Look Closer
There’s more to see in the Fall at Vermejo!
by Deann McBride and Sara Holm
Shorter days and chillier nights bring beautiful changes to Vermejo’s autumn landscape. You’ll surely witness the mountainsides taking on hues of sunset and wildlife preparing for winter. If you take time to look a bit closer, you’ll notice the geology of Ash Mountain, the bounty within a pinyon pine and New Mexico’s speedy state bird, the roadrunner.
LANDSCAPES
Photo by Sean Fitzgerald
ASH MOUNTAIN
Ash Mountain is one of the most recognizable peaks at Vermejo because the top portion is covered in super hard, blocky-shaped rocks. Roughly 33-23 million years ago, Vermejo had a volcanic event. A large plume of magma flowed up between shallow but steeply dipping geologic formations at Vermejo and cooled forming rock similar to rhyolitic lava. Erosion during the late Pleistocene (2.6 million – 11,600 years ago) that included the last ice age, exposed the rhyolitic sill that we now know as Ash Mountain.
The prominent peak formed as a shallow volcanic plug along the sill, like a failed volcano, whose magma never quite reached the surface. The repeated freeze-thaw cycles or periglacial processes have broken the rhyolite into block-slope deposits that blanket the peak’s steep slopes. If you find light-colored and very hard rocks with red-orange staining near the Wall, Leandro Creek, and the lower lakes, they are likely Ash Mountain rhyolite, the remnants of Vermejo’s explosive past.
FLORA
Photo by Sara Holm
PINYON PINE (Pinus edulis)
Have you ever eaten a piñon? These little gems are the smaller, richer, more buttery cousin of average pine nuts. Sometimes you can find them in pinyon or piñon trees open cones in the early fall, or on the ground surrounding piñon trees, but the creation of piñon seeds is more precarious than you might think.
Colorado or two-needle pinyon pines produce seeds or “pine nuts” every four to seven years. It takes a pinyon tree three years to generate the seeds and if drought occurs, the trees may abort the seed-bearing cones extending the length of time between viable seed production.
Luckily, for the trees, on mast years, or exceptionally large production years, animals like the pinyon jay cache, or store, the seeds for excess food. Nuts buried by the jays are not all recovered and those forgotten sprout into new piñon seedlings. This symbiosis between the piñon tree and the jay helps increase pinyon tree reproduction, giving us a better chance of enjoying piñons when we’re out wandering in the forest.
FAUNA
GREATER ROADRUNNER (Geococcyx californianus)
Unlike in the old cartoon, roadrunners don’t always outrun or out-fox coyotes. Sometimes they get caught and become prey to quick coyotes, raccoons, hawks, and other raptors.
True to the cartoon – roadrunners are fast! They prey on insects, lizards, snakes, amphibians, and small mammals. Roadrunners live in the lower elevations of Vermejo in the shortgrass prairie, oak shrublands, and pinyon-juniper woodlands. They will fly or glide when necessary and build stick nests in shrubs or trees above ground level. The state bird of New Mexico, roadrunners are members of the cuckoo family. They leave a unique track that resembles an ‘X’ with two toes pointing forward and two to the back. Keep an eye on the ground to notice the many different tracks in the dirt and sand at Vermejo, you might just see a roadrunner.