
To something else’s body and expect to stay alive
Blood has to flow through tissue afferent and efferent, never stagnant

We are sorted out and bent together, all dependent, as we’ve always been
They ask us with this structure to hold things, to hold water, though we already do
This thing that we become cannot
They ask us to become a structure with their hands,
Their hands are full of water, but cannot hold water when cupped together
Not for long

Fire and flood are our breath,
Both vital processes to the function of every system
They would never hold their breath as long as they hold ours
We are forced to fever, the fires burn too hot and wide to heal
Destroy what they are necessary to germinate
The floods destroy more than they make room for
Our body reaching past the temperature that kills the infection to kill itself
These are the symptoms of unnecessary medication

Now in our strange new form we are returned to the earth
Where we may rest, take root, and grow
Acknowledgment that the form that we take on our own is no less aesthetic or worthy
Than the form they have given us with their hands

Reciprocity to give us back to our home
To make new homes for others in exchange for what they take away
Acknowledgement that their hands hold the same water that runs through the veins of us the wilderness,
Even as it slips through their cupped fingers

This poem was written for the Gila Wilderness, the oldest national wilderness in the United States which is currently home to seven threatened and endangered species: the Southwest Willow Flycatcher, the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo, the Northern Mexican Garter Snake, the Narrow-Head Garter Snake, the Spikedace, Loach Minnow, and The Chiricahua Leopard Frog.

Gila River Collaborative

Gila River Collaborative
By Clark Frauenglass & Joanna Keane Lopez
October 15, 2015

For the past week, the Gila Wilderness has been home to Land Arts of the American West, a collaborative group of artists coming together to explore the environment and work with natural materials in response to the proposed diversion of the Gila River, the last un-dammed river of New Mexico. Land Arts of the American West is a semester long place-based art & ecology program through the University of New Mexico. As a group we have created a four-foot tall woven olla, traditionally a clay vessel for holding water, made of willow whips that we collectively gathered along the banks of the Gila River.

Since arriving in Gila, we have been learning from local artisan, Orien Macdonald. Orien has shared his knowledge of local materials and basketry with us. Under his instruction, we have harvested and processed willow, sotol and yucca from the surrounding area. With the materials we spent a day learning to weave our own individual baskets.

Local ecologist, Carol Fugagli, paid a visit to our camp and took us on a hike up the watershed. Carol shared her knowledge of the flooding cycles of a healthy river system, and the many endangered species that take refuge in the Gila Wilderness.

Our collaborative project, the olla, was built in stages with groups of four artists coming together to weave each successive panel. Once completed we carried the woven olla to the river where it was passed from hand to hand and dipped in and out of the river in a weaving motion, allowing the water to fill the basket and escape through the gaps in the woven walls.

The olla traveled from one artist’s hand to another down the river to a site on the bank. The olla was then planted along the bank in an act of renewal. As the willow whips take root and continue to grow, the olla will reconnect to the riparian ecosystem creating new habitat and paying homage to the vibrant wild communities and traditions that depend on the health of the Gila River.

Song of the River

Song of the River
By CB Bryan



Can you hear that? There is a slight and soft rushing, pushing its way over all other sounds – birds, rustling, voices from camp – all become background. Every evening I walk from our warm cook tent to my own tent, just south of the group’s and under a cottonwood tree. As I walk I sing to myself, alerting the nearby nocturnal animals of my incoming presence. As I sing, a new sound slowly infiltrates my song and the gentle call of the nearby river takes over to offer another voice as I pass through a tall thicket of coyote willow, some dried sunflowers and poison ivy. This song of the river is a force, which awakens me from sleep and calls me to its waters.

This is the Gila River, with headwaters located in southern New Mexico, which flow in to Arizona then out into the Gulf of Mexico. The headwaters are a special place, the last undammed section of river in the state. This will soon change if a proposed diversion project is executed. This is reason I am writing to you. The Gila River is threatened. Nothing is set in stone, but we feel that we have an obligation to protect and inspire conservation for the cycles of life that we have not known yet.

We are – the Land Arts of the American West, a group based out of the University of New Mexico’s art and ecology program. We have traveled from Albuquerque to sites in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. The Gila River valley has been our home for the past five days as we’ve worked collaboratively with local individuals to immerse ourselves in the art of basketry, natural material gathering and the ecology of the area.

We tromped in the waters off of Turkey Creek trail, finding pools of fish under insect casings with geologic crust that spans all of our lifetimes combined. Led by new friends from the area, Carol Fugagli and Orien McDonald, we became intimate with the footsteps of many – both human and nonhuman – which have called this area home. Through Carol and Orien we came to know the Gila as “not just an entity [but] a living organism” and because of that, we found that it needs room just as all rivers and things need room –“ to swell and move, recede and channelize,”(Carol Fugagli 2015) to breathe. By diverting and damming a river you constrain this breath, loosing some of the things that we have found so special within the wilderness.

Humans have built canals and dams to “straighten” the flows of rivers and harness a their natural energy, their breath. In the city where I grew up, Albuquerque, the local river has been under outside stress since the 1930’s when human intervention brought “order” by preventing floods, building supermarkets and housing developments over bends and historic currents. My childhood home was built on the floodplain of the Rio Grande river, old and unused – if the Rio flooded and moved as it would – my history, my home would be no more. The control of the river has caused some major issues such as species endangerment, native plant loss and invasive species influx. These issues may prevail but they still do not stop the song of the river. The tiny feet that run across its banks every summer or the myriad of hands that are involved to monitor and conserve the Rio’s life force during the fall and spring.

You might be wondering, “Why might I care about this?” How best to take further steps to investigate this matter, or matters like it across the world. In many ways this is a local issue, but in many more it is a global one. The “why should you care” could maybe be something about us not just being individualized egoists but parts of a larger whole or maybe something about “everything being connected.” All of that seems too cliché or too silly. I want to give heartache to everyone, a love for a mountain or a little stream behind the house you grew up in. I know in my own heart that everyone has a memory attached to a place and a love that grows out of that recollection. We have spent the last five days in this place, which may or may not already be known and experienced to some. But I can assure you that now it is, for all thirteen of us have dunked our heads in the waters and woven ourselves into the thickets of willow and the pathways of this Turkey creek wilderness. The “why you should care” should be based on your own memories of love. Every place has a song – the Gila River has its own that has been kicking around in my head during our time here. I’m sure there is a song somewhere in yours.

I cannot seem to write enough words or descriptions to share how I see this river, or any river for that matter. My desire to protect the Gila River comes from my own love for another river and I think that we can each find a place within ourselves to call to for inspiration. If you do not know the Gila then at least know your own local beauty and think about what life would be like without it.

Weaving Watershed

Weaving Watershed
By Kacie Smith
October 15, 2015

Imagine an October afternoon in the Gila Wilderness – more than three million acres of land in southern New Mexico without roads. It was there, just yards away from the Gila River, that I saw an endangered Monarch butterfly flit above a yellow chamisa plant. Nearby, a small puddle between juniper and cottonwood trees provided a drink for two California Sisters and a smaller butterfly with blue wings. As I watched colorful wings pass, local ecologist Carol Fugagli explained that the butterflies will soon be “hill-topping,” meaning they will congregate at the mountaintops to find a mate. The autumn sun was as crystalline as ever: illuminating the butterflies and pulling us toward the cool, clear waters of the river.

I am travelling with Land Arts of the American West, an Art and Ecology program run out of the University of New Mexico. Since August, we have been camping together, researching, and making art in the desert. We are now collaborating at the Gila River. The valley, surrounded by jagged peaks, is home to many fragrances, songs, fish, birds, mammals, ranchers, craftspeople, and histories. It is the last undammed river in the state, but its freedom is threatened.

Carol was introduced to us by Orien MacDonald, a local resident with many trades: basket-maker, blacksmith, musician, and teacher to name a few. In the nineties, Orien’s father Steve and Carol’s husband Mike blocked an previous dam from being built and founded the Upper Gila Wilderness Alliance (http://www.ugwa.org), which has taken on the responsibility to “promote the long-term health” of the watershed and its “communities of life.”

While camping with us, Orien pointed out materials we could use to make natural cordage, wooden spoons, and woven baskets. He shared stories of exploring these paths since his childhood. He has spent enough time here to have stumbled upon ancestral ruins, spied the shyest of frogs, and crafted the perfect backpack for hauling razor sharp sotol fronds. Deeply rooted in this place, Orien’s artistic passion and lifestyle celebrates the wildness of the valley.

The Gila River has proven its force, resilience and need for freedom time and time again. The Wilderness recently endured a major fire in 2011 and significant flood in 2013 – the affects of which would be argument for improved conservation efforts. However, last year, the Interstate Stream Commission approved a diversion plan, which is now being considered by the Department of the Interior. Undoubtedly destructive and expensive, the proposal created a huge controversy in the valley. According to the Gila Conservation Coalition (http://www.gilaconservation.org), the plan is “infeasible” and “may fail” due to long term drought.

Carol taught us about the Gila’s unique riparian ecology and how a proposed diversion would affect the plant and animal species’ habitat. Circled in our camp chairs, we were delighted to see her copy of a Gila butterfly guide. Beautifully illustrated, Carol mentioned it was made by local residents and is now out of print. Proudly on the page sat the California Sister, Sara Orangetip, Goatweed Leafwing and many more. The guide is not only a wonderful resource, but represents the culmination of many hours of observation and attentiveness.

In preparation for this trip, we met with journalist John Fleck. The current situation in the Gila reminds me of John’s talk about water in the West: of John Wesley Powell’s warning about living in arid lands and the centrality of “collective action.” Fleck sited the irrigation systems of the Hohokam and the Mormons as examples of the governance necessary to survive in the desert. Today, as environmental concerns increase, how communities share their water is of utmost importance. There are multiple constituents and complex politics surrounding the river diversion proposal and its influence on recreation and economy. Folks like Carol and Orien living in close proximity to the river are acutely aware of the effects these developments may have. They practice living traditions and skills that we hope will not be lost. We had read in the Atlas of the Upper Gila Watershed that long ago people gathered plants for food and fiber, yet this week we have lived those experiences with them.

With Orien, we created an olla from coyote willow, which regenerates densely with the floods. Along the riverbanks, we collected the longest shoots for weaving. Taking turns, we rhythmically built up the basket, mimicking the gourd-shaped pottery of the Mimbres people who once inhabited this place. Into the river we take our olla, where it bobs and turns, hardly holding water. It will be planted on the bank by the river, one of the very spots which would be underwater should the diversions be built. If not, it may sprout.

In just a few days here, the Gila Wilderness has revealed to us many treasures and moments of awe. When we meandered along and across the Gila River with Carol, she cheerfully identified birds by their song and mountain lion by its tracks. With Orien, we tasted the sweet mesquite pods and acorns. We found an ancient obsidian scraper, rose calcite, and alligator juniper trees. I saw cochineal bugs between the tines of the cholla cactus, which I plucked out with tweezers to make red dye. Near our cook tent, a skunk visits nightly. On the way to one of the natural hot springs, I saw a rattlesnake and a hefty javelina. It’s difficult to imagine the destruction that pipes and dams would bring to the entire watershed.

Back in camp, I opened the butterfly guide to the California sister, a graceful black butterfly with orange and white markings. I painted its likeness in my notebook as a reminder of this place, its vibrancy, and its community of stewards. My hope is that years from now, this glorious place retains the wildness and wonder that supports the hill-topping butterflies and that our buried olla has grown into a thicket of willows.

See Upper Gila Watershed Alliance Newsletter, Carapace for more information about the Gila River Diversion http://www.ugwa.org/Carapace/ugwa_carapace_winter_15.pdf