ALTHOUGH LOS ALAMOS native Melissa Fu moved to the United Kingdom 18 years ago, she says she’s “always plotting” ways to return home. In September, the author joined the inaugural artist-in-residence program at Valles Caldera National Preserve. Painters, writers, and a mixed-media artist stayed for two to three weeks in the Cabin District and led workshops inspiring others to think about their relationship with this place and the creativity it sparks. Fu guided amateur writers, interviewed researchers and residents, and worked on a book about growing up in northern New Mexico and what has been lost to climate change and severe wildfires.
I’M REFLECTING on what [the preserve] is now that the land is open to the public. I’ve always loved it and always been mystified by it.
I GREW UP DURING A SPECIAL TIME [in northern New Mexico], and a lot of that is gone now. So part of the writing project is to bring back, through story, some of those trails and places that we can’t access anymore. I’ve got photos from 1991, and it looks so, so different. It’s like a different ecosystem now.
I JUST CAN’T TEAR MY EYES AWAY from the mountains and how they’ve changed. But there’s some things that are the same, like the smells.
COMMUNITY AND STEWARDSHIP are the heart of my residency. When people come [to writing workshops], what I’m hoping to do is set up a situation where they are the experts, bringing their stories or their ideas and starting conversations with each other. There are so many different ways of seeing this space and valuing it and loving it.