Rose Houk

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the timber industry was drawn to the Colorado Plateau’s extensive pine forests. And African Americans—newly freed from slavery—played a big part in that industry.

Bison are among the most emblematic animals of the American West. Many Indigenous peoples relied on them for survival. Some, such as the Zuni, have oral histories of hunting them and performing a Buffalo Dance ceremony. Bison are known primarily as Plains animals, but historically they did extend into the Southwest.

A minnow that can reach six feet long and weigh eighty pounds—now that’s a fish story! But, this one happens to be true. The Colorado pikeminnow was known to reach such sizes.

Only a fraction of the nearly 15,000 apple varieties once known in North America are still cultivated. Now, a few hard-core searchers are combing fields and ravines, reports and records, even neighbors’ front yards, to relocate some of those long-lost old apples.

A hundred years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey installed one of the nation’s early stream gauging stations on the Colorado River at the head of the Grand Canyon.

In the fall, large flocks of cliff swallows take wing together, heading all the way to South America to overwinter. But they’ll be back in the spring, ready to breed and claim nesting sites.

Students learn to read and write in classrooms, but in the wider world they gain a different kind of literacy: a deep understanding of the natural world.

At dusk on summer nights, white-lined sphinx moths flutter like hummingbirds around flowers of datura and evening primrose. Their dark wings bear light bands, and the underwings are cotton-candy pink. They hover above a flower only long enough to dip their long hollow tongues deep into the sugar-rich nectar stores. Then they fly off to another source, exhibiting some of the fastest flying speeds in the lepidopteran world.

Four decades ago, naturalist and author Gary Paul Nabhan wrote a book called The Desert Smells Like Rain. The title came from the answer a young Tohono O’odham boy gave when asked what the desert smelled like to him.

“Taos” means "Place of the Red Willow,” in the Tiwa language spoken by the Pueblo people of New Mexico. Thus the name of the Red Willow Center at Taos Pueblo, a place designed to rekindle traditional agricultural knowledge.