The only thing that could be lovelier than spending a day in the Valle Vidal, is to spend it with Mollie Walton.

Mollie’s been an instrumental factor in the restoration work in the Valle Vidal for a decade plus and counting.  She’s currently the Comanche Creek Project Coordinator at The Quivira Coalition, the organization who helped launch Zeedyk and his early comrades’ EPA award winning work in the Valle Vidal (alongside partners including New Mexico Environment Department, Forest Service’s Carson National Forest, Albuquerque Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Game and Fish, Trout Unlimited, the Santa Clara Fire Crew and the Gallup Youth Conservation Corps.

Comanche Creek itself is a 10 mile scenic trout stream in the bottomlands of the the Valle Vidal. It receives runoff from a 43-square-mile watershed before it merges into the Costillo Creek, which then flows along and empties into the Upper Rio Grande watershed in southern Colorado. We walked and talked our way along Comanche Creek, starting at Comanche Point which serves as the confluence of where the two rivers meet.

We viewed twenty-year-old structures as well as toured treatments implemented in the last couple of years.  Witnessing the cumulative effect of Post Vanes, Baffles, Ripples and Exclosures was not only educational, but heart lifting.

The most exciting of all though, was to experience my first-ever Fen!  Who knew!  A fen is a unique peat-forming wetland, and if you find yourself on top of one they are reminiscent of nature’s original bouncy house.  Thousands of years in the making, Fen’s are rare and difficult to restore once destroyed!   They are dependent upon an artesian water source and if that link is altered, drained or rerouted due to incision, headcut or other, a fen’s survival is unlikely.  Lucky for us, the restoration efforts at the Valle Vidal have faired well and a Fen is still a Fen.

Drone Photography courtesy of Cristina McCandless.