​Northern New Mexico has its fair share of strange and unusual landscapes, but nothing can top the badlands south of Farmington in terms of being otherworldly, bizarre, and utterly surreal. The 45,000 acres belong to the most unique scenic areas on this earth.
 
A quick note about the pronunciation: when I first heard about the badlands, people always pronounced Bisti the way you pronounce “misty”: the stress is on the first syllable, ˈmɪs.ti. But that’s incorrect, the name comes from the  Navajo word bistahí which means “a large area of shale hills” and is pronounced “Biss-tah-HEE”, from what I could gather. De-Na-Zin, from the Navajo word Dééł Náázíní, means “Standing Crane”. 

The desolate, semi-arid terrain is adorned with magnificent rock formations and stunning colors: mushroom-shaped hoodoos (also called tent rocks or earth pyramids) are ubiquitous, as are spires, stone pillars, and pedestals suggestive of castles and mystical figures. Huge logs of petrified wood, adorned with patches of brilliant colors: yellow, orange, rust, and red dot the landscape. Layers of sandstone, coal, silt, mudstone, and shale form distinct stripes of mauve, greys, beige, rust, and bronze. Abundant fossils of dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, fish, and even mammals have been found. 

There’s actually a dinosaur called Bistahieversor, which means “Bistahi destroyer”, known also as “Bisti Beast”. They belong to the Tyrannosaurus family and lived some 75.5 to 74.5 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous Epoch. It’s estimated that the animals were up to 30 feet long and could weigh nearly 3 tons! The Bisti Beast has been found only in New Mexico.

It’s hard to imagine that today’s barren badlands once hosted abundant vegetation and animal life.  We’ll have to look back millions of years – approximately 74 million. Actually, one has to start even further back: at the time of the Western Interior Seaway which connected the Arctic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico and split the Northamerican continent into two landmasses. Just imagine – what is New Mexico today,  was covered by a shallow sea! That was 100 million years ago. At its largest extent, it was 2,500 feet (760 m) deep, 600 miles (970 km) wide and over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long. In the late Cretacaeous the sea levels fell several times and created swamps with lush plants and prehistoric animals. 

Eventually the water completely disappeared. Massive amounts of plant matter and organic material became compressed over time and left a 1400-foot layer of mudstone, shale, sandstone, and coal. And then erosion gradually formed the spires, towers, and hoodoos. They exist because everything around them has eroded. The mushroom-like caps and thin stems of the hoodoos for example are made of harder material and withstood the wind, rains, and floods that washed out the softer stuff.

The area around Bisti and De-Na-Zin is about 6,500 feet above sea level, but the badlands are about 200 - 400 feet below that. After the last ice age some 6,000 years ago the floods which resulted from the melting ice washed much of the sandstone away and revealed lots of fossils, petrified wood the size of huge trees, and the bizarre and unique formations so worth a visit.

​Paleontologists have found that the area has been occupied by humans since at least 10,000 BC. The prehistoric Great North Road, which connected many ancestral pueblos belonging to the Chacoan Anasazi, crossed the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness. 

A woman and her horse maybe? Taken on two different days, from opposite sides. 

​Each time I visited – always with one or two friends – I didn’t meet another soul. The area is truly desolate, and you better come prepared. There are no services, there is no water, there is no shade; no marked trails, no signs. Better not to expect a visitor center, and cell phone reception is sketchy. Depending on the time of the year, daytime temperatures can be rather hot. Plenty of water, sunscreen, a hat, and a GPS or compass are absolute necessities. Don’t forget sturdy shoes – while it is fairly easy to follow the main washes and there isn’t much climbing involved, the ground can easily crumble and you should make sure that your ankles are well supported. 

​Another thing to be aware of: the unpaved access road can become extremely slick when it rains and driving is almost impossible. I learned this the hard way on one of my visits. While we were hiking, it started to pour and soon everything was soaking wet. Well, no big deal, I thought – after all my car has  four-wheel drive. So we took off, but the tires were immediately caked in mud, without any tread – I was spinning around and sliding, getting all worked up in the process. Steering was impossible and I slowed down, but that was a bad idea, because soon I was stuck – literally stuck in the mud! 

​We were lucky. Although the area is sparsely populated, a car showed up shortly after I had dug myself into the clay-like gloop, and a friendly couple stopped to help. The man soon managed to get my car free and I drove on for a bit, trying my best not to get stuck again. The couple followed behind us, keeping an eye on my progress, but soon I saw them flashing their lights – they wanted me to stop. The reason: they had noticed that my right front wheel was loose; it leaned at a 45-degree angle! 

​We had to call a tow truck. This was harder than it sounds, because there was no cell phone reception where I got stuck. The helpful couple drove my friend further up the road, they knew a spot with higher elevation where phone calls were possible. And I sat in the car and waited, bemoaning my bad luck… 

As it turned out, we were actually quite fortunate. When the tow truck from Bloomington arrived, the driver told us that we should count our blessings: he was the only towing company in the whole area with a four-wheel tow truck, and without that, he said, he would have never come out: it’s more slippery than ice, he said, and a rescue would have been impossible. But more importantly, on a dry road the wheel might have held until we reached the freeway, US 550, where the speed limit is 70 miles/hour. Which means I would have driven close to 80. Quite likely, the wheel may have come off, causing a serious accident.
​
Just be sure to check the weather report before you visit the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, and it’ll be an immensely rewarding adventure.

Note: BLM Rules

• Camping is permitted within all units of the National Wilderness Preservation System administered by the BLM in New Mexico.  
• Visit the Farmington BLM District Office website for possible advisories or restrictions.
• The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area is closed to motorized vehicles and mechanical forms of transportation (mountain bikes included).
• Also prohibited are campfires, collecting fossils or petrified wood, climbing on delicate geologic features, traveling in groups of more than eight people, and trespassing on adjacent tribal lands.
• Tread lightly on the land and leave no trace of your visit.
• The use of drones is prohibited.
• A BLM issued permit is required for commercial video and photography.
• When using a motorized vehicle for camping, limit your parking and vehicle-based camping to parking areas and set-up no more than 300 feet from an established road.
• Permits are required for uses such as grazing, scientific research, and commercial guiding.

By Sara Wright​

​About two weeks ago my dogs and I had a glorious experience in a remote well wooded area. I had identified fresh bear sign and the three of us were following bear tracks into a steep gully when we came upon a young golden brown bear who emerged from behind a boulder to regard us with curiosity. When I spoke to him/her quietly the bear watched me intently; I lost time. Unafraid, the youngster eventually meandered on.

And then, twice in the last week, I attended presentations during which people literally winced and moaned when the subject of Black bears was raised.
 
As a researcher who conducted a formal fifteen year academic study of these remarkable animals, I experienced the usual crushing dismay that Black bears continue to be perceived as such a threat to humans, when the truth is that they evolved as a prey animal, and remain so today. Black bears are cautious around humans unless they have been terrorized by them; then they avoid people at all costs. A human has a one in a million chance of being killed by a Black Bear; one is 17 more times likely to die of a spider bite.
 
How has the Black bear become such a perceived threat to humankind, especially in this country?
 
 One reason is that we are a culture that is hell bent on keeping the outdated “man against nature” paradigm alive. This perspective pits humans against all nonhuman species with a vengeance. In addition, the unconscious psychological mechanism of projection allows people to ascribe human killer tendencies/evil onto hapless animals giving us permission to kill them indiscriminately. We also imagine that we are separate and superior to every species but our own. How else could we continue to destroy the planet that is our home without whose resources we could not survive?
 
Of course, this cultural attitude of senseless fear of Black bears in particular (and all wild animals by extension) is also generated in this country by powerful special interest organizations like the NRA that deliberately uses the myth of the killer bear for its own benefit while pontificating that we have the “right” to bear arms, regardless of character or self responsibility. This current explosion of men with guns has created a crisis of monumental proportions at the cost of lives, human and non-human alike.  
 
One critical lesson I have learned in my life is to watch what people say and what they actually do. If there is a split between the two, pay attention to what these folks do and not what they say – talk is cheap. The so called state Wildlife organizations say they are interested in caring for/saving animals but what they do is to make money from ordinary folk and support hunters who slaughter animals as a matter of course. These people also expose their colossal arrogance/ignorance by stating as “truth” that all wild animals need to be managed by humans when animals have been around for 350 million years and humans for about 200,000 years. How utterly absurd.
 
There is something deeply repellent to me about the state fish and game folks who want us to slaughter bears for “fun” and for trophies, rarely for food. In fact, here in New Mexico, the head of a black bear is the symbol for our state wildlife organization.
 
There are a number of theories that attempt to address why bears in particular are so feared by humans. One of the most popular (not scholarly) of these is that humans were originally prey animals so we “instinctively” fear black bears and all wild animals. In this way of thinking the story is written into our DNA. The problem with this theory (and please remember that theories are intellectual ideas, and not truth with a capital “T”) is that it contradicts a multitude of children’s studies that indicate just the opposite – namely that very young children appear to be universally drawn to wild animals, especially bears, and are not afraid of them. There are many European children’s fairy tales that focus on the special relationship between bears and children. The helpful bear saves, protects, or imparts hidden knowledge to the children (especially girls) – like how to trust one’s instincts. In this country Native peoples honor the bear as a great healer/protector. Children who are afraid of animals have been taught to fear them by the adults around them.
 
And this brings me around to the power of the image to influence human perception. Look at any hunting magazine and you will note the frightening predatory look of the animal on the front cover. In Maine I used to dread August not just because it ushered in bear hunting season but also because in every store the covers of all the hunting magazines portrayed a GIANT Black Bear as a vicious bloody killer roaring with a huge open mouth full of teeth (contrary to popular belief, bears don’t roar at all). Exaggerating the size of an animal to generate unrealistic fear is something that every hunting magazine and state agency routinely does. Most adult male Black bears run about 250 pounds and yet these magazines/agencies always use the pictures of the exception to the general rule - the one that weighs 400 pounds - and is probably a captive animal. Most Black bears don’t survive long enough in the wild to attain a weight that even approaches this number, because the majority are shot as yearlings or sub adults. Yet, these horrific images work on us below the threshold of our awareness especially if we have no relationship to the wilderness and the wild animals around us. We have all been socialized/inculcated into a culture that supports the idea that any wild animal is “automatically” dangerous to humans. And creating mindless fear and revulsion for profit is something advertisers do well.
 
In reality Black bears are extremely shy, intelligent, curious animals that learn to avoid people unless people choose to befriend them as I did. My trust-based study was based on my ability to develop a personal relationship with any bear that would tolerate my presence and allow me entrance into her/his world. Needless to say, many would not. Too shy.
 
What I discovered early on was that Black bears always clearly communicated what they needed/wanted from me. My initial challenge was learning to understand their language. For example, most bears needed me to respect their need for space. Even the bears that chose to interact with me let me know when I got too close by huffing or slapping the ground, twig, bush, tree with a paw. I learned quickly that talking to them quietly relieved their anxiety. When badly frightened, Black bears moan like children, or do the opposite, hiss/chop and slap branches while hugging the upper limbs of their trees which they co–evolved with. Too often a bear’s anxiety is interpreted as aggression. It’s worth repeating that the Black bear evolved on this continent as a prey animal who was/is totally dependent on tree cover for protection (Infant bears begin climbing shortly after birth, exploring the den, long before they emerge in the spring).
 
In New Mexico we have a population of about 6000 Black bears that live in remote mountainous terrain, always close to some kind of water. If you happen to meet a Black bear while hiking, please don’t panic. Speak quietly to the animal and give it the space it needs to go on its way. For anyone who is really terrified of bears it is useful to carry a whistle. When blown the bear will disappear in an instant, I promise you.  

For the last couple decades, it sure has felt like I could use fifteen more hours of sleep. This exhaustion explains why it took so long for genius to strike, which it did recently, much like William Tell struck Newton’s apple: What if—stick with me here—I went to bed early?

Surely I would get enough sleep to wake up all on my own, no series of alarms required, in time for my leisurely breakfast. I could then give my actual best for those three hours a day. My hypothesis: I could ignore emails more effectively than ever!

The experiment is still in progress. Early results indicate, however, that I would make a most excellent house pet. No one would have to let me out for eight, eleven hours at a stretch. Because if I grant myself more time to sleep—this is empirical science, people—I will fill it.

I’m dedicated to seeing this experiment through. It might take decades of field research to pay off my sleep debt and discover what happens. In the meantime, more hours resting means fewer hours waking. The only pragmatic cuts I can make come from that so-called “productive time,” as the rest of the day literally has nothing left to cut.
​
So be it. This is why we have auto-reply; I’ll get back to you in about twenty years.

***
A quick and shameless plug: you have mere days left to pledge support to the Call Me Zach Hively Kickstarter campaign. This means it’s your last chance to get your name listed in the book.

For our dear, darling backers, we have ebooks, and print books, and exclusive hardcovers, and even private writing workshops. Heck, I will give a commencement address at any event you choose, if you pledge enough.

Most of all, this is nearly my last chance to get all sappy and thank you all for the support. Let’s see how far we can push this behemoth uphill before the campaign runs out.
Back the book now

Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand.

Which is why I’m going to spotlight the most eligible friend I know—myself—in the first-ever-that-I-know-of Q&A Profile for Eligible Friends. Perhaps, by the end of this feature, you will want to be my friend!
​
Q: Tell us, Zach, why are you interested in finding long-lasting friendship?
A: Because I feel that life is like one of those popsicles with two sticks.

Q: And you want someone to share the other half of the popsicle with you?
A: No, I’ll eat the whole thing myself. I just want someone to help break it apart without expecting a foot rub in return, so I can go back to watching the Auto Manufacturer Snack Food Carbonated Beverage Sporting Event in peace.

Q: The prospective friends among our readers are all dying to know: what are your favorite activities?
A: Let me tell you, I am such an impressive potential friend that I have many favorite activities to list. These include reading, talking to my houseplants, and downing an entire bag of tortilla chips in one sitting.

Q: Those don’t sound like very friend-conducive activities.
A: I also play guitar.

Q: Excellent! That’s an activity you can share with friends. What style of guitar do you play?
A: Air guitar.

Q: Oh.
A: In the shower.

Q: Many people enjoy the great outdoors with friends. What are your favorite outdoor pursuits?
A: I enjoy yelling at chipmunks in my garden. And when they ignore me, I throw stones at them.

Q: That doesn’t sound very friendly. Why do you do that?
A: Because there are no children in my neighborhood to throw rocks at instead.

Q: Do you ski? Rock climb? Hike?
A: I ride a bike.

Q: Perfect! There are lots of avid cyclists who would love to be your friend! What do you enjoy most about bicycling?
A: I love that I can feel connected with nature, at one with the breeze through my helmet and the earth under my wheels. But my absolute favorite part is that I can go for hours and hours without having to talk to anybody.

Q: You do realize that the primary part of having friends is actually being around people, right?
A: Oh, sure.

Q: Well, is there anything at all that you enjoy doing with other people?
A: Friendships aren’t all about “doing things” with other people. I think you’ve confused me for one of those “Hot Singles.” Asking about someone’s day, striving to become a better person—that’s all mushy foreplay stuff. And it’s way easy, compared to making friends as an adult.

Q: How so?
A: Think about how you can be friends over literally anything as a kid—you both want to play with the same jump rope? Bam! Instant friendship. And that’s how we pick up on each other, too. “You like Gruyère? I like Gruyère! Let’s go on a date!” But it’s not like I, as a seemingly-grown-up individual, can walk up to another guy and say, “You drive on radial tires? I drive on radial tires! Want to hang out?” 
We are not doing this Q&A to find true love. We’re here to find friends. And unlike romantic interests who will lie about cheese preferences in hopes of ensuing kinky times, true friends will accept us as we are. I am a recluse. And it’s incredibly difficult for me, as a hermit, to put myself out there.

Q: Wow. I never stopped to consider the emotional fragility of someone like you trying to make friends.
A: Tell me about it. And I have it double tough, because on top of all that, I just don’t like people.

Q: There you have it! If you still think you want to befriend Zach, write a letter to the editor of this fine publication.
A: Or better yet, don’t. This bag of chips ain’t big enough for the both of us.

***

If you like what you see here—and even if you don’t—you can find much more like it in my forthcoming book, Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book is more than 180% funded, and they can’t all be suckers, right? So whether you like ebooks, or you prefer rare collectors-edition hardcovers, head on over there and find your next great bathroom read. (Plus, you can get your name ruined forever, as I will thank you personally in the book’s Acknowledgments!)
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By Sara WRight

Sixty years ago, scientist Suzanne Simard intuited as a child that the trees, plants, fungi, in the forests she lived in (and that she and her family lightly logged with horses) were all in intimate relationship with one another. It seemed to her that forests were complex interdependent cooperative living organisms. The forests were alive. The blood of the trees was in her bones, she often quipped.
 
As an undergraduate from UBC (University of British Columbia) her first job as a forester seemed daunting. It was up to her to determine why 20 percent or more of the tree seedlings died after the forestry industry stripped huge parcels of land compacting and scraping away the soil. The species chosen was one that would provide foresters with the fastest economical gain. No other trees were allowed to grow in these ‘plantations’ because according to the forest industry other trees and plants competed with the monoculture that had replaced what once was a forest that contained a diversity of trees, plants, mushrooms, and flowers.
 
 Suzanne suspected that there were two problems and one lay underground. She uprooted dying/dead seedlings and peered beneath the surface of the soil. She recalled her childhood when she was continuously digging up masses of colorful rootlets that seemed to be attached to complex underground webs in diverse forests where healthy seedlings flourished.
 
In newly planted strip logged sites the webs of tiny underground rootlets were missing.
 
Suzanne went back to school to become a ground- breaking scientist to prove what the child once intuited. The prestigious scientific journal Nature credited her with the discovery of the ‘Wood Wide Web’ in 1997 which posited the existence and importance of the mycelial network to forest health and regeneration, and by extension to all life.
 
The second intuition that Suzanne addressed and proved was the fact that removing all the other plants and trees like birches from a strip logged site invited in disease. All trees and plants work together to deal with pathogenic fungi, and she demonstrated through years of field work that birches, for example, protected trees if allowed to grow along with the cash crop.
 
Most important is Suzanne’s understanding that some Old Mother/Father Trees must be left in any forest that is logged to help seed future generations. If the ‘Old’ Trees are removed who will be left to pass on the wisdom of the forest?
 
 
 
Dr. Simard demonstrated through years of painstaking field research that all trees and plants are connected underground by way of these vast fungal networks. This fungal web provided seedlings with all the nutrients they needed to survive. Since her initial discoveries Suzanne’s work has been replicated by other scientists over a period of many years, although it is still considered ‘controversial’.
 
Not surprisingly the Forestry Industry did not want to learn that stripping huge tracts of land with giant machines that compacted the soil and destroyed the underlying networks might be an issue to be taken seriously.
 
After Suzanne wrote the story of her discoveries in a compelling memoir “Finding the Mother Tree” a few years ago she established the 100 Year Mother Tree Project where she and her students, many now renowned scientists themselves, continue this meticulous research, most of which is done in the field.
 
Taken directly from the Mother Tree Project’s site:
 
“The Mother Tree Project is a groundbreaking research initiative investigating forest renewal practices that aim to safeguard biodiversity, carbon storage, and forest regeneration as climate changes. The project assesses how seedlings from local, warmer, and colder climates respond to different levels of overstory tree retention, with a focus on seedling survival and growth.
 
Started in 2015 and funded by NSERC and FESBE, the Mother Tree Project is a large scientific, field - based experiment that builds on prior research with the central objective of identifying sustainable harvesting and regeneration treatments that will maintain forest resilience…”
 
Suzanne has incorporated Indigenous scientific scholars as well as well as their stories into her ongoing research.  She was as stunned as I was to learn that Indigenous peoples have known about mycelial networks for millennia. How did they learn, she asked some of her colleagues.
 
The plants told them.
 
In 2023 Professor Simard was the recipient of the prestigious KEW International Medal in recognition of her ongoing research that really is so broad in depth and scope that it’s impossible to condense.
 
I’ll end this essay reiterating key points and adding some practical information, ending with a question that perhaps some will ponder.
 
About 90 percent of all plants have underground symbiotic mycorrhizal (root fungi) relationships with other plant beings that are beneficial. These complex webs  branch and unite and are always on the move just below the surface of the earth creating a living skin that keeps trees, plants, grasses, fungi all connected to each other. Tubular networks keep plant life healthy by providing minerals, carbon, water, minerals etc. to vegetation through the rootlets. What this means practically is that overall plants cooperate with each other. (About ten percent of the fungi are pathogenic and kill trees and plants but this is not the rule).
 
If cooperation has been dominating plant relationships for 400 plus million years and continues to do so today, then how did we get the idea that Nature competes more than S/he cooperates?

By Jessica Rath

​Today, on April 19, the El Rito Library is showing the 2023 Oscar Winner for Best Documentary Feature Film, “Navalny”.* The film’s editor, Langdon Page, will be present to introduce it, because – guess what! – some of the editing happened right here, in La Madera.  The film is being shown at Northern New Mexico College, El Rito Campus, Alumni Hall.  Pot luck at 5:30, showing at 6:00PM.
​
I had watched the documentary shortly after Alexei Navalny was murdered at Polar Wolf, the maximum security corrective colony in Siberia near the Arctic Circle. To say it was gut-wrenching and  deeply moving is putting it mildly. I wanted to learn more about Langdon and his work, and he kindly agreed to talk to me.
 
Knowing very little about film making, I was curious – how does one become a movie editor? Are there college courses one has to take, or are there any special schools to attend? 

​Well, in Langdon’s case it was a very organic process. From an early age he was fascinated by movies, he had the “cinema bug”, as he told me. He’d watch films, read every book about movies that he could find, and spend every free minute learning about cinema and its many aspects. His brother had started a magazine in Chile together with some movie producers, and when he asked Langdon for help because of his obsession with  movies, that’s what happened: Langdon joined his brother in Chile, and together, they produced a few magazine issues – until the funding ran out. By that time, Langdon had established some solid connections with the small film community in Chile in the mid-90s.
 
“I started talking to some of the producers thereafter with an idea for making a little documentary about looking for dinosaur eggs in Argentina, and they thought it was a great idea”, Langdon told me. When he came back with the footage, they needed somebody to edit it, and Langdon bluffed his way  into the job. The producers had just acquired a top of the line Avid video editing system,  the first generation of digital nonlinear editing (I looked this up: while linear editing assembles a film  from beginning to end, the new technology allows the editor to work on any video frame or digital video clip, no matter where it will eventually end up). Langdon had the background and courage to figure out this completely new technology, was hired, and completed a number of projects in Chile.

A couple of years later, he moved to Los Angeles with his wife and their firstborn. For a while, he had to take any work that allowed him to support his family.

“The first place that hired me was actually a cable channel called E! Entertainment Television”, Langdon continued.  “They didn't care that I had made a series of films that had done very well in Chile, they just cared that I knew how to run an Avid –  the editing computer. So then I spent a while doing really boring television work, which kept us afloat as a family, but also taught me how to work with deadlines and within the confines of an industry that depends a lot of time on deliverables and strict formatting rules”.

“At the same time, I kept reaching out to independent producers, and ended up getting some films that were more interesting. And then people kept hiring me to edit even though I would be writing or producing or pitching ideas, but I kept getting hired as an editor. And so I ended up doing a lot of that for the last 25+ years”. 
​
I must confess that I’ve never really thought much about the editing process of a movie. When it comes to film-making, I know the names of directors and a few famous cinematographers, and that’s it – I don’t know any famous editors. That doesn’t seem fair. I’m a film buff, and the productions I enjoy most offer great acting, beautiful cinematography, and an intelligent, moving script – all seamlessly joined together into one immersive experience. Whether that’s done successfully or not depends largely on the editor, I think. Langdon’s words helped me to see this.
 
He elaborated: “When it comes to the making of a film it is often a year or more of editorial work. And that’s a lot of emotional energy, it's a lot of passion. If you're committed to it and are serious about trying to actually make cinema out of it the sensibility of the editor is inherently going to be reflected in the final film”. Yes, this makes total sense, especially in relation to “Navalny”. How did he get involved with this project, I wanted to know.

“It was right around the beginning of 2021. A producer that I had made four or five pictures with called me up and said, ‘we've got this thing, and I think you’d be great for it. It's confidential, nobody knows about it. We've got this very talented director who's got a lot of ideas; can you come and start working on it?’ The director and his crew were just starting to sort through the footage and see what they had. I often like projects to go through a phase before I come on board, so that the director can start to try out all sorts of different things and get an idea of what they want in their head, make all kinds of mistakes, whatever. And then I can come on board, and we can make a whole bunch of different mistakes. So that's how it played out: I came up from Santiago, Chile to  Santa Fe and set up the cutting room in La Madera. I was editing from there for the first six weeks”.

In La Madera? Of all the places? How did he end up in La Madera? 

Well, Langdon grew up in Denver, CO, but one of his grandmothers lived in Santa Fe, and throughout his childhood he spent much time there.  In 1994 his father, his stepmother, and some of her family bought a piece of land near La Madera, and this has been the family home ever since.  So that’s where he ended up doing much of the editing work, in secret, as he explained.
 
Obviously Langdon  needed the fastest internet he could get,  and also some gear, such as an extra screen. His father  suggested they ask the Bondys, because Brian has all this equipment. So Brian came over with a monitor and helped set everything up. Amazingly, the internet connection in La Madera, New Mexico is the fastest connection that Langdon has been able to get anywhere in the world – can you believe this!
​
“Navalny was a really fascinating project. It brought together a team of really strong voices with different perspectives, and we wanted to have all of that emotional, mental, cinematic firepower in the room together while working on this really challenging story.  It was obviously all being created in the shadow of heavy security risks. We were doing everything completely under the table, nobody even knew this project existed. At the time, Alexei was in prison, which added to the emotional pressure. We wanted to make the best film that it could be in the fastest amount of time, because we imagined and sincerely believed that the film would be in some ways a sort of life insurance policy for Alexei. The more the world and the international community and the general public were aware of Alexei’s situation, the harder it would be for Putin to have him disappear, knock him off. I think for a long time, that actually worked”.

​“The emotional stakes were incredibly high. There were lots of tears all the way through the edit. The director, Daniel Roher, had a very strong personal bond with Alexei and his family. He is  a young guy and was really emotionally distraught throughout the course of the edit. There was a time when I was working late at night, and he was asleep on the couch. And, he said, he woke up and I was just sobbing. I had just watched a part of it, and it just left me in tears. We would hug and tell each other, we’ll get through it, and then we kept on working”.

I asked Langdon whether he had met any members of Navalny’s family and inner circle.
 
“Well, I never met Alexei, because it was filmed before I came on board the project. We launched the film at Sundance Film Festival in January 2022. And it had not been announced that the film even existed. So, when we shared it secretly with the programming committee, they invited us to be a part of Sundance. But they billed it as a secret screening, which was the first time they had ever done that at Sundance. And everybody was sort of confused -- what is this secret screening?, and all this”.

“And then there was a COVID wave. It was kind of devastating for everybody because Sundance rightly decided to do another virtual Sundance that year. But there  was concern that if they announced our project, adversarial forces could undermine the streaming capability of the festival for the first weekend and actually shut down all access to all the other films. That’s why they decided  to continue to bill it as a secret screening through the first weekend. At the first weekend of the festival, all films that are premiering get at least one screening – that’s how Sundance works. And then over the course of the first week they start doing repeat screenings. So we would not announce the film until after the first weekend. They announced it on Monday morning, and tickets sold out immediately, and that evening, we did the premiere”.

By this time I was spellbound, listening to Langdon. To hear that the making of it was just as suspenseful and moving as the documentary was simply astonishing.

“That was the beginning of the next phase of the film”, he continued. “This was the whole roll-out, taking it on tour and going to different festivals. It was in the middle of a number of changes in CNN Films, the distributor, and the whole streaming landscape. So it ended up premiering on CNN in April or May of 2022. At the same time  we were going around showing it at festivals over the course of that whole year and leading up toward the Oscars. So there were a number of occasions when I spent quite a bit of time with Dasha, Alexei’s daughter, and Yulia, his widow”.

By this time of our conversation I was deeply moved, remembering Navalny’s untimely death. Dasha had lost her father. Yulia had lost her husband. But Langdon reminds us not to give in to despair:

“Yes, it is very sad. But I think we should continually return to Alexei’s message at the end of the film, which is that we can't be complacent. The force used by the authorities to try to shut down any sort of democratic movement in Russia, is an indication of how strong that movement actually is. As we know from history, the only way to break through this  is for the grassroots, the people on the frontlines to rise up. There's a lot of work being done. Most of the Anti Corruption Foundation has moved to Lithuania. They've reconstituted as a very strong force from outside Russia. When Alexei went back this was almost inconceivable, but since especially the invasion of Ukraine and the increased clamp down and censorship in Russia, a large part of the democracy movement has been forced outside of the country.  It still constitutes a very viable force. It's continuing to find innovative ways to get around sensors, and continues to expose the corruption of the Putin regime”.

I was quite shocked when I thought about the secrecy that had been necessary when working on the film. Were the people involved really in danger?

“One never knows what their actual reach is”, Langdon explained.  “Especially organizations like the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service), or the GRU (Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency). They've shown that they have the ability to assassinate or attempt to assassinate people throughout Europe. Within the United States we believe that we have a more solid firewall against some of those things, but not against all of them. In the 2016 election we witnessed significant online  infiltration by Russian forces trying to undermine our democracy, and it continues to this day. We took extraordinary security measures to keep everything encrypted and to stay as safe as we could, especially when we were editing in London, but the threat was very real. Christo Grozev (Bellingcat chief investigator) from the film has had a death warrant out for him for the last year and a half, which was not exclusively, but directly in response to his participation in this film. And Christo is basically living in the States at this point”. 

Some final words about Navalny: “Alexei’s courage and his humor, his inextinguishable spirit and faith in what he called the “beautiful Russia of the future” – this was amazing throughout his time in both prisons. He was subjected to isolation and immense torture at the first prison as well. For months and months and months they kept him in solitary confinement under horrible, horrible psychological torture conditions.  And yet, he was able to communicate with the outside world in a way that motivated people to take small actions, significant within Russia, and bigger actions, which are also significant on the global stage. We have to just take courage and inspiration from his indomitable spirit”.

Here is my final question: do you have a new project you're working on?
 
“Yes –  I've been working on a technology platform, to connect movies that have a strong call to action around an issue with direct actions that viewers can take after they watch that kind of movie. And this has been a fascinating and entirely different type of creative endeavor for me. So that's what I’m doing at the moment”.

Langdon closed our interview with these words: “It's a pivotal time for democracy in this country and worldwide. But, if you study history, it's always been a pivotal time. Democracy is an ongoing experiment. It's important not  to succumb to apathy. We have actually more tools now to strengthen our democracy and move it in a direction which is more sustainable than we've ever had before. So it's just about being inspired and having the courage to stay active”.
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“Navalny” most certainly is inspiring. I want to thank Langdon for his important part in it, and for taking the time for this interview.