A Book Launch, Poetry Reading & Music

A Free family-friendly event - At the Black Range Lodge

50 Kingston Main St., Kingston, NM - Saturday, September 13, 2025, 3:00-8:00 p.m.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Gila Wilderness, regional writers have collected poetry, prose and photographs, to express their love of the Gila's wild natural beauty.  On Saturday, September 13, these authors will gather in Kingston, NM, on the eastern edge of the Gila to celebrate the publishing of the finished book, Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing Cultures – A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures.  This event is free and open to the public.

In the shade of juniper and fruit trees, from 3 – 8pm, poets will read from this new anthology, interspersed with music from Wil Maring and Robert Bowlin, award-winning songwriters and musicians.  Throughout the afternoon, poetry and wilderness books will be available for purchase. Beverages will be also be available from Black Range Vineyards, with a complementary barbeque served around 6:30pm. 

The Gila Wilderness in southwest New Mexico is the world's first designated Wilderness.  Established June 3, 1924, it is the remotest section of New Mexico's Gila National Forest, which comprises 3.3 million acres of wild, natural beauty. 

U.S. Wilderness Areas are defined as "an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."  Camping, hunting and fishing are allowed, but no roads, buildings, logging, mining, or mechanized vehicles are permitted.

The idea of "wilderness" had long been a dream of conservationist Aldo Leopold who, as a young man in the early 1900s, was one of the first U.S. Forest Service rangers in the region.  Lessons he learned during his tenure in New Mexico and Arizona convinced him that some of America's vast landscape needed to be preserved from human commodification. Lobbying Congress with elegant essays and insights, Leopold's dream was realized with the preservation of the Gila Wilderness area -- a mountainous region of tall trees, majestic canyons and wild rivers, once home to tribes of Chihene (Apache) people.

In fact, the name Gila comes from the Athabaskan word Xila (pronounced Chee-lah), meaning 'Red Clay Hands,' the name some Chihene gave to their homeland. Spanish speakers later rendered it as Gila, a homophone that carried the sound but obscured the origin. At the Gila Voices Book Launch, Ruben Leyva—a Gila Apache and member of the Chihene Ndé Nation—will share his own poetry as part of the program. 

Other Kingston activities during the weekend will include an art opening at the Historic Percha Bank, organic apples and cider at the Kingston orchard, and the new Kingston Ghost Town Museum will be open for tours.

The Black Range Lodge is located in lovely Kingston, NM on the eastern edge of the Gila National Forest, and just a few miles from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.

This Gila Anthology and Book Launch is sponsored by the non-profit Southwest Environmental Education Cooperative (SWEEC) and the Black Range Lodge.  For more information call 575-895-5652.

Please visit these links for more information:

https://www.southwestenvironmentaleducationcooperative.org/ 

Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing Cultures—A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures available at:  https://www.gilacentennialanthology.org/ 

Gila Voices Podcast is available at: https://youtu.be/9qDwYyukasI 

Episode 1: Endure  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn79Ua7dinA