Written by Grace Davenport, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
This week we began work in a new area for our crew: the Black Range in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico, part of the Gila National Forest. Aldo Leopold, a pioneering environmentalist, was instrumental in establishing the Gila Wilderness, the first Wilderness Area in the world, in 1924. In 1980, a 316 sq. mi. portion of the Gila National Forest that had been part of the originally proposed Gila Wilderness was designated the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.
Before venturing into the backcountry, we stopped in Truth or Consequences to pick up a radio from the Black Range District Forest Service Office. Cell phone service drops off in the canyon, and Leopold’s vision of a wilderness area feels more complete in these pockets of service silence and isolation by modern communication standards. We drove in on long, winding and very scenic roads, ending up at the trailhead for the Circle Seven Trail, where we donned our packs and hiked nearly 3 miles to near the end of previous work on this trail, set up camp, and began work the next day.
In 2022, the Black Range experienced the second largest wildfire in New Mexico history to date, the Black Fire. While direct evidence was minimal early on our drive and hike in, significant flood damage in the canyon bottom was quickly evident, and the further up canyon we went, the more we started to see burned and increasingly fallen trees.
We set out working our way up canyon, routefinding, flagging, brushing, crosscutting logs, and spending the bulk of our time digging tread to redefine connections between existing trail, building new creek crossing ramps, building large cairns to help people navigate creek crossings and narrow canyon-bottom portions of trail still at risk of continued flood damage, and generally helping to redefine the trail and make it passable by hikers and pack stock.
The lack of service and renewed silence of a Wilderness area led to much crew innovation, especially in gastronomy. Rebekah made a fateful grocery shopping pre-hitch trip to Costco and brought a dozen buttery croissants into the wilderness. Max brought Gushers, and the world would never be quite the same. The first documented creation and consumption (by persons older than middle-school age) of a “Gushoissant” occurred on March 7th, 2026 during lunch break, followed by the second creation on March 8th 2026 around 5:30 PM. Research and development is still ongoing on a cookie that is both chewy on the inside and crunchy on the outside.
Despite an unrelenting hailstorm one afternoon and spotty storms for several days, we were able to get 1.33 miles of trail brushed and retreaded/rebuilt, built 14 large cairns to help define the route where building tread wasn’t worthwhile at this time, and cut 52 logs off the trail including clearing new deadfall off the previously maintained 3 miles in from the trailhead before where we began our other work.
