The Long Way to Taos…

Shortly after graduate school, I landed a job at an engineering firm doing what most people politely refer to as “not glamorous work.” And by not glamorous, I mean this: I had a four year degree in fisheries and wildlife biology, a freshly earned M.S. in Environmental Biology, and I was waking up before the sun to pull on my shit kickers, cowboy boots if we’re being formal, and go trap prairie dogs on the Front Range of Colorado.

Yes, prairie dogs. Specifically, black tailed prairie dogs. This was all in the name of development and progress, which usually meant another patch of open ground about to turn into houses, roads, or parking lots. If you’re wondering how someone with a graduate degree ends up doing this, welcome to early career natural resources work. This is where idealism meets reality, and reality usually wins the first few rounds.

People would ask what the whole deal was with removing prairie dogs, usually with a look that said they weren’t sure whether to be curious or concerned. The short answer is that in Colorado, prairie dogs are somewhat protected when there’s anticipated ground disturbance. A lot of local ordinances require them to be removed before earthwork begins, mainly because burying a colony alive under heavy equipment is, unsurprisingly, considered inhumane. So instead of letting that happen, we trapped them.

And sometimes, trapped meant relocated. Other times trapped meant euthanized. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t what I pictured when I was sitting in college classrooms talking about stream ecology and fish passage. But there was at least some good that came out of it. Whenever we conducted lethal removals, the prairie dogs were donated to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Black Footed Ferret Center in northern Colorado. Black footed ferrets are federally protected and listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and prairie dogs happen to be their primary food source. So, in a weird, full circle way, one species was helping keep another from disappearing altogether.

Still, that didn’t make the alarm clock any kinder.

I spent more mornings than I can count waking up at 3:00 a.m. to set Tomahawk traps in the dark, headlamp on, coffee barely working, questioning my life choices while reminding myself that this was part of paying dues. Early career natural resources isn’t fancy. It smells like dirt, sweat, and diesel, and sometimes you’re doing work no one ever brags about at conferences.

But I also knew, even then, that those mornings mattered. I knew that showing up, doing the work, and learning the uncomfortable sides of conservation would eventually open doors somewhere else. I didn’t know where yet, but I knew I wasn’t done moving. Rivers were still calling, roads were still waiting, and this was just one stop along the drift.

 About a year and a half passed, and a whole lot of prairie dog lives had been removed from the Front Range of Colorado. By that point, waking up at 3:00 a.m. to set traps had become less of a surprise and more of a routine, which is a dangerous place to be mentally if you plan on doing anything else with your life.

Then one afternoon, out of the blue, I got a text from a friend and former classmate from graduate school. Some people referred to her as my little big sister, mostly because she spent a good portion of grad school yelling at me to study. Despite our frequent academic disagreements, she remains one of my closest friends to this day. Her message was simple. There was a job opening with Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico. She was working there as a fish biologist, and the position available was for a water quality biologist.

I remember sitting there reading that text, boots still dusty, hands probably still smelling like prairie dog and coffee, weighing my options. On one hand, I could keep cracking prairie dogs’ necks on the Front Range and telling myself this was just “paying my dues.” On the other, I could take a leap south to northern New Mexico, trade Tomahawk traps for sampling bottles, and start measuring water quality instead of euthanizing mammals.

 It didn’t take long to decide.

I figured, what the hell, I might as well take the jump.

A few phone calls, some paperwork, and a surprising amount of internal convincing later, I got the call. I’ve been offered the job with Taos Pueblo. There was just one catch before anything became official. I needed to make the trip down to northern New Mexico to complete my drug testing.

What could’ve been a simple in and out drive quickly turned into something else.

I called my best friend, and we decided to turn the whole thing into a fishing weekend. Rods got packed, bags got loaded, and suddenly a required pre-employment task became an excuse to point the truck south and chase water along the way.

The job offer, the drive, the fishing, and everything that followed all started on that trip. And it all began with us pulling into an Airbnb in northern New Mexico that probably should’ve come with a warning label.

 That’s where the Taos story really begins…