The Galisteo Basin is a place where we hike in all seasons. The Basin is vast, an area that was once covered by an inland sea; I’ve found fossilized tree trunks and shell fossils along the trails. The terrain varies from marshy grasslands to rocky hogbacks to deep water-cut arroyos. In the spring, tiny wildflowers bloom along the trails; water runs in the arroyos in the summer monsoon season.

Where we stopped to photograph, the giant cottonwoods turn bright gold in autumn. This is the old Thornton Ranch, an area farmed centuries ago by early Pueblo people. There are still remnants of native corn cultivation sites here, made of flat stones laid in loose grids to capture water. The Santa Fe Conservation Trust bought the ranch to save it from commercial development, extending a wildlife migratory corridor to a larger regional network of existing land preserves.