Editor's note: The following story was written as part of a series called "Cheap Thrills" for the Albuquerque Journal. The criteria for these "thrills" are 1) a day-trippable circle roughly 150 miles from Albuquerque and 2) fees of no more than $10. Enjoy.
It was a warm, almost-spring afternoon. But whenever a breeze nudged through the bosque, dry cottonwood leaves still clinging to bare branches shook with a wintry rattle.
New leaves had yet to appear on the cottonwoods, so Maggie Reysen, a volunteer tour guide at the Rio Grande Nature Center, had brought along samples of leaves taped to sheets of paper to show us what we were missing:
The Nature Trail
Location: The Rio Grande Nature Center on Candelaria. Hours: Sunday at 1 p.m. and a tour for children at 2:30 p.m. the same day. On the third Sunday of every month, there's an additional guided tour at 11 a.m. For more information, call 344-7240. Cost: $1 for adults, 50 cents for children over 6 to enter the park. There is no extra charge to take the tour. Features: Guided tours through the bosque.
Rio Grande Valley Cottonwood, Russian Olive, Siberian Elm, Coyote Willow and Tamarisk (also known, less pleasantly, as salt cedar).
"If this is your first visit," Reysen said, "it's a good time. You can come back at other times to watch the changes during the year."
For most members of the Cheap Thrills Adventure Club, the great advantage of the 270-acre Rio Grande Nature Center is its inside-Albuquerque location. You just drive along Rio Grande Boulevard NW until you get to the intersection with Candelaria. Then you turn toward the river and, when the street dead-ends, you're there.
It's a fine destination for an otherwise busy day. Although chores may keep you from a major outing, you can still enjoy an hour or so of bosky outdoor wandering.
At the center's interpretive building, you're requested to pay a state park entrance fee -- $1 for adults, 50 cents for children over 6.
I'd been to the nature center several times before, but I'd never taken one of the free guided tours. I usually just wander around by myself, not talking to anyone. But I thought that on a tour I might learn something new -- always a thrill.
There's a tour for adults each Sunday at 1 p.m. and a tour for children at 2:30 p.m. the same day. On the third Sunday of every month, there's an additional guided tour at 11 a.m. For more information on these tours or other programs, you can call the nature center at 344-7240.
There were seven people in my tour, the one for adults, including two children -- Tara Ptacek, 4, and her l-month-old brother, Jason, who spent the whole time asleep in a buggy-stroller cooperatively lifted up railroad-tie stairs over river levees by John and Manuela Ptacek (Mom and Dad).
The Ptaceks, a Navy family, arrived in Albuquerque in 1989, after living in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Beverly Callahan, a former resident of Maine and Florida, was also a new resident of Albuquerque.
Meeting other people -- strolling and talking with them as you move slowly through the bosque -- turns out to be one of the pleasures of joining a tour. I know a lot more now, for example, about how the weather in Albuquerque differs from what I'd have to endure in Alaska or Florida.
Even Reysen, the tour guide, had just recently arrived here from New Jersey. The nature center was one of the first places she visited. She signed on for the volunteer guide training and now leads tours one Sunday each month.
This was her fourth excursion, and she was well-prepared --drawing from her knapsack not just the sheets of pasted-up leaves, but also a magnifying glass for closer looks at nature and materials (including a palm-sized crayon) for making take-home cottonwood-bark rubbings.
Here's what I learned on that tour:
* In midsummer, when the cotton from the cottonwoods starts flying, it blows thick as snow inside the bosque. A male cottonwood's seed cluster is called a "Sammy," and a female cottonwood's seed cluster is called a "Tatones." When Sammy and Tatones get together -- we're talking birds & bees & trees, and I won't get more specific -- they soar on wind currents that can carry them two miles high into the sky.
* The bosque is composed of mostly elderly cottonwoods. Flood control improvements along the river mean that seedlings (which need lots of moisture) are having trouble getting their footing. In the meantime, alien trees like the Russian olive and the Siberian elm now grow more thickly, and the pesky salt cedar threatens to entirely replace cottonwoods all along the river.
* Beavers, possums, muskrats, rabbits, skunks, bats and gophers all live in the Bosque -- but we didn't see any of them because they're all nocturnal.
* Beavers like to eat cottonwood leaves as well as the inner bark of the trees. Since they can't climb the trees, they cut them down to get at both the inner bark and leaves. And beavers don't just go after saplings. One tree that showed deep evidence of their gnawing was too big for me to get my arms around.
* Hugging that big cottonwood, I knew it was too late to save the tree -- it was girdled at shin height by deep beaver notching. I had considered carrying home a rubbing of its bark. But instead I'll keep the memory of the bark's impression on my cheek.
It was a warm, almost-spring afternoon. But whenever a breeze nudged through the bosque, dry cottonwood leaves still clinging to bare branches shook with a wintry rattle.
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