Imperial Dreams: Life in the Sierra Madre

Friday, April 12, 2013

Life in the Sierra Madre

(Photo by Tim Gallagher)

More than a decade into the 21st century, most people in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental still live simple lives, often making do without electricity, plumbing, telephones or other modern conveniences. They live in rough-hewn log cabins, cut from the surrounding pine forest, or in adobe huts, made of clay bricks, shaped by hand and dried in the sun. Most get around on foot or ride mules. These were the people we sought out in our search for the Imperial Woodpecker.

(Photo by Tim Gallagher)

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

I'm the author of six books, including my latest, Born to Fish (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; May 2018) about world-class angler Greg Myerson and his conservation efforts on behalf of the striped bass.

My other recent book is Imperial Dreams, about my search for the Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico, the largest woodpecker that ever lived. Two feet in length, with the deepest black plumage and brilliant, snow-white flight feathers that showed as a white shield on its lower back, the Imperial Woodpecker lived only in the high country of northwestern Mexico. The last documented sighting of the species took place in 1956, and many scientists have already written the bird's epitaph. But stories persist of lone Imperial Woodpeckers flying yet over the most remote pine forests of the Sierra Madre.

I began searching for these birds about ten years ago and interviewing people who remembered seeing them. It was tough. The mountains have become a major center of drug growing where you often encounter AK-47-toting drug traffickers and other dangerous people.