Just outside of the heart of Santa Fe, the Dale Ball trails wind up and into the foothills.

On Dec. 15, 2011, Pat Rogers, the prominent Modrall Sperling lawyer and lobbyist, sent an email to the private account of Gov. Susana Martinez’ chief of staff, Keith Gardner, thanking Gardner for agreeing to set up a meeting with Martinez on behalf of one of his firm’s clients.

In the rolling foothills of central New Mexico’s Chupadera Mountains, groundwater seeps through volcanic gravel, forming a shallow spring stream where a tiny snail makes its home. The Chupadera springsnail’s conical, translucent shell is no bigger than a poppy seed; the animal scrapes algae and microscopic organisms off rocks with a toothlike structure at the end of its snout. Twenty-seven years after it was originally designated a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, the snail officially became protected on Aug. 12.

On the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, anti-nuclear organizations and concerned citizens staged a large protest of nuclear development in Los Alamos.

As I stand in the small parking lot behind Positive Energy’s solar electric systems on a recent Friday morning, I begin to feel guilty about laughing as hard as I am.

“We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor…the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thundercloud and the rain…some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” –Henry David Thoreau I’ve lived in Santa Fe off and on for the last two years, and in that time I’ve participated in nearly every outdoor pursuit available to a human bound by finances and gravity. Few places on earth offer such a varied palette of adventure, situated as Santa Fe is at the intersection of alpine and high desert biomes. With that adventure occasionally comes danger, but the rewards, for me, have always outweighed the moderate risks. Yet those who thrive on challenges tend to escalate them. Here you’ll find stories of some of my favorite nearby adventures, in order of escalating toughness, with maybe a flyspeck of danger. (We’ve also ranked them on a 1-5 scale for difficulty, danger and fun—1 being the least and 5 being the most.) Nothing crazy here. Just some fun moments in places worth wandering.

Nature-lovers are familiar with the classic, conservationist coffee-table book: Usually, it’s full of Aldo Leopold quotes and scenic, if sometimes static, photos of mountains and rivers and meadows full of [insert endangered mammal here].

Environmental news is a downer. I know. Despite trying to balance news about climate change and energy development with a love for wild places and muddy rivers, I’ve pretty much spent a decade of my life depressing readers. Lately, I’ve even been wondering how much I’ve contributed to the helplessness people feel about the environment.

I felt no smug satisfaction when reading of a recent federal court case involving The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. In March, the company pled guilty to charges that it had knowingly sold poisoned birdseed.

In a shaky, hand-shot video from 2010, Nimish Vyas of the United States Geological Survey pans across a field in Vernon, Colo. Vyas focuses on a dirt mound and then zooms in on a pale spot atop the dry, tawny grass. The spot twitches, and he zooms closer.