High in the San Mateo Mountains of the Cibola National Forest in New Mexico is Apache Kid Peak, and one mile northwest as the crow flies, at Cyclone Saddle, is the Apache Kid gravesite. The hiker who comes across the marked site in such a remote area may wonder who the Kid was, and perhaps will ask himself why, so far from the usual tourist attractions, such an elaborate memorial has been assembled. In the story of the Apache Kid, much of it fact and part of it legend, rests one of the Southwest's many intriguing sagas.

Space of all kinds surround Roswell. Wide open spaces, Robert H. Goddard's space experiments, and the crash of a UFO. Has the beginning of space exploration here been overshadowed with all the hype of the UFO crash in 1947? Probably. At the Houston Space Center and Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, Robert Hutchings Goddard is known as the Father of Space Exploration.

The Gila National Forest of Southwest New Mexico encompasses more than three million acres in a contiguous block of largely untrammeled terrain, an area larger than some Eastern states. Near the center of this last great wilderness in the Southwest, in a cave a few miles downstream from where Sapillo Creek meets the main branch of the Gila River in northern Grant County, Martin Price made his new home in June of 1983. He brought with him a subsistence lifestyle and the myth of the mountain man.

The history of humanity is a long and complex one. When stripped of all the manifold facts and figures, it really comes down to two key fundamentals: food and sex. Food sustains the living, while sex insures the continuity of that living. Mildred Cusey spent most of her life engaged in the professional aspects of both basics. She was early caterer for the former and later entrepreneur of the latter.

In his grip on the imagination, psyche and national character, the mountain man rivals the cowboy as the archetypal American Hero. In the Southwest the mountain man reached his zenith, and held his lifestyle longest, in the region's last great wilderness - the Gila country of southwest New Mexico. Here within the mountains and canyons of the Gila, San Francisco and Mimbres Rivers, the mountain man era lasted well into the 20th century.

Although Juan de Onate is credited with bringing the first cattle into New Mexico from old Mexico, it was John Chisum and men of his ilk who made the cattle industry an economic force in the 1860s.

In the days of the Old West, New Mexico was home, at one time or another, to many of the more colorful desperadoes. The Clantons, William Bonney, Jesse Evans, William "Curley Bill" Brocius, Clay Allison, Doroteo "El Tigre" Sains, Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum, John "King of the Rustlers" Kinney, Jim Miller, and Johnny Ringo are a relatively small sample. Because of its remoteness and proximity to the Mexican border, Southern New Mexico attracted a large number of outlaws: violent men who lived from the labor of others, who were quick to kill, and for whom the conventions of settled society meant little. A man who fit the mold of New Mexican outlaw, and has been largely ignored by historians and folklorists, was José Chavez y Chavez.

Victorio's Mimbres Apaches were concentrated family units which had once populated the Mimbres and Gila Rivers, and Mogollon Mountains. Through attrition from contact with encroaching Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers, their numbers dwindled, and in 1870 the Mimbres Apaches were given a small reservation, Ojo Caliente or Warm Springs, northwest of present Truth or Consequences.

On May 17, 1885, Mangus (son of Mangus Colorado), Chihuahua, Nachite, old Nana, the shaman Geronimo, and their followers fled the San Carlos reservation in Arizona in an attempt to regain the freedom they had known before the reservation system was instituted by the United States government. The restrictions of reservation life were difficult for these semi-nomads, and they longed for the openness of the land the Spaniards had called Apacheria. Although the Chiracahuas could not have foreseen it, this was to be their last attempt to recapture the old ways that many of their cousins had already forsaken.

Oldtimer Bob Sundown is a dropout in the true sense of the word. For 40 years he has voyaged about 20 miles a day along the West's gritty highway shoulders in a donkey-drawn sheep wagon he and some kids built from discarded materials. "Thousands of friends," a few live-in chickens and his knowledge of edible plants form his sometimes tenuous security net. Although he intentionally draws no pension nor social security, he claims he's the richest man on Earth because he knows how to "use his mind."

In 1930, a 17 year-old boy arrived in Southern New Mexico's Gila Wilderness, seeking adventure - and relief from sinus problems. Dawson ("Doc") Campbell would soon become one of the most influential men in Southern New Mexico. He would become a trapper, ranch hand, custodian of the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Forest Service smoke-chaser and ranger, landholder, hunting and fishing outfitter, and general store owner. He would live the rest of his life in the Gila Hot Springs valley, about 40 miles north of Silver City, New Mexico, and pass away on May 11, 1998, at the age of 85.

Coincidences many times show us how connected our world really is. For example, "Ask Us" is a feature of Southern New Mexico Online to answer questions people have about New Mexico. Recently, an artist from Corrales, NM, sent an email of his experience in an art gallery in Kassel, Germany where he had an exhibit. During the opening, he relates, an elderly, shy man asked if he knew about Roswell, New Mexico. At first the artist thought he was referring to the UFO Incident but he hadn't even heard about it. Instead he was referring to being a WWII prisoner of war near Roswell. He explained he had never seen the town because he worked in the cotton fields south of town but it identified where he was held. When he left the gallery, he whispered, "Roswell," said the artist.

Sometimes extraordinary effects or circumstances spring from ordinary events. Such has been the case with Roswell photographer Bruce Gaucher, who gave his wife a camera he wanted for Christmas about five years ago. He had no idea that act would lead to his becoming a landscape/nature photographer who would inspire awe with his pictures.

People often ask me why I am a nature writer. After much thought, I know what to say: The stories of our wild relatives - the plants, the animals, the desert itself - are the most important stories that I know. Like any landscape, the Chihuahuan Desert abounds with lives, with wild neighbors that we often don't notice or don't know. Take the spadefoot toad, a tiny amphibian that appears as if by magic after summer thunderstorms, filling the night with its mating calls, and then vanishing just as quickly when the ephemeral rainwater is gone. Or the shabby-looking creosote bush that by coating itself with a sophisticated protective armor comprised of dozens of smelly and bad-tasting compounds, also produces the desert's signature fragrance.

When you’re a heretic you set about teaching others to be heretics also. That’s the story behind the two books written by Hal Banks. His first, Introduction to Psychic Studies (now out of print), was not at all what the rank and file would expect a Presbyterian (USA) Minister to write. But his classes that used his book as a text were well-attended by church people and non-church people as well. It has also been used as a text at colleges in Canada, South Carolina and California.