500 DAMS

The Anaya Springs area lies three miles north and east of the town of Cerrillos, in Northern New Mexico. Rain falling here flows downhill to Galisteo Creek and from there to the Rio Grande. San Marcos Puebloan peoples lived nearby and farmed the mesa tops up until the late 1600’s. The arrival of the Spanish in the 1600’s brought intensive sheep ranching. By the time the railroad arrived in the late 1800’s bringing homesteaders and their cattle, the grasslands had already been severely degraded by overgrazing leaving an eroded landscape of deeply carved, dry drainages locally called arroyos.

An ever-increasing percentage of the scant rainfall received each year runs off taking soil with it. The advance of global warming is only making matters worse as rainfall decreases and temperatures rise. The scale of the problem is so large, it is difficult to believe that individuals can make a difference. What can two people possibly do in the face of an ecological catastrophe? Is there any room left for personal agency?

For the past 20 years, as a daily, shared practice, Anne Nelson and Bill Gilbert have built and then maintained over 500 check dams to hold water and soil on the site, creating a multitude of small incubators for grassland restoration. We work with rocks readily at hand to make a series of small interventions in the hopes that through endless reiteration our effort will have an effect. After adding a dam, we name each watershed for significant topographical characteristics, family members, pets, etc. Doing so helps us to hold Anaya Springs in our minds as a complex hydrologic system.

Change has been incremental, but continuous. Silt fills in behind the dams, grass germinates along the arroyo edges and in the dams. Packrats build homes in the gathered stones. Cactus, wildflowers and native shrubs sprout, gain a foothold and grow. Water infiltrates and then seeps slowly from the dams after rains.

What are the chances the springs return? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we keep building.

ABOUT THE SURVIVAL KIT COLLECTIVE

Survival Kit Collective (SKC) formed as an interdisciplinary group with a shared interest in New Mexico’s high desert ecology dedicated to bringing this work to a public dialog. SKC combines science and art; watercolor, adobe sculpture, animation, environmental science, drone video, interactive digital mapping, photography and ceramics to present a portrait of the Anaya Springs area as a complex riparian ecology in a period of environmental flux. SKC members include: