May 29—LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Fresh wounds are present on the land and in the souls of thousands of Northern New Mexicans whose lives have been upturned by the largest wildfire in the state's history.

As the smoke and flames dissipate in areas around Las Vegas and Mora, and locals take stock of what remains and what was lost, the range of emotions varies from devastation to relief to resolve.

Some have lost everything they own in the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire and are left to contemplate if there's still a future for them where they'd once carved out a little slice of heaven in a grand mountain setting. Others have rushed to offer support, fighting the fire or delivering food and water to sustain the people of their communities through this historic hardship.

Everyone has questions and everyone has a story as resilient residents push forward into uncertainty in places where so much has changed for so many.

'I ain't about to quit'

With sheet metal scraping in the gusty wind, Rex Haver leaned on his cane as he looked over the barely recognizable property where he had spent 46 years of his life building.

The 75-year-old Vietnam veteran known as Buzzard is quick to share that he's not an easy man to get along with, but he and his wife managed to raise three kids here in the secluded woods southwest of Mora.

The hideaway included a two-story house, a hot tub room, a 3 1/2 -car garage, five Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a 1955 Chevy hot rod and countless other treasures accumulated over the decades.

None of it survived the fire.

"I've come up here three times since the damage, but there's not much you can really do with nothing," he said.

Haver was one of the last people to evacuate from the area. After he learned the blaze had burned through, he drove back to check on the property and saw the house and everything around it was still on fire before forestry officials escorted him away.

Now staying in Las Vegas with his wife in a house that was passed down from her father, Haver isn't looking forward to the paperwork and personal interaction that will come with the recovery process.

"I have a habit of losing my temper and flipping desks," he said. "I don't have patience. I don't like people, in particular."

He doesn't seem to mind his huge Rottweiler named Bear, though, who watched over Haver as he poked through the wreckage while walking with a severe limp he said he picked up in Vietnam when a guy next to him tripped a booby trap. Doctors wanted to amputate his mostly useless leg, he said, but Haver refused because he needed it to ride his motorcycle.

Haver said his kids and grandkids are going to try to get time off this summer to help him sort through and clear the charred remnants. He plans on having a storage shed moved onto the property, and maybe even a little place where he can stay to get away from everyone.

"Am I coming back up here? Hopefully before I die I'll get here," he said. "I figure 75 years already and I ain't died yet, so I ain't about to quit."

Mental and physical exhaustion was setting in for Harold and Denise Sena and their children as they moved themselves and two trailers full of animals from one location to another in a cycle of evacuations that felt like it would never end.

Their home along N.M. 94 near Rociada had been in the path of the fire in late April. After evacuating with their steers, lambs, goats and pigs just a couple of hours before the blaze tore through the area, they received calls from two different people telling them the house didn't make it.

To make matters worse, they had to keep bouncing between livestock evacuation centers around Las Vegas as the fire put the city on high alert.

"I think we moved a total of six different times," Harold Sena said. "In one weekend, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were on the run from the fire. It was devastating and it was tiring."

A few days after learning their home had burned down, some online investigative work by their daughter proved otherwise.

A video posted on Facebook taken by someone driving along their road showed evidence they could barely believe.

"She caught a glimpse of our gate, so she stopped the video and zoomed in, and you could see our house right there — it hadn't got burned," Harold Sena said. "You couldn't imagine how happy we were just seeing that. We had to look at it about five or six times to process it and see that it was true."

Finally finding a stable place for themselves and their animals to stay in mid-May at a large ranch north of Las Vegas, the family was eagerly awaiting the chance to move back home.

Though, they realized many of their neighbors weren't as lucky.

"That fire took out at least 28 homes," Harlod Sena said. "There's four or five homes in that one-mile stretch that are still standing, including ours, thank God."

'Ask and you shall receive'

An ever-growing list of questions is stuck in the mind of Joseph Griego as he ponders how the people of Mora County can come back from the devastation of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

What compensation will the government provide to those who lost so much due to a fire that at least partially originated from a U.S. Forest Service prescribed burn gone wrong?

How will ranchers be supported with summer grazing lands in the high country burned to a crisp?

"This community, a lot of people make their living off the forest, and now that's gone. How does a person recuperate from that?" said Griego, who is director of the Mora/Colfax Head Start. "And it's not this year, it's the following years. It's just gone."

Since the fire arrived in his community, the Mora native has been trying to provide a reliable answer to at least one question: Where can locals in need get food and supplies?

He and his brother, Jason Griego, have organized a distribution center at the Head Start building near Mora High School. Stocked entirely through donations, the center has provided food, water and livestock feed for residents who stayed through the evacuation orders — many to protect their homes or care for their animals — and those who have recently been able to return.

The service has been vital amid power outages that have lasted weeks and concerns over contaminated water supplies.

The donations have come in from organizations and individuals all over the state and from as far as Houston. Volunteers, many who are school staff members or students, have organized it all, and goods have been available daily to pick up on-site or delivered by local fire departments.

"It's been a great experience and it's been a tiring experience, that's for sure," Griego said. "God says, 'Ask and you will receive,' and it's been an abundance of way more than we expected from the surrounding communities."

Jim Sampson is taking time to try to see past what once was to what could be.

That's a challenging prospect when he's facing the burned bones of his former full-time home — an old adobe he thinks was originally constructed in the 1880s that his father rebuilt.

Or when he looks up at the black forest of trees covering the mountainside toward where he and a group of friends used to go on a camping trip each summer in the last week of July.

With a chair, a tent, his truck and his two dogs, Sampson has plopped himself back on his tucked-away, 62-acre property southwest of Mora to sort out a plan.

"I've got to sit around and think," he said. "Worse comes to worse, I'm a 77-year-old Boy Scout."

Sampson stayed with his beloved home almost until the end. He was told to evacuate by a fire official May 1 and gathered a few belongings. Within about an hour, he said, the fire had come through the area, but his house survived. Days later, he said, a second wave rolled in and didn't miss.

The fickle nature of the fire has perplexed him. While his house burned, his daughter's house 100 yards down the dirt road is still standing.

"It's interesting how the fire took this house, took that barn, didn't take that house — and for that house, the fire burned right up to it but it was just fine," he said.

Sampson doesn't want to impose on his daughter. He wants his own place again where he can care for his dogs and his 15 goofy alpacas that are still running around. He's thinking of getting a manufactured home or a four-seasons travel trailer.

Retired from the insurance industry, Sampson said he couldn't get an agency to insure his own home. Insurance has become hard to find for any house in the forest.

Moving forward, he hopes he can stretch out his savings to rebuild.

"I worked and retired and I got money," he said. "Not a lot, but enough — at least I thought I had — but now we'll see how much of that long-term money gets spent on the short-term."

Cecilia Romero heard the fire calling her back in the days after she returned to work.

A service writer at the NAPA Auto Parts location between Cleveland and Holman, Romero took more than two weeks off to help the Buena Vista Volunteer Fire Department from late April to mid-May.

The sense of urgency and gravity of the moment filled her with purpose as she worked alongside boyfriend Ronald Duran, the department's fire chief, and other volunteers to protect homes and put out spot fires around Mora County.

She, like most volunteers, eventually had to switch gears back to her full-time job to support herself financially after her time on the line.

It was not an easy transition.

"For me, coming back to work was hard because I knew where my heart was, I knew where my mind was and I knew that's where I wanted to be," Romero said. "I feel blessed and I appreciate that I have my job, but this is something that's going on with my community, my family, people that I care about, so it was hard to come back."

The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon blaze was just the third fire Romero, 42, had ever faced since getting involved as a volunteer in 2016. She said she felt fortunate to be able to learn alongside Duran, someone she knew she could depend on and trust in any situation.

Working with volunteers from other local departments and seeing the strength and generosity of locals during the fire has been inspiring for Romero. Though she's unable to take another extended leave to fight the fire, she said on weekends she would jump at the opportunity to help defend other communities that find themselves under threat.

"I've grown up here my whole life," Romero said. "When there are bad times, it seems like everyone has really been able to come together — always. It makes me proud to come from here."

'What if no tears come out?'

David Martinez can't physically elicit the proper response to express his sadness.

He says he's been trying to come to terms with losing the cabin he built with his friends in the summer of 2008 and where he's lived ever since, but he doesn't feel like he has appropriately mourned.

"What can we do, wipe our tears? What if no tears come out?" Martinez said. "I was telling my friend, 'I try to cry but it doesn't come out.'

"Nothing works, so might as well take it like it is. It's devastating."

The 63-year-old said he didn't lose as much in the fire as other people he knows because he didn't have much to begin with, but his jewelry, his tack room and his saddles are gone. He wasn't able to take much when he evacuated, aside from some clothes, his guns and his pickup.

Since residents have been allowed to return to the Monte Aplanado area southwest of Mora, Martinez has moved his few remaining possessions and some supplies he's been given into an old travel trailer that was left on his property.

"It's not mine, but I scoot my ass in there," said Martinez, who has difficulty walking. "It's not comfortable and I'm crowded."

A lot of times he prefers sleeping in his truck, sometimes parking on other friends' properties while they're gone to protect them from looters.

Looking at an aspen grove on a parcel of his land that was unharmed by the fire, Martinez says he wants to stay close to where he was raised rather than move to Denver, like some people have suggested. He's applied for relief from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department and hopes to receive a new trailer to live in.

Many friends and family members have reached out to Martinez to check in and offer support. He said he feels closer to some of them now than ever before.

"It helped us to recognize each other," Martinez said of the fire. "It opened hearts. Every time, no matter what, from something bad, something good comes out of it."

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