Molly Montgomery SUN

The first week after the Embudo Valley Library opened, in May 1992, Library cofounder Shel Neymark watched two grade school children wander out of the Library clutching books. “I just went, ‘Yes! Yes! This is going to work,’” Neymark said. “At that point I knew that it wasn’t going to be just a club for the people who started it.

Gunshots have become a significant part of the soundscape around El Guique and Estaca. Despite residents’ protests, Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s deputies and others use the Cook family’s gravel mine on the border of the two communities as a gun range. The constant noise disturbs the surrounding families and their animals, but because the shooting is happening on private property, they have little recourse.