Healing and Adapting with the Land
Paula Garcia. (Photo courtesy of NMPBS)
In early spring 2022, fires burned across New Mexico, months before the historic fire season. “The Hermits Peak Fire started on April 6 and then soon after, the Calf Canyon [Fire] started,” says Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. “By April 22, which was to me a very fateful day, that’s when it really blew up and went on a run about 15 miles and that’s when it rushed across my family lands.”
More than two years later, she still remembers April 22, 2022: “The way the wind was blowing, the temperature of the fire, the intensity of the burn, and the area that it covered was so dramatic. It exceeded all expectation,” she says. “We weren’t at all ready for it. Not for the evacuation and basic day-to-day life change that was going to happen to us. But certainly not ready for the changes on the land that were going to happen, that were going to affect us as land-based people.”
Anyone who knows Paula Garcia knows she is born of a land she loves. And she is always rising to the challenges New Mexicans face in a climate-changed world.
“We’ve always loved this land,” she says of northern New Mexico. “Here, we were taught to be caretakers of the land and now that role as caretaker is more important than ever … These are our beloved lands and they’re still in our care and they’re going to be in the care of our children and grandchildren.”
The fires, and the floods that came afterwards, continue to overwhelm communities. But Garcia believes that in healing the land, people will also heal themselves. As part of an NMPBS special, “Loving Our Changing Homelands,” she also talks about the lessons everyone can learn ahead of a climate-related disaster.
“To me, the silver linings of any disaster is to see how the community comes together, and I feel like ‘Well, we don’t have to wait for a disaster to do that, you know?’” she says. “We should have a mental picture of all our neighbors and who is vulnerable, who is more able to help, and create these networks of mutualism… because that’s something that we’re going to need for the future more.”
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