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There are places in New Mexico that feel sacred without anyone needing to say so aloud, and the Bosque is one of them. Drive in at dawn, before the sun even thinks about rising, and you’ll see what I mean.
Birders call it migration season. I call it the season when the sky comes alive.
The horizon glows faintly blue, the cold bites at your fingertips, and then—if you’re lucky—the world erupts. Ten thousand snow geese lift off the water all at once, a single white cloud opening its wings. The sound—half wind, half thunder—hits you square in the chest. You don’t watch it so much as feel it.
People travel from across the globe to experience that moment. For those of us who live here, it’s practically in our backyard, and yet it never stops being astonishing. Every year, the birds return as though keeping a promise: the sandhill cranes with their slow, prehistoric calls; the dabbling ducks tracing ripples across the wetlands; the raptors perched high, surveying the valley with the regal entitlement of creatures who know they were here long before us.
Bird watching at Bosque del Apache is often described as peaceful, but “peaceful” hardly covers it. Yes, there are the quiet hours—when you’re standing on the auto tour loop with your binoculars fogging slightly, and a northern harrier skims low over the cattails. But there’s also anticipation, surprise, and sometimes outright chaos. One moment you’re trying to identify a quack; the next, a hawk flies overhead and every bird on the pond decides it’s time to make a run for it.
Part of the magic comes from the sense that you are witnessing a tradition older than any human settlement here. These birds migrate thousands of miles every year—Canada to Mexico and back—guided by instincts we can admire but never fully understand. And for a few winter months, this little strip of the Rio Grande Valley becomes their home. In turn, it becomes ours in a different way: a sanctuary, a reminder that not everything in life needs to be rushed.
This year, especially, the refuge feels like a living lesson in resilience. Staffing shortages, delayed maintenance, even the cancellation of the Festival of the Cranes—none of it stopped the birds from coming. Nature shows up, whether we’re ready for it or not. And maybe that’s the reminder we need: that beauty persists, but it also depends on us to care for the places where it thrives.
As I stood along the wetlands last week, watching a crane pair circle in for landing, I overheard a visitor whisper, “It’s like the world slows down here.” They’re right. It does. Maybe that’s why we return year after year—why people drive hours before sunrise just to stand in the cold with a thermos of coffee and a pair of binoculars. In a world full of noise, Bosque del Apache teaches us to listen.
