Sandi Ault is a renaissance woman, Western-style. She lives with her husband in Pinewood Springs, near Lyons, where she works both as a volunteer firefighter and a fire information officer. Her pet wolf is named Tiwa. She’s devoted years to exploring the cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Indians in the Four Corners region of the Southwest, researching the customs and rituals of their contemporary descendants. And now she’s written a mystery novel, “Wild Indigo,” that debuted in bookstores Tuesday. It’s the first in a new mystery series, based on female sleuth Jamaica Wild, which encompasses all of Ault’s passions: wolves, firefighting, petroglyphs, rock art and American Indian mysticism.
Ault wrote a significant part of “Wild Indigo” on her laptop in a camp chair, lakeside in the pine-scented mountains, where she and her husband took refuge with their first pet wolf, Mountain, after learning he was terminally ill.
What’s it like to own a pet wolf?
It’s a very challenging thing actually, not for the faint of heart. We thought it would be a real romantic idea, but we live to accommodate his needs. Physically, it’s a big commitment, to give them enough exercise and freedom to be happy. A confined wolf is an unhappy wolf.
What draws you to the life of a wildland firefighter?
It’s a lot like life with a wolf. You end up in remote and beautiful places. Learning to dig a fireline is difficult, but more than anything, I love the people. Wildland firefighters have a commitment to the land, and love wild places. We’re very lucky in our country to have so many of them still left.
What hooked you into writing about the Southwest, and setting your first novel in New Mexico?
I remember when we took our first vacation to Four Corners, I was smitten with this panel of rock art. There are moments in life when you know something large is happening, and you don’t fully understand it. I wanted to know more, so I started chasing them. I started studying everything I could about the first people in our continent, and this led me deeper. Ancestral Puebloans were so advanced, building huge cities in places so abandoned that we can’t even live there. There’s something they knew that we’ve still not gotten.
How did writing on a laptop in the mountains affect the quality of your writing? Your descriptions of Southwestern landscapes are so lyrical.
It made a huge difference. We literally quit our jobs because we didn’t know how long (the wolf) would last. We had money saved, so we hung out with him, giving him as much freedom as we could. We went to remote places where he could lope off lead. It freed us in a way nothing else could. We were living next to the land, eating fish we caught, wild berries we gathered, and jerky we’d made. It was a big part of the book.
