Horse Tail Trails

Buying local is the buzz right now, and with good reason.  By supporting local small businesses, you help build up your community to be strong.  Eating local has been a huge part of this, which is also a great idea.  The fresher the better when it comes to what your family eats.  When you get your produce, meats and dairy from a local source, you know that they haven’t been traveling for eternity in some semi-truck, losing nutrients during the long trip and costing ridiculous amounts of money for gas.  Work smart, not hard, companies are saying now.  With this philosophy, cooperative markets are on the rise, bringing people food from their own neighborhoods.

Los Alamos Cooperative Market is one of many of its kind springing up across the nation.  It takes devotion and love to get one of these running and to maintain it, but it’s well worth it for everyone. Their mission statement says: “The mission of the Cooperative is to serve Los Alamos County and surrounding communities by providing fairly priced, wholesome foods and other goods in an ecologically sustainable, socially responsible, and economically appropriate manner.”  Additionally, their missions are to ensure the highest quality goods, support local northern New Mexican farmers, maintain fair and moral business policies, support environmentally sound procedures, and to “emphasize food for people, not just for profit.”

As humans, we are all naturally curious about the world around us.  Sadly, many people’s interest in scientific studies drops off after a time, probably largely because science is seen as boring.  Does it have to be boring?  Not at all.  There are amazing things to learn and new discoveries made every day.  So how to we make those things interesting again?

Enter Café Scientifique New Mexico, workshops for teens that are fun and totally free.  Every meeting explores what’s new and upcoming in the scientific community, ranging from DNA testing to the latest machinery.  Each workshop or lecture is headed by scientists, engineers, and inventors, done in a casual setting that encourages conversation and questions during the entire evening.  We’re not just talking about a boring slide show with a Q&A session afterwards.  Café Scientifique even incorporates games into their programs, engaging audiences in interactive science.

In the vast, wide open mountains of Northern New Mexico, there is a small community called Des Moines.  Settled among the Sierra Grande Mountain, the area is full of ancient volcanic evidence, with seemingly endless views of the surrounding desert.  At night, the stars are crystal clear, with very little in the way of city lights to block them out.  This quiet rural area is home of a very interesting complex known as The Mandala Center.

The Mandala Center began in the 1980’s as a vision – rather literally.  A woman by the name of Tish Hewitt didn’t know where her quest would lead her, but she knew she had one.  “Tish Hewitt discovered the land that now is home to The Mandala Center after having a vision of two mountains that seemed very important to her,” the Center’s website explains.  “During a road trip she discovered her vision was real when she came upon the Sierra Grande and Capulin Volcano – the two mountains she was shown.  Tish felt a calling to settle here and purchased land and the ranch upon it that just happened to be for sale right between the two mountains.”