This is the first installment of a four-part series on the beautiful, threatened Otero Mesa from New Mexico writer and Southwest Regional Office Administrative Assistant Zoe Krasney. The three of us lean out of the car windows as we bounce along the dirt road through Otero Mesa, this remote and hidden grassland in Southern New Mexico. The road is blanched by mineral deposits leaching to the surface, a pale line starkly bisecting the wash of green and brown and the metallic spray of seedheads for miles all around us. more