Jason Versus the Volcano

Discovering New Mexico's Best Kept National Park Secret

As a federal employee working for your United States Forest Service, I’ve been a bit…stressed lately for absolutely no reasons whatsoever. With the weekend coming, I texted my buddy Eric on Thursday to see if he’d be interested in a spur of the moment road trip. My initial plan was if there was a government shutdown, I’d leave from Pueblo and head west deep into Ute Country to Montrose before circling north and looping back through Glenwood Springs (where Doc Holiday passed away), eventually making it back home back Monday or Tuesday. However, we had no idea what was going to happen, so Eric advised a shorter trip South into New Mexico, leaving my Colorado circuit for a better plan. And in a historic first, I listened to someone else.

This trip had been coming for a while. I get antsy if I sit in one place for too long, and my first thought was to visit friends on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Ignacio, because that is a place that I always feel welcome. And further, as a tribal liaison for the Forest Service, I feel it is my duty to spend as much time in the traditional homelands of the folks I work with so that I can understand their needs and help foster communication between the government and the Tribes. Fortunately, everywhere is Native land, so it really doesn’t matter what direction I go in.

We left Friday evening eventually making it to Las Vegas, New Mexico (a really charming place, actually) Saturday morning and I’ll relay that first half of the trip later. But while it’s fresh in my head, I wanted to talk about climbing Capulin Volcano National Monument.¹

This is actually the world’s tallest fencepost.

Capulin sits east of Raton, New Mexico and we’d hoped to hit it on the way to Las Vegas, but a snow storm derailed those plans. Besides, one of the cool things about climbing this volcano is that you get to see so freaking much.

I think a lot of times when we consider the National Park Service, we get caught up in the 63 National Parks—places like Yellowstone, Acadia, Glacier, Yosemite, and other amazing places. But the National Park Service stewards lots of other places in the form of national monuments and national historic sites. There are tons of them. And you own them all.

Capulin is one of a series of volcanos in northern New Mexico in what is called the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. It’s actually a huge field, at about 8,000 square miles. This volcano last erupted about 60,000 years ago and is completely dormant, so no worries there. The name comes from the Spanish term for choke cherry, meaning that even when the empire wasn’t busy killing and missionizing, they still took time to name things after the most violent fruits possible.

But more importantly, this space in northern New Mexico is of course home to a number of Indigenous communities, many of whom I have the honor of working with, including the Jicarilla Apache Nation, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the Comanche Nation, the Kiowa Tribe, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, among others. So for me, seeing these spaces is a way of honoring my commitments to the Tribes, as well as trying to find some sense of peace in what feels like an increasingly chaotic world.

One of the great things about visiting Capulin was that despite it being a comparatively small NPS site, it has a terrific gift shop and museum. I was really happy to see the work of their tribal liaison—an awesome guy that I know—in ensuring Indigenous peoples were represented in the museum. Plus, the staff was great, despite the fact that I work for a superior agency.²

Love to see this.

Another cool thing- this place was busy! Did you know that last year was the busiest year on record for the National Park Service? It’s absolutely true. According to Outside Magazine, over 331 million people visited NPS sites last year, which demonstrates just how much Americans and visitors love public lands.³ I looked at the license plates of the visitors—people came from amazing places like Texas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, and the Chickasaw Nation. People also came from Indiana. Unfortunately, the current administration fired many civil servants from not only the NPS and United States Forest Service, but other public lands agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Reclamation. I’m sure there’s all a very good reason for these decisions, but if you’d like to contact your elected officials to confirm this, you can do so at the link in this footnote.⁴

One of the cool things about the volcano is that you can actually drive almost all the way to the summit and then make a one mile hike around the rim, which Eric and I set out to do. The hike is pretty doable for most people, but there is some elevation gain. I’d suggest taking your time and bring a water bottle. Sneakers are fine for this hike since it is paved.

One of my favorite things about places like this is that people are usually really open to talking. They’ll smile and chit chat. Eric and I passed a Grandfather, his adult son, and his daughter. They grandpa was a former Marine from Lawton, Oklahoma, so we talked about our love of the Comanche Nation and the Wichita Mountains down that way.

I took a bunch of pictures for y’all but I hope you understand that they simply don’t do it justice. And when you realize you’re standing on top of a freaking volcano at over 8,000 above sea level, sometimes you need to put the camera down and just let the space speak to you.

Of course I posed for this.

So that’s it. A little taste of this place that maybe you didn’t know existed. But it’s yours. And I like to think to think these spaces are special and worth protecting. I’ll try to share more of these types of trips in the future.

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What I’m reading

Right now, I’m doing prep work for several upcoming pods (this is almost always the case), but I’m actually working my way through The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt. Colonel Roosevelt (as he liked to be called) is an interesting dude. There’s a lot to be admired (love of nature and learning, his work towards creating a better world for the lower classes) and frustrated with (racism, imperialism) but I think reading about imperfect people helps us understand what it is to be human. How can we learn from their strengths and from their weaknesses? That’s the job, right? Take from them what we can.

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Current pod

Alright everyone, happy Monday. Let’s go do the things.

Jason

1. https://www.nps.gov/cavo/index.htm

2. Sorry, I had to.

3. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/national-park-service-visitation-record/

4. https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials