Throughout the spring semester, NMWF partnered with Freedom High School in Albuquerque to implement a “Decision Makers Curriculum.” Learn more about the program and our field trip to the Valles Caldera in the online edition of the Outdoor Reporter. Freedom High School student Michelle Daniela Ramirez recounts her experience with the program and the trip below:
Our world our legacy and our future are all things that we as humans tend to avoid once we know we’re heading on a dark path, we seem to always destroy something and then try to bring it back with quick temporary fixes. My name is Michelle D. Ramirez I am a first generation American, both of my parents are from the deepest parts of Mexico and I was born and raised in Albuquerque. As a first-generation American, there are many things you have to deal with growing up, learning English, and dealing with racism and inequality, so global warming is not something you would put at the top of your to do list although growing up my father has always taught me to appreciate the small things like bees, trees, and most importantly clean water.
Before my trip to the Valles Caldera we had been studying and researching global warming, environmental issues due to different kinds of populations, and basically getting a general idea of what we are going to be dealing with if these circumstances don’t change. We also had a guest speaker who has been really helping us understand the concept of the issue. For example we talked about many national parks and their backgrounds on their vegetation, population and how the government has influenced these parks. Growing up my father always told us about these parks and how it was very important for us to keep these parks clean and and keep their legacy alive but my father has always been a very outspoken man, he would inform us that the National parks are not the only places that need to be kept preserved, we need to treat this whole world like this. My father would go on and on about how the government has even taken over our national parks I never really knew what he meant until a couple months ago when we began this project.
The author in the Valles Caldera. Photo taken by fellow Freedom High student Shelby Webb.
My love for the outdoors has always gotten to the best of me, throughout the years I have fallen deeply in love with nature and the beautiful world we live in, it was about 6 years ago when I was introduced to the smartest women alive Ms. Anderson, she was my inspiration in reducing my carbon footprint! She introduced me to the topic of global warming and we made change, as a class we recycled we reused and we reduced on a daily basis, but I always wanted more, so I joined the garden club, the recycling team and organized over a dozen community and school clean ups. As I’ve gotten older my love for our lovely planet has grown as well I aspire to do as much as possible and base all my life choices knowing my lifestyle might influence others and we could make even more of a difference.
Our trip to the Valles Caldera was interesting, we arrived early morning in hope of gaining more information on how we can help and the consequences of what mankind has done to this beautiful piece of land. First we spoke with a very kind forest ranger, she spoke of how the environment has changed over time and how its predicted to look in future years. We talked about how trees are growing closer together, underbrush, and these two factors are making some controlled fires get out of hand. Throughout the last of couple of weeks we have been told that controlled fires are good for the environment but shouldn’t a controlled fire be controlled? Hiking up the mountain a certain sadness came over me, a type of emotion you know you can’t control , taking a look around you can see all dead trees, all the leftover burnt ash, everything was charcoal black dead and lifeless. We hiked for about half an hour to an hour until I got upset and walked down the hill.
I can’t possibly stress how much we need to fix this issue, in my opinion it’s like a virus we find vaccinations to help the ease the disease but not completely rid of then, and I feel that’s how we treat or fires, we start these fires and only find temporary solutions and not completely find a solution personally I feel as if we need to rebuild we need to stop letting our government corrupt our nation’s forest and national parks, we need to stand up unite and make change! Our world our legacy and our future something we need to think about to save our future generations, it’s an issue that myself my teacher my peers and the natural wildlife federation are all coming together to fix.
