Category: Rio Grande

Saturated colors.

Flowing ditches.

Hawks calling to each other.

Abundance abounded when we arrived at the Open Space Visitor Center less than 24 hours after the city’s drenching. We received nearly an inch of rain Saturday.

Agriculture and permaculture fields pulsed deep green, a scattering of yellow wildflowers breaking the monochrome.

We walked into the bosque, squeaked through a path of rushes and cattails, and came to the fast-flowing river. On a sandbar, barn swallows bum-rushed a Cooper’s hawk till he fled the scene.

Hawks were everywhere today – bouncing from branch to branch at a fancy house along the ditch, chasing each other up into the evergreens.

Butterflies cavorted. A striped lizard climbed up a cottonwood trunk and did push-ups.

We had the bosque almost to ourselves this afternoon. The sun beamed down and humidity (humidity!) still hung in the air.

As we walked back to the visitor center, the same hawk bounced from branch to branch at the same fancy house.

We climbed the observation tower to see the color show from a slightly higher elevation and watch wind ripple the grass.

The desert is a miracle in all seasons, but I have spent so much of this dry year longing for color. I’m grateful that I got to soak it in today.

I wasn’t the only one.

Hike length: 3 miles

Difficulty: easy

Trail traffic: light

Wildlife spotted: Cooper’s hawks, herons, spotted and striped lizards, butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers, barn swallows, hummingbirds

The thicket of green quickly engulfed us.

Eerie squeals nearby filled the air. At first I thought a family with toddlers was on the trail nearby. Nope. Coyotes.

We’d entered the thicket on the hunt for a lightly-trod trail hugging the west bank of the Rio Grande, about half a mile north of the Montano bridge.

Two weeks ago, we’d walked that trail as it glowed with yellow Russian olive blooms, sparkling against the reflection off the river.

Today we started on a doubletrack baking in the sun. One faint path headed toward the river – and straight into the thicket. We were mere yards from the river, but as we went deeper into the growth, the path faded and the brush closed in, becoming impassable without seriously trampling vegetation (a bad idea anywhere, but especially in the desert.)

It was incredible to realize you could be swallowed up by nature, until your entire vision was blue and green, so very close to one of the most high-traffic roads in town. It was a thing worth celebrating.

But the sun was already beating down at 9:30 a.m., and I wanted to see more than the thicket before the heat became unbearable.

And we did. A cottontail bounded away from us. We heard dozens of lizards skittering in the leaves lining the trail. We saw at least 10 lizards, several striped or spotted, one at the edge of an irrigation ditch, so brown and gray he was barely visible.

We saw a hawk sitting on a cottonwood limb that bent all the way to the ground, then watched it fly away.

We watched a water bird flap over the river.

We saw two turtles basking in the detritus at a spillway, soaking up the sun.

I’ve heard the Rio Grande is likely to run dry through Albuquerque this summer. I’ve also heard water managers are likely to release just enough water that it won’t, in order to keep residents from wigging out at the sight of a dry riverbed.

I wonder how long there will be vegetation in which someone could disappear completely, if the river is allowed to go where nature seems to be taking it this year.

Hike length: 3.5 miles

Difficulty: easy

Trail traffic: light

Wildlife spotted/heard: rabbit, coyotes, dragonflies, grasshoppers, butterflies, hummingbirds, lizards, water bird (heron?), hawk, black phoebe