I’ve been working my way through a book edited by my former journalism professor, Tony Hillerman, entitled “Best of the West: An Anthology of Classic Writing from the American West.”
The book contains 142 short stories on a variety of subjects, mostly historical in nature. Under the section of the book entitled “Tall Tales and Practical Jokes” is an entry called “How trout survive mountain waters.”
The gist of the story is that old timers in the Salida area of southern Colorado, just north of the San Luis Valley (which many people think rightfully belongs to New Mexico) claim that winters were so cold in the region that some species of trout grew fur. A story in the 1938 Pueblo (CO) Chrieftan claimed someone from Kansas had written to the Chamber of Commerce in Salida asking if there was truth to the rumors of fur-bearing trout. The tongue-in-cheek article concluded that one old timer claimed that “There’s still some of them around, if you know where to look, which I do, but I ain’t tellin'”
“Their fur is pretty few and fur (sic) between compared to what it was,” the old timer said. “And they ain’t near as fur-bearin’ as they wuz, not near.”
This made me think of my years-long quest to catch a Gila trout in the Gila Wilderness of southwestern New Mexico. I wrote a post about this last August, when I was finally able to catch some of the elusive species on Mineral Creek, just north of Whitewater Creek. I had written many articles during my career as a journalist about efforts to help the trout species recover in the waters of southwestern New Mexico.
While attempting to dig through some old photographs, it occurred to me that I might have actually caught a few Gila trout years earlier when my son, daughter, a friend and his son hiked into the upper part of Whitewater Creek in the Gila Wilderness. All of the kids, I recall, were still in elementary school, yet managed a several mile hike on a tough trail just east of the ghost town of Mogollon to the upper reaches of Whitewater Creek. We caught several fish on the hike and at the time, I assumed they were just rainbow trout, since they are fairly similar in coloring.
I vividly recall a photograph of my daughter, Lindsay, holding a stick with four or five tiny trout we had managed to catch on that hike into the Gila wilderness. I did a cursory search for that image and could not locate it in dusty boxes in our hallway closet where we stash photographs chronicling many fun adventures with our children. Even if I could find it, I doubt I would be able to verify the species of trout we caught because the fish were so small and the quality of the photograph likely left something to be desired.
At any rate, the Gila trout are not a fur-bearing variety, as the old timers in southern Colorado claimed they had seen. My biggest concern for the species is the dramatic decline in precipitation we have experienced this winter in southern New Mexico. I think the Gila Wilderness has had a little more moisture than we have had in the Las Cruces area. But for an already challenged ecosystem, the coming of the spring winds makes the risk of devastating forest fires an even bigger challenge for the Gila country and the Gila Trout.
The wind outside my home office is howling as I write this, sucking out what little moisture might be left in the arid landscape of southern New Mexico. I hope the Gila is spared of more disastrous springtime fires that have threatened this tiny yet hardy species.
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