In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Gila Wilderness, regional writers have
collected poetry, prose and photographs, to express their love of the Gila’s wild
natural beauty. The finished book, Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing
Cultures – A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures is now available for you to read and/or download for free.

The Gila Wilderness in southwest New Mexico is the world’s first designated
Wilderness. Established June 3, 1924, it is the remotest section of New Mexico’s
Gila National Forest, which comprises 3.3 million acres of wild, natural beauty.
U.S. Wilderness Areas are defined as “an area where the earth and community of
life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain.” Camping, hunting and fishing are allowed, but no roads, buildings,
logging, mining, or mechanized vehicles are permitted.

The idea of “wilderness” had long been a dream of conservationist Aldo Leopold
who, as a young man in the early 1900s, was one of the first U.S. Forest Service
rangers in the region. Lessons he learned during his tenure in New Mexico and
Arizona convinced him that some of America’s vast landscape needed to be
preserved from human commodification. Lobbying Congress with elegant essays
and insights, Leopold’s dream was realized with the preservation of the Gila
Wilderness area — a mountainous region of tall trees, majestic canyons and wild
rivers, once home to tribes of Chihene (Apache) people.

In fact, the name Gila comes from the Athabaskan word Xila (pronounced Chee-
lah), meaning ‘Red Clay Hands,’ the name some Chihene gave to their homeland.
Spanish speakers later rendered it as Gila, a homophone that carried the sound
but obscured the origin.

On Sept 13, 2025, several of the Gila Anthology contributors got together at the Black Range Lodge in Kingston, New Mexico, to share their work and celebrate their love of the Gila Wilderness. I was the MC of the event and had such an amazing day.

Here I am at the event with folk poet JOHNNY HUERTA (on right) and Santa Fe poet Josh Robbins (on left)

Thanks to UNM’s Dr. Michelle Kells and her team for making this Gila Anthology come together!

The whole GILA anthology is free to read online and/or download HERE.