Carson National Forest

What about these elk? You know, how can I hunt one of these things? And so the next thing I'm putting in for elk tags.

But so I was real familiar with New Mexico and the Pecos Wilderness and the Carson National Forest.

And so I started putting in for those places where I'd already spent weeks of my life camping, fishing.

And, uh, yeah.

I've never seen a big bird that close and so many times in a row before.

When I was 12, my snowmobile broke down about 15 miles into Carson National Forest in Red River, New Mexico on a private trail behind my granddad's house.

It took me several hours to walk home, and along the way, about halfway back, I crossed paths with a man.

The last thing I expected to come across was another human, since it was a private trail and it was already getting dark.

Yeah, we're really blessed in Northern New Mexico.

We have this pretty amazing place on the Carson National Forest.

It's Aldo Leopold's original cabin.

So Aldo Leopold was the first supervisor of the Carson National Forest in 1911 to 1912.

And he was stationed in Tres Piedras, New Mexico.

And I think he had a $600 budget to build this cabin.

She had two phones, both of which had been factory reset.

Her remains were found by a hiker in Carson National Forest almost a year later in May 2026.

At the time, her family released a statement including a line that said, "She was located in an area previously searched." There was a gun found near the body, but the forensic pathologist who carried out the autopsy returned a cause of death as undetermined.

Frank Mewald, a 61-year-old principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Just me, my rifle, and the endless stretches of forest and high desert.

I had driven up into the Carson National Forest, far off the beaten path.

It was late September, and the air was crisp, the scent of pine thick in the breeze.

I had my usual spot, a secluded clearing about eight miles from the nearest trailhead, where I liked to set up camp.

Uh, Melissa Casillas worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and vanished last June.

Human remains discovered by a hiker last week in the Carson National Forest have been confirmed as hers.

They were described as skeletonized, uh, skeletonized and found sitting against a tree with a handgun nearby.

Casillas' disappearance became part of a, uh, ongoing speculation about the deaths and disappearances of at least 10 people, uh, with connections to scientific research.

Was Melissa being pursued by someone? Why would she lie to her daughter and husband but tell them both different things? Now since that section I just narrated was written, Melissa's body has sadly been found.

On May 28th, 2026, hikers in the Carson National Forest came across skeletal remains.

These remains were ultimately identified as Melissa Casias.

The area of the park, McGaffey Ridge, where she was found, was around 15 miles from her home in Taos.

What happens when we are forest-centric instead of only human-centric in our thinking and our actions? And that question was actually what was told to me by the trees when I visited them yesterday, um, in the area of the forest that talks a lot.

[laughs] Um, and I believe this currently proposed five hundred thousand acre thinning plan in the Carson National Forest in Northern New Mexico is exactly why the trees in the forest near my house wanted to have a pod- podcast to share their views and needs.

Forest management plans need to consider multiple viewpoints, not just board feet quotas of timber extracted.

I recognize that this concern is for those of us locally, but I hope you, as the listener, can see and feel how these ideas could be applied to the place you love, the forest and ecological biomes you call home.

And on top of that, even if you don't live near the Carson National Forest, its continuing ability to contribute to climate change mitigation does positively affect your life.

And the wind has just rustled through the chokecherry trees that live along the acequia, which brings my attention to them and their fall glory.

We also have a lilac bush.

When you get to that webpage, scroll down to almost the bottom, and you'll see a link highlighted in green that takes you to the public comment page.