Ghost Ranch Newsletter: The Autumn Edition

Autumn 2023 Newsletter

Setting the Table on the Mesa for Volunteers By David Gill, Interim Executive Director

After the mesa dorm-style housing ceased being suitable for guests, the two community buildings situated near them - Yucca and Roadrunner - remained largely unused most of the year. These buildings were mirrors of each other with a large open meeting space and bathrooms accessible from the outside (each with multiple showers, sinks, and toilets). It occurred to us that these under-utilized buildings could be perfect for volunteer groups, once rehabilitated with the Ranch’s untapped and restricted funds for New Volunteer Housing. Facilities Director, Eric Garcia got right to work on plans and a budget. The buildings would get insulation, new windows, new doors, upgraded bathrooms, and a communal living space with an efficiency kitchen perfect for small groups to cook their own meals. Two bedrooms would be added, each with two sets of bunks (eight beds per building). The work is well underway and has been kept cost-effective using group discounts the Ranch receives through the Trinity-HPSI group buying program. We are also saving money by using products donated to the Ranch through the national Good360 program. Thus far, the Ranch has received three truckloads totaling $101,000 in retail value yet costing only $6,000 in administration and shipping. Eric Garcia estimates that this program has saved us tens of thousands of dollars. Earlier this year the Ranch submitted a preliminary application to host a team of AmeriCorps volunteers and we were approved to submit a full application for a team of 6-9 young adults. These volunteers would be on site from early January through mid-April. The new mesa housing will be ideal for such groups and their labor would help with many site improvements. The AmeriCorps volunteers will also devote one day a week to volunteering at Abiquiu Elementary School thereby giving back to our local community. The new mesa housing will be ideal for other such groups whose labor could help with many site improvements. This project is allowing the Ranch to breathe new life into two underused buildings, supporting our mission of local community engagement, and being accomplished using funds outside the operating budget.

Yay! Ghost Ranch Community Camp

Ghost Ranch has received $40,000 from the Outdoor Equity Fund to support our Community Camp in 2024. For the first time, our Community Camp week is fully funded and this grant will enable us to expand Community Camp to two weeks in 2024! This funding is meant to enable all New Mexican youth equitable access to the outdoors and it supports programming that provides outdoor experiences that foster stewardship and respect for New Mexico’s land, water, and cultural heritage.

Ghost Ranch’s Community Camp provides experiential education to youth in Rio Arriba County through summertime outdoor and environmental education and helps to prevent summer learning loss, supports rural families when school is out of session, and gives opportunities to underrepresented youth to experience outstanding landscapes, geology, paleontology, and waterfront in New Mexico. We are thrilled to have financial support and the ability to expand this important community program.

Snake Sniffing Dogs: Pawsome

Earlier this summer Ghost Ranch Facilities Director Eric Garcia added a pair of uniquely specialized team members to his staff. To help deal with rattlesnake safety, which falls under the responsibility of the Facilities Department, Eric contracted Sean McGann, and canine team member Mystique, of Snake Dog LLC. Sean and Mystique specialize in canine-assisted rattlesnake detection and consult in rattlesnake safety for clients throughout northern New Mexico. Ghost Ranch has thousands of acres of largely open land. Ghost Ranch staff takes pride in maintaining an ecologically responsible stewardship plan for the land. As such, the property is home to a very healthy population of snakes, largely Prairie and Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes. In light of this, Eric and Sean developed a plan to address roughly 500 acres of our property with the highest risk of human-rattlesnake encounters. This plan includes ongoing canine monitoring of all residential, camping, dining, and administrative areas, a maintenance plan that responsibly encourages rattlesnakes to look for food elsewhere. It also involves the relocation of rattlesnakes to a suitable environment somewhere with less chance of human-rattlesnake interaction. The goal is to maintain healthy rattlesnake populations in areas less traveled by our guests.

Why use a canine team to find rattlesnakes? Simply put, dogs are far more likely to find these elusive, highly camouflaged, creatures. Mystique is a graduate of Auburn University’s Canine Sciences Program, and many of these canine graduates go on to national defense. She is trained to detect rattlesnakes by scent only and to locate them to within ten feet.

Before working with Mystique, Sean was a canine handler for search and rescue teams in New Mexico. It is his job to remove and relocate the snakes. The team spent their summers clearing rattlesnakes for private clients and have spent the past two summers clearing sets for the film industry in New Mexico. You can learn more at: https://www.snakedog.co/. We want to be sure that the rattlesnakes whose home is on Ghost Ranch are protected while our human guests are kept safe!

Ghost Ranch Archaeological Dig

Ghost Ranch is well known for its beautiful landscape. However, the area also has a rich and diverse cultural history. The remnants of nomadic hunter-gatherer/agriculturalist archaeological sites dot the landscape representing each of their ancient lifeways. Archaeologists at Ghost Ranch are involved in a long-term research project that includes the excavation of two rock shelters that contain evidence of over 4,000 years of occupation. These include campsites used by Archaic foragers, Pueblo farmers, and Apache nomads.

This summer, Dr. Charles (Charlie) Haecker directed an archaeological dig program at Ghost Ranch. Charlie is an expert in Apache archaeology and a retired National Park Service archaeologist who has authored numerous publications. About 20 students learned proper field excavation techniques while unearthing (Dr. Haeker pictured at left)

stone tools, pottery, animal bones, and fire pits. They also had the opportunity to assist in processing and cataloging this material in the laboratory for ongoing research. Nightly lectures and discussions helped broaden their understanding of regional archaeology and artifact analysis.

Music Among the Mesas

Ghost Ranch Resounded with The Sound of Music All Year Long! It began with Bluegrass Week (May 10-14), a years-long tradition that kicks spring off in the right way. Thirty participants with mandolins, fiddles, guitars, basses, banjos (and the odd autoharp) learned from master bluegrass musicians and rehearsed all over the ranch. The week ended with a romping-stomping performance by the participants followed by a concert by the Finders & Youngberg Band. Bluegrass 2024 will be next May 8-12.

June 25-30 brought back our Youth Week when Presbyterian youth groups from all over the country played, prayed and ran all over the ranch. And, with the help of the California-based Zehnder Brothers, they sang in the mornings and the evenings and drummed in the afternoons (thank you, Mike Boggio!). Big Hat Daddy, and 80 youth raised the roof the last night. Youth Week is scheduled for June 23-28, 2024.

The Ghost Ranch Chorale, 30 voices strong, helped begin the Festival of the Arts joyously. Conducted for the third year by Adam Waite (Montview Presbyterian in Denver, CO) and accompanied by Barbara Hulac, the chorale's theme was 'The Wonder of Creation', featuring gorgeous songs and Leena Waite and Elizabeth Young on strings. Start warming your voice up now for July 7-13, 2024!

Ghost Ranch's Gospel Choir was part of the third week of the Festival of the Arts. Led by the inimitable Rev. Todd O'Neal, they could be heard day (and most nights!) singing, clapping, and laughing. Although smaller this year they were as mighty and moving as ever in their closing night gospel concert. Help swell their ranks next summer—July 21-27. Of course, no summer would be complete without our weekly Coffee House. Guided by the College Staff, everyone on the Ranch was welcomed to share music, poetry, movement and humor every Wednesday night. As a bonus, the College Staff offered home-baked treats at each show (audience members gratefully donated to college staff group trips). Finally, Blossoms and Bones, the Third Annual Ghost Ranch Music Festival took over the Ranch on August 25th and 26th. The music lineup featured The Breeders, Spoon, Japanese Breakfast, Rising Appalachia, and Yola.

The food trucks were delicious (as witnessed by the long lines), the glamping tents transformed the burro field, the VIP lounge was a great place to hang out and listen, and the people-watching was the best (thousands of them). By the end of Sunday, the Ranch looked perfect! Kudos to staff and volunteers who worked before, during, and after to make this so successful yet again. Stay tuned for news of the 4th Annual Ghost Ranch Music Festival. "...all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music!”

Ghost Ranch Movie Tour

We are now able to share a best-kept secret about Ghost Ranch. If you’ve seen the movie Oppenheimer, you might have thought that much of the scenery looked familiar. That’s because much of Oppenheimer was filmed at Ghost Ranch! Due to our contract with the filmmaker, we were not able to share that news until August 22, 30 days after the movie was released. All the tour guides at Ghost Ranch became well practiced at blank looks, poker faces, and double talk when asked whether it was true that Ghost Ranch was the film site. Up on Tennessee Ridge, the filmmakers built a standing set with the security gate for the lab and two intersecting streets representing Los Alamos in the 1940s during the Manhattan Project. Though some of the movie structures were removed Ghost Ranch now has a standing set footprint that can be “skinned” (in movie language) to look like a western town or a historic downtown in another time period for other films that might be shot at Ghost Ranch. This raises our appeal to filmmakers, as the state of New Mexico recognizes us as a film site and offers a significant tax incentive. If you haven't seen the movie, it’s a compelling story and the scenery is all you know and love about Ghost Ranch. For a limited time, the Oppenheimer standing set will be a stop on our Ghost Ranch Movie Tour.

Los Angeles Dino Fest & Patent

(Jennifer Borst, Museum Educator and Joanne Lefrak, Programs Director) On September 24th, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA) invited Ghost Ranch’s Program Director, Joanne Lefrak, and Museum Educator, Jennifer Borst, to exhibit at this year’s “Dino-Fest.” This festival focuses on one dinosaur each year, with this year’s dinosaur being Coelophysis. The event was sold out, with an attendance of 5,600 people! Both Joanne and Jennifer engaged with the public to discuss the various fossils discovered at Ghost Ranch.

They organized a Coelophysis coloring page station and furnished information about the Ranch to those who were interested in learning more about the origin of this little dinosaur. We are grateful to paleontologists Nate Smith and Luis Chiappe of the NHMLA for inviting us to be a part of the event.

In August of this year, our Museum Educator, Jennifer Borst, had some exciting news. She, along with a group of citizen scientists from the Southwest Paleontological Society (SPS) in Mesa, Arizona, published a patent that can be used for paleontology. Patent # 11,740,382, titled, “System and Method for Identifying an Indeterminate Object in an Encompassing Medium,” can be used to find radioactive fossils underground. Not all fossils are radioactive, but some have been exposed to elements like uranium oxide found in groundwater. SPS's homemade Geiger counter, affectionately named BABS (Beautiful Analytical Bone Sensor), can be placed on top of soil and rocks (matrix) to detect areas with higher radiation levels, also known as "hot spots." SPS is thrilled about their accomplishment and the potential it holds for future fossil research.

Once in a (Super) Blue Moon!

The Outdoor Adventures (OA) program began in early June under the leadership of Laura Hand, the new OA Manager, and summer staff assistants, Phil Shepard and Sydney Cook. OA was kept busy during the summer months by offering waterfront paddles multiple times a day. On the 30th of August, some fortunate guests were driven to the Abiquiu waterfront for a special moonlight paddle, where they watched the blue supermoon rise and basked in the reflected light of the bright moon and the sunset. One thrilled guest noted with awe that “it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” According to NASA, a blue supermoon won't happen again until January and March 2037. Blue supermoons take place roughly every 10 years.

Trading Post Feature

Did you know that Ghost Ranch has its own coffee blend produced in Santa Fe? Stop into the Trading Post or order a Ghost Ranch Roast as a gift.

Chimney Rock Society

In 1995, the National Ghost Ranch Foundation (NGRF) created a planned giving society to ensure the future of Ghost Ranch. They named it after Chimney Rock to convey the beauty and permanence of the transformational landscape. The Chimney Rock Society is composed of friends who have told us that Ghost Ranch is included in their estate plan.

We recently sent a mailing to all those whom we believe are members of the Chimney Rock Society to confirm their intentions. If you did not receive a confirmation letter from Ghost Ranch, or if you have included Ghost Ranch in your estate plans but have not shared that information with us, please let us know by sending an email to Lorenza Marcais, Annual Giving Manager, lorenzam@ghostranch.org or calling the Development Office at 505.685.1005. We are so grateful to Chimney Rock Society members who care so much for Ghost Ranch that they want to ensure that it will continue to thrive for generations to come!

Ghost Ranch Wish List

Our Ghost Ranch Wish List includes items that will enhance our programs or improve our guest experience. If you wish to purchase some of an item for which we need multiples, that helps us too! To make a gift that will enable us to purchase something from the Wish List, please contact Lorenza Marcais at lorenzam@ghostranch.org.

250” plaster cloth for the Museum—$80 500-gallon rain barrel—$1,000 Acrylic paint set for the Museum—$40 Shelves with coat hooks for Corral—$765 each, 15 would be wonderful Leather sofas for Coyote—$8,000 Desk lamps with charging stations for guest rooms—$50 each, 20 would be perfect New radios for the programs and events teams—$350 each, we could use 6

There are Many Ways to Support the Mission of Ghost Ranch

Together with you, Ghost Ranch stewards a place of great beauty to nurture the human spirit and mind, discover the sacred, and care for creation. As a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, The National Ghost Ranch Foundation is grateful for the many generous donors and members who support our mission. There are many ways of giving to Ghost Ranch including: Donated Appreciated Securities: stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Donor-Advised Funds Distributions from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) Matching gifts--if your employer or company matches gifts, please let us know when you make a gift! Honorary or Memorial Tribute Gifts--we will notify those that you choose to honor through a gift Every gift that is donated supports and strengthens the Ghost Ranch experience for all who enter our gate. For a personal conversation about your gift please contact Lorenza Marcais, Annual Giving Manager, lorenzam@ghostranch.org, or office: 505.685.1005

Get In Touch We'd like to hear from you! Send your Ghost Ranch stories, photos, and memories to us at info@ghostranch.org. Thank you for the many ways you support Ghost Ranch. We are looking forward to your next visit!