'Acequias of Albuquerque' looks at the history behind the waterways and the ecosystem around them

The new book “Acequias of Albuquerque: Walking Ancient Waterways” has a nifty juxtaposition of words on its front cover. The “ancient waterways” subtitle in English is a description of acequias, a Spanish word.

In the context of New Mexico, acequias refer to the communal gravity-flow earthen irrigation ditch systems that apportion water drawn from many rivers.

“Acequias of Albuquerque” explains how these open-air irrigation systems have been drawing water from the Rio Grande for more than four centuries.

The systems are indeed ancient. They were used in the Middle East and were known by the Arabic name al-saqiyah.

Muslims applied that irrigation knowledge to build acequias in the high, dry farmland of southern Spain during their centuries-long occupation of part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Spanish colonists, in turn, borrowed the concept of the acequias and applied it to arid areas of the New World, including New Mexico.

However, long before the Spaniards crossed the Atlantic, the Puebloan people had been using Rio Grande floodwaters and its rich sediment to irrigate their fields of beans, squash and corn.

The acequias improved on that by diverting the river’s seasonal floodwaters with the sustainable system of ditches and canals.

Irrigation water not lost to evaporation seeps into the aquifer and returns to the Rio Grande downstream.

Hundreds of acequias are still in operation today and are linked to a number of New Mexico’s rivers, including the Rio Grande. They provide water for fields, orchards, gardens and pastures.

The book’s author, Joyce Salisbury of Albuquerque, writes that there have always been grassroots celebrations of the acequias.

“From the time of Spanish settlement, religious celebrations and processions have been linked to the cleaning of the ditches and the flow of the waters that bring the precious irrigation to the fields,” Salisbury writes.

The annual spring-cleaning is known in Spanish as limpia.

In Albuquerque, the celebration of the cleaning is secular, taking the form of the South Valley Acequia Run, she writes in the book’s introduction.

Salisbury also discusses how the Rio Grande’s flooding has created a riparian cottonwood forest or, in Spanish, bosque.

“This 300-mile-long oasis of forest within this high desert extends from Santa Fe in the north to El Paso, Texas, in the south and is one of the largest cottonwood forests in the world,” she writes.

The book presents 15 suggested walks that were developed by Kim Hafermalz, a veteran local trail guide. The walks encourage visitors to amble through the bosque and along the adjacent acequias in portions of Bernalillo and Sandoval counties.

Through photographs and text, the walks also offer readers a refreshing look at various related subjects — the historic Gutiérrez-Hubbell House in the South Valley; the jetty jacks, 16-foot-tall, X-shaped metal forms that were once designed to contain river flooding; and myriad wildlife.

The book sports photographs of coyotes, turtles, owls and even a handful of porcupines asleep in trees in winter.

“These North American porcupines are mostly nocturnal and browse in the cottonwoods,” Salisbury writes.

Hafermalz said she took a photograph of a bobcat on the west side of the Rio Grande.

The bosque shelters many kinds of birds; there are photos in the book of ducks in a pond at Tingley Beach, a cormorant in the Silvery Minnow Channel, a blue grosbeak in the Open Space near the Riverside Drain Acequia.

The bosque has also become a home for public art. Among the artwork are an interactive cat sculpture carved from a tree stump and sculptures of former Albuquerque Mayor Clyde Tingley waving his hat and nearby one of his wife, Carrie, sitting on a bench and greeting a child.

Beginning in the 1930s, Tingley promoted cleaning up the Rio Grande and its banks, which had been used as a dump, the book states.

Each of the 15 walks is two to three miles long, but Salisbury said anyone can walk as much or as little as they like. Maps in the book show the location and length of many of the walks.

The acequias and bosque paths offer lots of options for branching out, and there is always something interesting to see as you walk, Salisbury writes.

A companion book to “Acequias of Albuquerque” that offers a comprehensive view of acequias is “Water for the People: The Acequia Heritage of New Mexico in a Global Context” edited by Enrique R. Lamadrid and José A. Rivera (University of New Mexico Press).