New Mexico

On a raw, bright winter day, John Olívas and his wife, Pam, hold court at the Hatchas Café in Mora, New Mexico. They seem to know everybody who comes in, chatting as they stamp snow off their boots and find seats. The street is lined with crumbling adobes and rusty pickups, and snowpacked pastures dotted with livestock and unused farm equipment stretch toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There's not a fast food drive-through or big-box store in sight. Olívas, a lean and youthful 43, is a longtime hunting guide and more recent wilderness advocate who was elected to the Mora County Commission in 2010. He lives in the house his great-grandparents built 200 years ago; his family was among the original settlers of the Mora Land Grant in 1835, when it was still part of Mexico. By local standards, that's not very long ago; many residents still speak the archaic Spanish that the original settlers brought to these mountain villages in the early 1600s. When I sit at his table, Olívas launches without preamble into a tirade against hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which involves shooting a mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep underground to release oil or natural gas trapped in layers of rock.