Park Ranger Anna Martinez-Amos is currently on a detail assignment for a few months to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve from San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. A large part of her heritage is the Indigenous Coahuiltecan people of south Texas and northern Mexico, a tribe that long predated the US/Mexican border.

Here, she reflects on her response upon first seeing the culturally modified ponderosa pines in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. These living artifacts were ceremonially peeled in past centuries by area tribes. The largest concentration of modified trees in the park, just east of the dunefield, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as ‘Indian Grove’.

“As a child growing up in the South Texas borderlands of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, I remember going with my mother into el monte, the brushlands outside of town. We’d pick nopales, prickly pear cactus pads when they were young and bright green. We’d also look for herbs such as verbena, which my mother would make into a medicinal tea. It was this memory which sprang to mind when I saw the culturally modified ponderosa pines around the dunes. I imagined a young person accompanying a parent to find the right specimen of pine to collect bark for food and medicine. At the time, I was mystified by my emotional reaction to seeing those trees. I realize upon further reflection that it was in a way connecting me to my dear mother who has been gone from this earth for almost 20 years. And in a way, it also connects me to the people generations ago who collected bark from those ponderosas.”