Young hikers take a trail in the Rio Grande
Estrella Weikel, a student at Mesa Vista High School in Ojo Caliente, grew up gardening. To her, clean water and healthy land weren’t abstractions – they were visible necessities. Her family had gardens and crops at home, while her father worked in construction and sold firewood. That lifestyle, she says, where she spent so much time outdoors with dirt under her fingernails, “helped me learn that there are other things in life than sitting around and not caring about the environment. It helps me in my life because I think of ways to make our environment and lifestyle better.”