A lone elk runs across the Plains of San Agustin. After finishing up a visit on Alegres Ranch, I was told to avoid the road I took this photo from because it was in such bad condition. I missed my turn and ended up taking the road anyway, and was glad I did. In five or so miles, I saw at least 500 elk. In the low evening light, it made for one of the more spectacular scenes of my summer in New Mexico.

The Very Large Array took me by surprise the first time I saw it while monitoring a large ranch near Socorro. It wasn’t the size of the array that surprised me, but rather its place on the landscape. It seemed both oddly out of place and perfectly integrated; massive dishes surrounded by shortgrass prairie and unassuming cattle that seemed unconcerned by the $100 million observatory interrupting their pasture.”

The San Mateo mountains during an early afternoon thunderstorm.

The day that I monitored the Montosa ranch near Socorro, temperatures on the Plains of San Agustin reached well into the 100s. This provided a good excuse to retreat to the top of the highest mountain in the area, which happened to be Mt. Withington in the San Mateo Range.

Photo: Looking southwest into the Gila, toward a screen of smoke and rain. At that time, the Vics Peak Fire, the Good Fire, and the Tadpole Fire were all burning actively at this point.

The fire tower at the top of Mt. Withington. “I’d be lying if I said I weren’t a little jealous of whoever gets to live up there.”

From Mt. Wittington.

Highway 152 makes its way over the Black Range en route to Silver City, NM, and affords the traveler spectacular views while doing so.

The Sangre de Cristo Range north of Angel Fire still had plenty of snow when I visited the Agnew ranch in early June.

A brown trout with especially wonderful coloration.

After completing monitoring obligations near Angel Fire, I made camp for the evening at just under 11,000 ft northwest of Mora. It was a chilly night, but as an Iowan, I was just happy to be in the mountains. #

THE END

Nick’s New Mexico Photo Journal

September 9, 2020

Our summer intern, Nick Jacobson, spent most of his assignment out on the land in New Mexico, conducting the annual monitoring of the 90-some conservation easements we hold for landowners throughout the state.

Nick often camped, sometimes fished, drove a lot, and shot many photographs for us from the field.

Nick was so busy with his stewardship work this summer that he is just now getting his photos edited and downloaded to us. So we will be sharing these with you in phases. The words are Nick’s and together with the images, offer a view of New Mexico as seen by someone for the first time.

[click the arrows on right side of photos to progress the slide show at your own pace.]

Nick Jacobson is a rising junior at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Studying geography (with an emphasis in geospatial sciences) and environmental studies, his position as the New Mexico Land Conservancy’s conservation intern provided a wonderful opportunity for him to gain real-world experience while putting his academic experience to work. Nick has previously had research interests in the Namib Desert, working with an endemic conifer in the hyper-arid region. More recently, he has spent time working with an entomology-focused international biological control lab based in the Great Basin Desert. In 2019, Nick was named a Wallace-Carver Fellow by the USDA and the World Food Prize. When he isn’t spending time conducting monitoring visits in beautiful places for the NMLC this summer, you can probably find him deep in the mountains fly fishing and mountain biking