I must massage a bunch of photographs for the next posting, and that will take most of the time I would today spend researching and writing the next chapter of Java Chronicles. However, here’s a digression - I told you there would be digressions.
Drinking (alcohol that is) always depresses me, which is why I don’t drink often, and never drink very much. Forget the dehydration, it’s the loss of outlook that I consider a hangover. Its probably been this way as long as I’ve been an adult, but it really became apparent once I trained in Reiki. I found then that the slightest amount of alcohol grossly inhibited my sight, and, discovering also that the effect lasted a couple of days, I stopped drinking at all for a few months. Now, I just accept the consequences, and indulge rarely.
Anyway, I saw some excellent music last night, had a couple of beers, and felt happiness in the company of friends. That’s a special kind of happiness, the kind that nothing can ever take away, and it comes from the kind of distributed love that sustains the members of any community. But, the morning was different. I woke to a chill, grey day, and thought of “California Dreaming”.
A little cat jumped up on my bed, and snuggled up to my chest, purring and pushing his forefeet and closing his eyes - giving the kind of soft love that a cat gives so well. And I felt the emptiness that’s been residing in my heart for months now. Having let slide the denial and distractions I had applied like a compress over a pavement burn, I felt the emptiness prominently. I didn’t want to be feeling that way, but that’s not the kind of thing one really gets a choice in. Once you open yourself to another, when the options are closed off, grief is inevitable. Still, why can’t it be sunny?
Seeking optimism, I thought of collating photographs of Colorado, and the joy of re-living the experiences in order to share them with you all. And, then, I realized that I have the power to travel back to Cerrillos, or Taos, or the Rio Grande in my mind, and to dwell in the sun and adventure. And, it would be so very easy to spend the next couple of hours catatonic, but happy. But, that’s not the way forward, and the cat, Gabriel - the messenger, is insistent.
So, “California Dreaming” could not be suppressed, and I have my own version. I wondered why I had felt such a strong sense of homecoming in New Mexico, particularly in the area around Santa Fe. I recalled that although I was born in Manhattan, and I have long claimed my formative years to have been as a city kid, in truth I spent my infancy and toddlerhood (no, that’s not recognized by the spell checker) in the hills of Burbank. Yes, that’s right, my earliest experiences of the environment beyond my mother are of the sun and heat and canyons and hills of California, and those are not so very much different than the surroundings at Madrid, or Cerrillos! In that child mind that is at the core of us all, I had indeed come home to where I had been nurtured!
So my friends, I owe these thoughts to a little black and white cat, whose greatest adventures are batting a stuffed mouse around, or boxing with a Maine Coon twice his size, or some mysteries he keeps from me in his wanderings outside. I will correct the photographs today, but will wait for some sunny hours to re-visit Colorado with you.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Durango, or, How I Survive a Dip in Pagosa and Discover a True Paradise!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The way to Colorado lies on the western side of the Carson National Forest, continuing up the Rio Chama valley towards the San Juan mountains. As I said before, the highlands (higher lands?) of the Carson National Forest are really a southern spur of the San Juan Mountains. To the west is a vast expanse of high plains. So, the San Juan’s, which already have some snow on them in October, dominate the landscape. They are magnetic!
In the town of Chama, 84 turns left towards Dulce, and NM 17 bears off to the northeast, right into the San Juan’s, through Cumbres Pass (10,022 ft) and La Managa Pass (10,230 ft), back towards the Rio Grande National Forest and the Rio Grande valley. This is very inviting, and actually had been an alternate route from Taos, but I’m intent on getting to Durango, so I postpone this trip for another time - some summertime!
Driving west on 84, the terrain is clearly wetter, there are grasslands, creekbeds and thick spruce and aspen forests. Halfway to Dulce from Chama, 84 turns northerly into the San Juan foothills, and starts to wind between lush ranches and forests. Sometime after crossing the border into Colorado, I notice a sign on the shoulder, rather like the “mowing ahead” signs we see here during the summer, but this sign says instead “Cattle Drive ahead”. Cattle Drive Ahead? I’ve got to know!!
Digressing again, at one point in that European trip from 1970, I was in Austria. Austria is a very beautiful country. They had, maybe still have, a policy that for every tree cut, two must be planted. As a result, there is no barren terrain, there are farms, towns, cities, and forests. I had gotten to Austria from Munich (ah - there’s a story for that city too), via Salzburg, to Graz. At Graz, I was able to tour an armory from the 16th - 17th centuries. The Moors had been invading Europe (I understand that Flamenco is a consequence of those invasions into Spain), and at Graz a large armory of weapons and armor had been assembled to repel the invaders. Indeed, the defenders were successful, and although there was much fighting at Graz, the taking of Vienna was thwarted, and the invaders were fought to a standoff. The armory has been preserved intact since 1551! Then, and I’m supposing that is no longer true today, on payment of a small fee, I was able to wander the five floors of weapons, arrayed as if in a warehouse - which indeed it had been - without inhibition. My strongest memory of that afternoon, other than the amazing freedom to wander about and touch pieces that would be behind glass if in NYC, was noticing one breastplate with a perfectly round, roughly 5/8 inch diameter, dent in it. I supposed that the breastplate had saved its wearer from a lead ball shot from some archaic wheellock firearm.
After Graz, I went to a campground in a small town called Langenwang, a bit closer to Vienna. There are many stories to tell about that stay, but the one that belongs here is about cattle. One day, headed I recall not where on one of the pastoral roads, I became engaged in a cattle drive. Well more of a milk drive, because they were milk cows being herded from one pasture to another, or from pasture to barn. My little white Opel became surrounded by large, thankfully docile, black cows, guided by a somewhat amused and annoyed herder with - yes - a staff! The Brothers Grimm appeared in my backseat, a white swan landed upon my hood, and I awaited a clear road, entertained Grimmly.
But in Colorado, it seems there are no cattle on the highway! Then, just as I’ve been lulled by the exquisite valley, there in front of me is a herd of perhaps 50 steers! They’re moving downhill, on the opposite side of the road, and traffic is backed up behind them as if they were a stopped schoolbus. They’re accompanied by a half dozen riders, men and women, and three or four dogs. The riders are keeping the cattle moving downhill, and keeping them to their lane (double yellow after all!). The dogs are nipping at the strays’ heels, and the riders are directing the dogs and generally pressing the back of the herd. All wearing cowboy hats of course (except the dogs)!
84 ends in Colorado at Pagosa Springs. To the right (east), lie the San Juan mountains and Wolf Creek ski area (for those of you who like to know those kinds of things). Pagosa Springs is located on the San Juan River, which is about the size of the Musconetcong there. There’s not a lot to Pagosa Springs, its rather a main street (Pagosa Street) sort of town, with a lot of restaurants and motels on the way in. I’m heading for the resort however, and on spotting some steaming pools, I turn off the main road. Fortuitously, I’ve found the resort, called, appropriately enough, “The Springs”.
The concierge plays the silly “its Saturday, I’ll have to see if there’s anything available” game with me while she evaluates me, and finally I get a room. Access to the various pools comes with the room, and although the room is expensive, it’s a lot easier to lodge there than to go elsewhere, buy a day ticket and have to go back and forth. They provide nice heavy terrycloth bathrobes, and soft towels on demand. There are perhaps a dozen different pools, in different sizes, at different temperatures, and with different amenities (waterfalls, better looking women). There’s also a small number of “adult” pools in a segregated area. I ask what do they mean by “adult”, and the best I get is that children aren’t allowed. Duh! I saw nothing else that actually distinguished the adult pools from the others, other than a fairly elegant gas fired outdoor fire place of the circular basin sort, but maybe I just wasn’t there at the “right” time.
The air was cooling quickly as the sun was heading towards setting, and I went for the hottest pool, which at 111 degrees was pretty toasty. A bit of time in there, and I moved on to a slightly cooler, but slightly larger pool nearby. Getting bored there, I went back to the hottest pool. That pool was about waist deep, and access was via a single step at the side with a central handrail. When I had first gone in, I noticed a large chip out of the concrete plaster covered step. I wanted to avoid stepping on that loose chip when going back, so I carefully looked into the pool for the chip, and stepped down with my right foot so as to land just to the left of the chip. Unfortunately, the step was not a continuous ledge, and I kept going! An intense pain shot into my left thigh as I tried to stop my fall, and the best I was able to do was slow myself down enough that I maintained just a little bit of decorum as I kept from landing on another occupant! Ow! I still don’t know exactly what I did to that muscle or tendon, but I could barely walk and couldn’t ascend a stairway!
I soaked my leg, took some aspirin, rested a bit, and headed out for dinner, choosing an Asian restaurant listed in the resort guide. You guessed it, I tried walking instead of driving. Well, I had thought that getting my throat cut and my spine disassembled gave me some empathy with the various injured people I’ve run into over the past 30 years investigating accidents. Well, that was nothing compared to trying to walk what turned out to be about two miles (round trip) in the chilly Colorado evening, with my left leg unable to support my weight unless I had my knee locked. I thought about Gunsmoke! The worst was that every dozen or so steps, I’d lose control, my leg would flex, and the pain would stop me in mid-stride.
After dinner, I went back into one of the pools (adult) to soak my thigh, took some more aspirin (wonder drug) and Xanaflex (another wonder drug) to keep whatever was injured from spasm, and went to sleep.
Sunday, October 10, 2010.
The next morning another dip, an inept encounter with two cute women whom my pain didn’t keep me from eying up, but whom my limp kept me from being comfortable with, a walk (no, I don’t give up - I’m a stubborn German) into town looking for film, and back into the car for breakfast and then Durango!! That leg continued to give me trouble the next few days, and made some of my intended excursions impossible, but so it goes!
Oh. The sulfur. I forgot about the sulfur. The air in Pagosa smells like sulfur. The springs are sulfur water. The sulfur gets into your pores. Even clothing that you’ve put onto your dry body after showering winds up smelling of sulfur. Three washings at home and my bathing suit still smells like sulfur. I’m sure the water is healthful, some people even drink it, but everybody smells like they got seriously paranoid with some 1950's acne remedy!
The road to Durango lies through Bayfield. The terrain is hilly, and the road is mostly narrow as it winds between the various hills. No longer are there the expansive vistas of New Mexico, in fact, at some points I rather felt like I was in the southern Appalachians - perhaps Tennessee or western Virginia. Rounding a sweeping bend I saw a sign for jerky: elk jerky, deer jerky, buffalo jerky. HAD to stop. Wound up in a nice half hour discussion with the woman running the stand, and she told me that her jerky was pure (not true), and good (quite true). She used to live in Durango, until it got too crowded for her, so she moved to Bayfield. Now, I’m having a hard time conceiving that any place in the Four Corners area is too crowded for anybody, too commercial perhaps, but too crowded - no. So, I open a discussion about New Jersey, and what too crowded might mean to me. Its all in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure that somebody from Delhi thinks New Jersey really is the Garden State! She is quite cordial, assures me that I’ll like Durango, and welcomes me to move to Bayfield! The 25 or so dollars of jerky sustained me quite nicely at odd times over the next few days, along with the plentiful supply of Brach’s Harvest Mix that I had imported from New Jersey.
Finally, Durango. Unfortunately for Durango, the approach is through a modern built-up commercial area and is rather unattractive. But, again trusting to the Fates that have guided me well for many travels over many decades, I finally make an opportune but illogical right turn, and wind up on the road to Fort Lewis College! That road crosses Main Avenue, and I’ve arrived! Cruising around a bit, I locate the restaurant where I’m going to meet a friend, and then drive up to the College to get my mental map firmed up.
Durango is pretty much a Main Street city on the Animas River. There are serious ridges, mountains, and mesas on the east and west of the City. The old City is on the eastern side of the river, at the foot of the mesa on which Fort Lewis College is built. There’s a residential district starting just a block off the main street, leading up to the edge of the mesa. Mostly small homes, with front porches, landscaped lawns, trees, people out walking and bicycling - perfectly charming. I got a little lost, disoriented at least, and obtained some directions from a woman tending her garden, without getting that dose of fear that exists whenever I (as a stranger) try to communicate with a woman on the street in New Jersey. Maybe she was armed.
I’ve a little time to kill, so I park my SUV near the restaurant, Carver Brewing Company, and walk Main Avenue. It was very inviting. No closed stores. Couples, singles, children, elders, walking the street, shopping or just strolling. Real stores, a real record shop, a real camera store, some tourist establishments, a huge candy store, restaurants, whatever you could want. Really not much bigger than a good sized NJ mall, but about an order of magnitude more diverse, and infinitely more attractive!
Two PM arrives, my friend arrives (by the way, did I mention that one can find parking on the main street?), and Carver Brewing turns out to have some of the best beer I’ve ever tasted! I get some recommendations for lodging, and finally check into a small 1920's hotel, the Leland House, that was converted from an apartment house, and which is associated with the 1890's Rochester Hotel just across the street. The place is decorated in early 20th c. boxing memorabilia and historic Durango photographs. I’m loving it!
A quick shower, a brief rest, and back out onto the streets. Durango has a working, narrow gauge steam railway, with an associated museum and well equipped repair and restoration shop. The whistle blows regularly, as the train crosses many streets on its route north to Silverton, and even the sound of steam is audible at my lodgings! Wanting some photos (I didn’t bring my flash, and now was the first, and only, time I regretted that omission), I walked down to the terminal, and watched the machinations of moving engines and cars about for the next day. The light was waning however, and no photos were possible.
Dinner at a Mongolian restaurant, which was wonderful, and I’m thinking that perhaps I could call my kids up, have them ship my stuff, and that I could move to Durango the next morning.
The way to Colorado lies on the western side of the Carson National Forest, continuing up the Rio Chama valley towards the San Juan mountains. As I said before, the highlands (higher lands?) of the Carson National Forest are really a southern spur of the San Juan Mountains. To the west is a vast expanse of high plains. So, the San Juan’s, which already have some snow on them in October, dominate the landscape. They are magnetic!
In the town of Chama, 84 turns left towards Dulce, and NM 17 bears off to the northeast, right into the San Juan’s, through Cumbres Pass (10,022 ft) and La Managa Pass (10,230 ft), back towards the Rio Grande National Forest and the Rio Grande valley. This is very inviting, and actually had been an alternate route from Taos, but I’m intent on getting to Durango, so I postpone this trip for another time - some summertime!
Driving west on 84, the terrain is clearly wetter, there are grasslands, creekbeds and thick spruce and aspen forests. Halfway to Dulce from Chama, 84 turns northerly into the San Juan foothills, and starts to wind between lush ranches and forests. Sometime after crossing the border into Colorado, I notice a sign on the shoulder, rather like the “mowing ahead” signs we see here during the summer, but this sign says instead “Cattle Drive ahead”. Cattle Drive Ahead? I’ve got to know!!
Digressing again, at one point in that European trip from 1970, I was in Austria. Austria is a very beautiful country. They had, maybe still have, a policy that for every tree cut, two must be planted. As a result, there is no barren terrain, there are farms, towns, cities, and forests. I had gotten to Austria from Munich (ah - there’s a story for that city too), via Salzburg, to Graz. At Graz, I was able to tour an armory from the 16th - 17th centuries. The Moors had been invading Europe (I understand that Flamenco is a consequence of those invasions into Spain), and at Graz a large armory of weapons and armor had been assembled to repel the invaders. Indeed, the defenders were successful, and although there was much fighting at Graz, the taking of Vienna was thwarted, and the invaders were fought to a standoff. The armory has been preserved intact since 1551! Then, and I’m supposing that is no longer true today, on payment of a small fee, I was able to wander the five floors of weapons, arrayed as if in a warehouse - which indeed it had been - without inhibition. My strongest memory of that afternoon, other than the amazing freedom to wander about and touch pieces that would be behind glass if in NYC, was noticing one breastplate with a perfectly round, roughly 5/8 inch diameter, dent in it. I supposed that the breastplate had saved its wearer from a lead ball shot from some archaic wheellock firearm.
After Graz, I went to a campground in a small town called Langenwang, a bit closer to Vienna. There are many stories to tell about that stay, but the one that belongs here is about cattle. One day, headed I recall not where on one of the pastoral roads, I became engaged in a cattle drive. Well more of a milk drive, because they were milk cows being herded from one pasture to another, or from pasture to barn. My little white Opel became surrounded by large, thankfully docile, black cows, guided by a somewhat amused and annoyed herder with - yes - a staff! The Brothers Grimm appeared in my backseat, a white swan landed upon my hood, and I awaited a clear road, entertained Grimmly.
But in Colorado, it seems there are no cattle on the highway! Then, just as I’ve been lulled by the exquisite valley, there in front of me is a herd of perhaps 50 steers! They’re moving downhill, on the opposite side of the road, and traffic is backed up behind them as if they were a stopped schoolbus. They’re accompanied by a half dozen riders, men and women, and three or four dogs. The riders are keeping the cattle moving downhill, and keeping them to their lane (double yellow after all!). The dogs are nipping at the strays’ heels, and the riders are directing the dogs and generally pressing the back of the herd. All wearing cowboy hats of course (except the dogs)!
84 ends in Colorado at Pagosa Springs. To the right (east), lie the San Juan mountains and Wolf Creek ski area (for those of you who like to know those kinds of things). Pagosa Springs is located on the San Juan River, which is about the size of the Musconetcong there. There’s not a lot to Pagosa Springs, its rather a main street (Pagosa Street) sort of town, with a lot of restaurants and motels on the way in. I’m heading for the resort however, and on spotting some steaming pools, I turn off the main road. Fortuitously, I’ve found the resort, called, appropriately enough, “The Springs”.
The concierge plays the silly “its Saturday, I’ll have to see if there’s anything available” game with me while she evaluates me, and finally I get a room. Access to the various pools comes with the room, and although the room is expensive, it’s a lot easier to lodge there than to go elsewhere, buy a day ticket and have to go back and forth. They provide nice heavy terrycloth bathrobes, and soft towels on demand. There are perhaps a dozen different pools, in different sizes, at different temperatures, and with different amenities (waterfalls, better looking women). There’s also a small number of “adult” pools in a segregated area. I ask what do they mean by “adult”, and the best I get is that children aren’t allowed. Duh! I saw nothing else that actually distinguished the adult pools from the others, other than a fairly elegant gas fired outdoor fire place of the circular basin sort, but maybe I just wasn’t there at the “right” time.
The air was cooling quickly as the sun was heading towards setting, and I went for the hottest pool, which at 111 degrees was pretty toasty. A bit of time in there, and I moved on to a slightly cooler, but slightly larger pool nearby. Getting bored there, I went back to the hottest pool. That pool was about waist deep, and access was via a single step at the side with a central handrail. When I had first gone in, I noticed a large chip out of the concrete plaster covered step. I wanted to avoid stepping on that loose chip when going back, so I carefully looked into the pool for the chip, and stepped down with my right foot so as to land just to the left of the chip. Unfortunately, the step was not a continuous ledge, and I kept going! An intense pain shot into my left thigh as I tried to stop my fall, and the best I was able to do was slow myself down enough that I maintained just a little bit of decorum as I kept from landing on another occupant! Ow! I still don’t know exactly what I did to that muscle or tendon, but I could barely walk and couldn’t ascend a stairway!
I soaked my leg, took some aspirin, rested a bit, and headed out for dinner, choosing an Asian restaurant listed in the resort guide. You guessed it, I tried walking instead of driving. Well, I had thought that getting my throat cut and my spine disassembled gave me some empathy with the various injured people I’ve run into over the past 30 years investigating accidents. Well, that was nothing compared to trying to walk what turned out to be about two miles (round trip) in the chilly Colorado evening, with my left leg unable to support my weight unless I had my knee locked. I thought about Gunsmoke! The worst was that every dozen or so steps, I’d lose control, my leg would flex, and the pain would stop me in mid-stride.
After dinner, I went back into one of the pools (adult) to soak my thigh, took some more aspirin (wonder drug) and Xanaflex (another wonder drug) to keep whatever was injured from spasm, and went to sleep.
Sunday, October 10, 2010.
The next morning another dip, an inept encounter with two cute women whom my pain didn’t keep me from eying up, but whom my limp kept me from being comfortable with, a walk (no, I don’t give up - I’m a stubborn German) into town looking for film, and back into the car for breakfast and then Durango!! That leg continued to give me trouble the next few days, and made some of my intended excursions impossible, but so it goes!
Oh. The sulfur. I forgot about the sulfur. The air in Pagosa smells like sulfur. The springs are sulfur water. The sulfur gets into your pores. Even clothing that you’ve put onto your dry body after showering winds up smelling of sulfur. Three washings at home and my bathing suit still smells like sulfur. I’m sure the water is healthful, some people even drink it, but everybody smells like they got seriously paranoid with some 1950's acne remedy!
The road to Durango lies through Bayfield. The terrain is hilly, and the road is mostly narrow as it winds between the various hills. No longer are there the expansive vistas of New Mexico, in fact, at some points I rather felt like I was in the southern Appalachians - perhaps Tennessee or western Virginia. Rounding a sweeping bend I saw a sign for jerky: elk jerky, deer jerky, buffalo jerky. HAD to stop. Wound up in a nice half hour discussion with the woman running the stand, and she told me that her jerky was pure (not true), and good (quite true). She used to live in Durango, until it got too crowded for her, so she moved to Bayfield. Now, I’m having a hard time conceiving that any place in the Four Corners area is too crowded for anybody, too commercial perhaps, but too crowded - no. So, I open a discussion about New Jersey, and what too crowded might mean to me. Its all in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure that somebody from Delhi thinks New Jersey really is the Garden State! She is quite cordial, assures me that I’ll like Durango, and welcomes me to move to Bayfield! The 25 or so dollars of jerky sustained me quite nicely at odd times over the next few days, along with the plentiful supply of Brach’s Harvest Mix that I had imported from New Jersey.
Finally, Durango. Unfortunately for Durango, the approach is through a modern built-up commercial area and is rather unattractive. But, again trusting to the Fates that have guided me well for many travels over many decades, I finally make an opportune but illogical right turn, and wind up on the road to Fort Lewis College! That road crosses Main Avenue, and I’ve arrived! Cruising around a bit, I locate the restaurant where I’m going to meet a friend, and then drive up to the College to get my mental map firmed up.
Durango is pretty much a Main Street city on the Animas River. There are serious ridges, mountains, and mesas on the east and west of the City. The old City is on the eastern side of the river, at the foot of the mesa on which Fort Lewis College is built. There’s a residential district starting just a block off the main street, leading up to the edge of the mesa. Mostly small homes, with front porches, landscaped lawns, trees, people out walking and bicycling - perfectly charming. I got a little lost, disoriented at least, and obtained some directions from a woman tending her garden, without getting that dose of fear that exists whenever I (as a stranger) try to communicate with a woman on the street in New Jersey. Maybe she was armed.
I’ve a little time to kill, so I park my SUV near the restaurant, Carver Brewing Company, and walk Main Avenue. It was very inviting. No closed stores. Couples, singles, children, elders, walking the street, shopping or just strolling. Real stores, a real record shop, a real camera store, some tourist establishments, a huge candy store, restaurants, whatever you could want. Really not much bigger than a good sized NJ mall, but about an order of magnitude more diverse, and infinitely more attractive!
Two PM arrives, my friend arrives (by the way, did I mention that one can find parking on the main street?), and Carver Brewing turns out to have some of the best beer I’ve ever tasted! I get some recommendations for lodging, and finally check into a small 1920's hotel, the Leland House, that was converted from an apartment house, and which is associated with the 1890's Rochester Hotel just across the street. The place is decorated in early 20th c. boxing memorabilia and historic Durango photographs. I’m loving it!
A quick shower, a brief rest, and back out onto the streets. Durango has a working, narrow gauge steam railway, with an associated museum and well equipped repair and restoration shop. The whistle blows regularly, as the train crosses many streets on its route north to Silverton, and even the sound of steam is audible at my lodgings! Wanting some photos (I didn’t bring my flash, and now was the first, and only, time I regretted that omission), I walked down to the terminal, and watched the machinations of moving engines and cars about for the next day. The light was waning however, and no photos were possible.
Dinner at a Mongolian restaurant, which was wonderful, and I’m thinking that perhaps I could call my kids up, have them ship my stuff, and that I could move to Durango the next morning.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Durango? Or, how I get Distracted again!
Saturday, October 9, 2010.
Another exquisite morning in Taos, and my goal is Durango! I’m not actually supposing that I’m going to get to Durango, but Pagosa Springs would be close enough for the day! Out of Taos by the way I had come, but now with fresh batteries in the camera. First stop is the Rio Grande canyon to get the photos that had been missed on the way in. The vendors are beginning to set up in the parking lots on the eastern side of the bridge, and the canyon is dark with the morning shadows.
A walk out onto the bridge! I’m reminded, writing here, of my 1970 trip to Europe. One of the stops there was a campground in France, on the Gard River, at the Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is the remains of a circa 19 BC Roman aqueduct, originally constructed as a part of the water supply system for Nimes, France. It is reputed to be the highest of the Roman aqueducts (160 feet), and one of best preserved. Camping came with the opportunity to swim in the river, at the feet of the ancient structure. The swimming was delightful! I don’t recall the entire range of opportunities, but I vividly recall standing in mid-calf deep water, and watching sizeable fish hover in the eddies a foot downstream of my legs.
People have been crossing the aqueduct for centuries, in fact it owes its preservation to its use as a toll crossing in medieval times. Seeing others on the top, I decided to see what the top was about. Access to both the conduit and to the top was an easy climb in lightly wooded terrain. The top is wide enough to drive a car across, and appears strong enough to do so.
However, walking across, along the center of this causeway that one couldn’t possibly fall off of, peripheral vision announced to me in no uncertain terms that I was walking at least at 60 MPH, and I was completely out of control of my movements. Uncanny. Not vertigo - the sensation stopped as soon as I stopped - but instead a breakdown in my visual feedback system. A sense of being unable to keep control of my balance and position while walking. I suppose I could have shut my eyes and the sensation would have gone away, but that seemed like a pretty bad idea! By focusing on the pavement, and maintaining that concentration, I was able to walk, but it was extraordinarily difficult. Makes me wonder what a child, just learning to walk, experiences!
The same experience did not occur on the Rt. 64 bridge, apparently because the guardrails - which were non-existent on the Pont du Gard - were in peripheral vision, and thus my brain was receiving familiar visual cues.
Pont du Gard, looking downstream.
Pont du Gard again, looking more or less upstream. Swimming was at the foot in the foreground, hidden by the trees on the slope. Got up to the top at the end at the far left of this photo. Some steps had been cut into the top of the second tier and the bottom of third tier, that one could ascend to the top of the third tier.
By the time I finished taking photographs, a good number of vendors had set their wares out. Right at the end of the bridge, there was an older woman with tables of jewelry out. Browsing briefly, I immediately found some lapis earrings and a lapis stone, pierced as for a pendant. I knew that lapis would look stunning with my daughter’s hair (and I’m still hoping that she’ll pierce her ears that I can buy her many more earrings), and, knowing that a dear friend of mine is enamored of cobalt glass, I thought she’d enjoy lapis also, and would be able to work the lapis stone into a necklace for herself.
It was the vendor’s birthday, and we talked of her residence in the region. For years she had to haul water, but recently a communal well was drilled (she said the well had to go to the depth of the river), and water became plentiful! Wishing her a happy day, I walked on to see what else might be around.
Nearby there was a young man with a table full of turquoise and malachite cabochons at extremely low prices. It turned out that most of the pieces were flawed in some way, which gave reason for the attractive prices. However, I rather like some types of flaws in stones - as in wood and people, it is the flaws which give the character (I better think so because I’ve got lots n’ lots of flaws). One particular piece of turquoise, which looked like Sleeping Beauty, caught my attention, and it will be worked into the headstock of the OM sized guitar I’m finishing up now. Marked at $3, but he reduced it to $2, without asking, because of the flaw. To me, the flaw looks like a star in an azure sky, perhaps Venus at dawn.
Across the highway, to a leather worker. Extraordinarily energetic individual, years ago I would have said “speed freak”, but we got into a long discussion the drug trade in NM, during which he vociferously denied using any drugs. He explained that the (more or less) center of drug trafficking in northern NM was Espanola (remember I wrote that I didn’t like the energy in Espanola?). His leather work didn’t appeal to me, but he had a photograph of the bridge and canyon, that a friend of his had taken, for sale as both a postcard (dramatic color) and a panoramic print (dramatic format). I bought both.
Back into the car, thinking the next stop would be Pagosa Springs, but that was not to be. Just a few miles along, I passed the unusual, glittering, seeming free-form buildings that I had noticed on the way in to Taos. Earthships! There is an information center and model building, and an invitation to see what they’re about. Well, they are indeed impressive, and quite self-sustaining. I’ll leave it to your interest to search them on Google, here are some passing comments.
The primary construction modules are used automotive and small truck tires. The tires are stacked in courses like bricks, and then filled with rammed earth. The technique allows for curved walls, domes, etc. Where stuccoed with adobe or cement, the walls are fairly uniform. Where not covered, they are (to my eye) ugly, and smell of tires. I can’t help but think that while a more or less beneficial use of otherwise hard to recycle waste, it can’t ultimately be healthy to breathe the outgasses over years.
Elsewhere, and in addition to tires, walls are constructed with glass bottles and jars, wine bottles seeming to be predominant. I asked, and was told that bottles are readily available from willing donors. In that system, the bottles are laid on their sides, sometimes with the necks cut off, in adobe, and adobe plastered over. Where bottles are used with their necks cut off, the cut ends facing each other and to the center of the wall, a light transmitting wall can be constructed - yielding the glittering walls I had seen from the road.
Flat roofs are covered with rubber membranes, and collect water in 10,000 gallon cisterns.. They use conventional toilets, plumbed to a more or less conventional septic system, but instead of a subterranean leach field they use effluent gardens. Those gardens are not used for edible crops. I asked about composting toilets, and was told that they had been tried but had not worked out very well.
Graywater is filtered and used to irrigate interior gardens, used for ornamentals and kitchen garden type crops. As a result, the building interiors are rather more humid than the arid exteriors, and quite pleasant.
Building costs are high.
Leaving the Earthships, 64 runs westerly towards 84. North on 84 is towards Colorado and Pagosa Springs. South on 84 is towards Ghost Ranch. Now, it being Saturday, I’m expecting to eventually encounter traffic. But no, the very few cars I encounter ascending this southern spur of the San Juan mountains are inoffensive, and there is ample time to pay attention to the beauty. I decide that I’ll head south towards Ghost Ranch when I reach the option point.
On ascent, which starts immediately after leaving Tres Piedras, the terrain changes from the mostly flat sagebrush plain to rolling, but continuously ascending hills, rather like the foothills of the Poconos here in the east. The slopes are steeper though, and the vegetation is different. Where the Poconos are mixed hardwoods and some fully shaped conifers, Carson has mostly aspen and many precisely spired spruces. It being October, the aspens are gold against the spruces, exquisite! There’s an occasional lush farm, quite remote - and quite beautiful! I’m supposing winters are difficult.
This supposition is reinforced on the westerly side of the range spine. There, multiple switchbacks yield grand vistas, and the land seems harsher, like its been exposed to many millennia of cold, wet winds. There are many places where the road has apparently been washed out, and the washes filled with asphalt. I think that I don’t want to be on that road in the kind of weather that causes such powerful streams to flow over the roadway so as to excavate it and carry it in the chasms adjacent.
On reaching 84, I turn left towards Ghost Ranch. Why Ghost Ranch? Well, I want to see what Georgia O’Keefe saw. For the most part, we don’t get to see the environments in which artists have lived. Monet’s Giverny has been preserved that we can see what he saw, and we are free to see the places Ansel Adams photographed, but we can never see what Edward Hopper saw, and the Hudson Valley has been developed even beyond what the Hudson River School artists feared. Oh, yes, I’m sure you can come up with examples I’ve missed, but regardless of what you show, you will never be able to say that it is usual to be able to see what an artist of the past saw. Thus, to me, in October, 2010, I have a rare opportunity!
On the way south, there’s a small sign, a turnoff to Echo Amphitheater. I can’t resist, even though the name is itself an echo of all those roadside attractions billboarded into notoriety elsewhere. It’s a Bureau of Land Reclamation site, and there’s a trivial user fee, payable in cash or check only. The parking lot is at the head of a canyon, and a paved path leads into the canyon. There a signs warning to stay on the path as the terrain is sensitive, and there are a few pleasant, paved picnic sites just off the main path.
The walls of the canyon rise on both sides of the path. The distance between the walls is but one or two hundred yards. To the right is an eroded promontory revealing epochs of aggregation of the seabed. The lower strata are mostly pale red iron, then there comes a slightly darker region still iron red, then a chalk white region, topped with ochre and then earth brown. I wonder how far back into time I am walking.
The promentory at the easterly end of the northern wall of the canyon. That grey layer at the very top is what we would call topsoil. Its perhaps 20 - 30 inches thick in this photo.
The northern wall, or at least the top of it!
At the back of the canyon, there is indeed a natural amphitheater. The lower strata have eroded, and there is an enormous conchoidal fracture in the upper strata, such that a dome has formed. This is my first experience with such rock formations, and it opens my eyes to the possibility. There is even an oculus, though which running water has left a stain on the underside of the half dome. Of course, the echo must be tried!
The amphitheater itself. The above photos are to the right of this spot, and behind. There is a rocky ascent near the bottom of the amphitheater, that one can better get to the focus of the semi-dome.
Returning to my car, I see the first of many more shallow, conchoidal caves that have formed in the cliffs easterly of Echo Amphitheater. Days later, at Mesa Verde, I realize that most of the abodes there exist beneath such convenient fractures. The earths grow increasingly more colorful! Still, as beautiful as the colors of the earth at the Amphitheater are, they have not prepared me for arrival in the region of Ghost Ranch. To the west, in this arid land, is a lake! Apparently Rio Chama, which runs southeasterly from the Chama River Canyon Wilderness area, was dammed, creating a body of water called Abiquiu Lake/Reservoir.
To the east is Ghost Ranch, which extends in a semi-circle perhaps 2 miles away from the road, and to the foot of a large mesa. At the northerly and southerly ends of the ranch area, the mesa comes right up to the road. Its not startlingly high, but it is startlingly colored. While truth is that it is a limited palette, it seems that all the colors of an artist’s palette are there. No wonder Ms. O’Keefe chose to live there, she had chosen to live with her pigments! On closer examination, it is really only the iron reds that are present, tempered by occasional chalky, white strata, and occasional reduced iron greys. But, the impression is of a riot of color!
A lake! I can smell it!
There's no way a photo can do the colors justice.
I’m hot; I’m thirsty - the lake has tantalized me. And, while I was able to refill my water bottle at Echo Amphitheater, the water was so soft as to be flat and alkaline tasting and I’m wondering what it might do to my digestion; and I’m hungry - all I’ve had to eat is raisins and crystallized ginger from Albuquerque. A stop for gas finds a large convenience store, where I’m able to get water, but nothing that seems healthy to eat. So, back on the road, and more raisins on the way north to Pagosa (anybody remember Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska”?) I wonder what he ate?
Another exquisite morning in Taos, and my goal is Durango! I’m not actually supposing that I’m going to get to Durango, but Pagosa Springs would be close enough for the day! Out of Taos by the way I had come, but now with fresh batteries in the camera. First stop is the Rio Grande canyon to get the photos that had been missed on the way in. The vendors are beginning to set up in the parking lots on the eastern side of the bridge, and the canyon is dark with the morning shadows.
A walk out onto the bridge! I’m reminded, writing here, of my 1970 trip to Europe. One of the stops there was a campground in France, on the Gard River, at the Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is the remains of a circa 19 BC Roman aqueduct, originally constructed as a part of the water supply system for Nimes, France. It is reputed to be the highest of the Roman aqueducts (160 feet), and one of best preserved. Camping came with the opportunity to swim in the river, at the feet of the ancient structure. The swimming was delightful! I don’t recall the entire range of opportunities, but I vividly recall standing in mid-calf deep water, and watching sizeable fish hover in the eddies a foot downstream of my legs.
People have been crossing the aqueduct for centuries, in fact it owes its preservation to its use as a toll crossing in medieval times. Seeing others on the top, I decided to see what the top was about. Access to both the conduit and to the top was an easy climb in lightly wooded terrain. The top is wide enough to drive a car across, and appears strong enough to do so.
However, walking across, along the center of this causeway that one couldn’t possibly fall off of, peripheral vision announced to me in no uncertain terms that I was walking at least at 60 MPH, and I was completely out of control of my movements. Uncanny. Not vertigo - the sensation stopped as soon as I stopped - but instead a breakdown in my visual feedback system. A sense of being unable to keep control of my balance and position while walking. I suppose I could have shut my eyes and the sensation would have gone away, but that seemed like a pretty bad idea! By focusing on the pavement, and maintaining that concentration, I was able to walk, but it was extraordinarily difficult. Makes me wonder what a child, just learning to walk, experiences!
The same experience did not occur on the Rt. 64 bridge, apparently because the guardrails - which were non-existent on the Pont du Gard - were in peripheral vision, and thus my brain was receiving familiar visual cues.
Pont du Gard, looking downstream.
Pont du Gard again, looking more or less upstream. Swimming was at the foot in the foreground, hidden by the trees on the slope. Got up to the top at the end at the far left of this photo. Some steps had been cut into the top of the second tier and the bottom of third tier, that one could ascend to the top of the third tier.By the time I finished taking photographs, a good number of vendors had set their wares out. Right at the end of the bridge, there was an older woman with tables of jewelry out. Browsing briefly, I immediately found some lapis earrings and a lapis stone, pierced as for a pendant. I knew that lapis would look stunning with my daughter’s hair (and I’m still hoping that she’ll pierce her ears that I can buy her many more earrings), and, knowing that a dear friend of mine is enamored of cobalt glass, I thought she’d enjoy lapis also, and would be able to work the lapis stone into a necklace for herself.
It was the vendor’s birthday, and we talked of her residence in the region. For years she had to haul water, but recently a communal well was drilled (she said the well had to go to the depth of the river), and water became plentiful! Wishing her a happy day, I walked on to see what else might be around.
Nearby there was a young man with a table full of turquoise and malachite cabochons at extremely low prices. It turned out that most of the pieces were flawed in some way, which gave reason for the attractive prices. However, I rather like some types of flaws in stones - as in wood and people, it is the flaws which give the character (I better think so because I’ve got lots n’ lots of flaws). One particular piece of turquoise, which looked like Sleeping Beauty, caught my attention, and it will be worked into the headstock of the OM sized guitar I’m finishing up now. Marked at $3, but he reduced it to $2, without asking, because of the flaw. To me, the flaw looks like a star in an azure sky, perhaps Venus at dawn.
Across the highway, to a leather worker. Extraordinarily energetic individual, years ago I would have said “speed freak”, but we got into a long discussion the drug trade in NM, during which he vociferously denied using any drugs. He explained that the (more or less) center of drug trafficking in northern NM was Espanola (remember I wrote that I didn’t like the energy in Espanola?). His leather work didn’t appeal to me, but he had a photograph of the bridge and canyon, that a friend of his had taken, for sale as both a postcard (dramatic color) and a panoramic print (dramatic format). I bought both.
Back into the car, thinking the next stop would be Pagosa Springs, but that was not to be. Just a few miles along, I passed the unusual, glittering, seeming free-form buildings that I had noticed on the way in to Taos. Earthships! There is an information center and model building, and an invitation to see what they’re about. Well, they are indeed impressive, and quite self-sustaining. I’ll leave it to your interest to search them on Google, here are some passing comments.
The primary construction modules are used automotive and small truck tires. The tires are stacked in courses like bricks, and then filled with rammed earth. The technique allows for curved walls, domes, etc. Where stuccoed with adobe or cement, the walls are fairly uniform. Where not covered, they are (to my eye) ugly, and smell of tires. I can’t help but think that while a more or less beneficial use of otherwise hard to recycle waste, it can’t ultimately be healthy to breathe the outgasses over years.
Elsewhere, and in addition to tires, walls are constructed with glass bottles and jars, wine bottles seeming to be predominant. I asked, and was told that bottles are readily available from willing donors. In that system, the bottles are laid on their sides, sometimes with the necks cut off, in adobe, and adobe plastered over. Where bottles are used with their necks cut off, the cut ends facing each other and to the center of the wall, a light transmitting wall can be constructed - yielding the glittering walls I had seen from the road.
Flat roofs are covered with rubber membranes, and collect water in 10,000 gallon cisterns.. They use conventional toilets, plumbed to a more or less conventional septic system, but instead of a subterranean leach field they use effluent gardens. Those gardens are not used for edible crops. I asked about composting toilets, and was told that they had been tried but had not worked out very well.
Graywater is filtered and used to irrigate interior gardens, used for ornamentals and kitchen garden type crops. As a result, the building interiors are rather more humid than the arid exteriors, and quite pleasant.
Building costs are high.
Leaving the Earthships, 64 runs westerly towards 84. North on 84 is towards Colorado and Pagosa Springs. South on 84 is towards Ghost Ranch. Now, it being Saturday, I’m expecting to eventually encounter traffic. But no, the very few cars I encounter ascending this southern spur of the San Juan mountains are inoffensive, and there is ample time to pay attention to the beauty. I decide that I’ll head south towards Ghost Ranch when I reach the option point.
On ascent, which starts immediately after leaving Tres Piedras, the terrain changes from the mostly flat sagebrush plain to rolling, but continuously ascending hills, rather like the foothills of the Poconos here in the east. The slopes are steeper though, and the vegetation is different. Where the Poconos are mixed hardwoods and some fully shaped conifers, Carson has mostly aspen and many precisely spired spruces. It being October, the aspens are gold against the spruces, exquisite! There’s an occasional lush farm, quite remote - and quite beautiful! I’m supposing winters are difficult.
This supposition is reinforced on the westerly side of the range spine. There, multiple switchbacks yield grand vistas, and the land seems harsher, like its been exposed to many millennia of cold, wet winds. There are many places where the road has apparently been washed out, and the washes filled with asphalt. I think that I don’t want to be on that road in the kind of weather that causes such powerful streams to flow over the roadway so as to excavate it and carry it in the chasms adjacent.
On reaching 84, I turn left towards Ghost Ranch. Why Ghost Ranch? Well, I want to see what Georgia O’Keefe saw. For the most part, we don’t get to see the environments in which artists have lived. Monet’s Giverny has been preserved that we can see what he saw, and we are free to see the places Ansel Adams photographed, but we can never see what Edward Hopper saw, and the Hudson Valley has been developed even beyond what the Hudson River School artists feared. Oh, yes, I’m sure you can come up with examples I’ve missed, but regardless of what you show, you will never be able to say that it is usual to be able to see what an artist of the past saw. Thus, to me, in October, 2010, I have a rare opportunity!
On the way south, there’s a small sign, a turnoff to Echo Amphitheater. I can’t resist, even though the name is itself an echo of all those roadside attractions billboarded into notoriety elsewhere. It’s a Bureau of Land Reclamation site, and there’s a trivial user fee, payable in cash or check only. The parking lot is at the head of a canyon, and a paved path leads into the canyon. There a signs warning to stay on the path as the terrain is sensitive, and there are a few pleasant, paved picnic sites just off the main path.
The walls of the canyon rise on both sides of the path. The distance between the walls is but one or two hundred yards. To the right is an eroded promontory revealing epochs of aggregation of the seabed. The lower strata are mostly pale red iron, then there comes a slightly darker region still iron red, then a chalk white region, topped with ochre and then earth brown. I wonder how far back into time I am walking.
The promentory at the easterly end of the northern wall of the canyon. That grey layer at the very top is what we would call topsoil. Its perhaps 20 - 30 inches thick in this photo.
The northern wall, or at least the top of it!At the back of the canyon, there is indeed a natural amphitheater. The lower strata have eroded, and there is an enormous conchoidal fracture in the upper strata, such that a dome has formed. This is my first experience with such rock formations, and it opens my eyes to the possibility. There is even an oculus, though which running water has left a stain on the underside of the half dome. Of course, the echo must be tried!
The amphitheater itself. The above photos are to the right of this spot, and behind. There is a rocky ascent near the bottom of the amphitheater, that one can better get to the focus of the semi-dome.Returning to my car, I see the first of many more shallow, conchoidal caves that have formed in the cliffs easterly of Echo Amphitheater. Days later, at Mesa Verde, I realize that most of the abodes there exist beneath such convenient fractures. The earths grow increasingly more colorful! Still, as beautiful as the colors of the earth at the Amphitheater are, they have not prepared me for arrival in the region of Ghost Ranch. To the west, in this arid land, is a lake! Apparently Rio Chama, which runs southeasterly from the Chama River Canyon Wilderness area, was dammed, creating a body of water called Abiquiu Lake/Reservoir.
To the east is Ghost Ranch, which extends in a semi-circle perhaps 2 miles away from the road, and to the foot of a large mesa. At the northerly and southerly ends of the ranch area, the mesa comes right up to the road. Its not startlingly high, but it is startlingly colored. While truth is that it is a limited palette, it seems that all the colors of an artist’s palette are there. No wonder Ms. O’Keefe chose to live there, she had chosen to live with her pigments! On closer examination, it is really only the iron reds that are present, tempered by occasional chalky, white strata, and occasional reduced iron greys. But, the impression is of a riot of color!
A lake! I can smell it!
There's no way a photo can do the colors justice.I’m hot; I’m thirsty - the lake has tantalized me. And, while I was able to refill my water bottle at Echo Amphitheater, the water was so soft as to be flat and alkaline tasting and I’m wondering what it might do to my digestion; and I’m hungry - all I’ve had to eat is raisins and crystallized ginger from Albuquerque. A stop for gas finds a large convenience store, where I’m able to get water, but nothing that seems healthy to eat. So, back on the road, and more raisins on the way north to Pagosa (anybody remember Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska”?) I wonder what he ate?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Afternoon in Taos
Friday, October 8, 2010: It’s mid-afternoon by the time I get back to Taos. The parade’s done, and there’s little traffic. I had spotted a museum, the Taos Art Museum and Fechin house, roughly opposite where I’m staying. Presuming that it, like other museums, closes early on a Friday, I’m sort of rushing to get there. I’ve no idea of what to expect, but I come upon a large, 1920's looking adobe mansion, with a large, single-story outbuilding and a small garden.
A charming, older woman sells me a ticket, and gives me a brief description of the home as she hands me a descriptive brochure. Nicolai Fechin had been born in Russia, emigrated to the United States in 1923, and moved to Taos in 1927. There had been a thriving artists' community in Taos, rather started by Mabel Luhan Dodge, and Fechin was a member of that community. He designed the home (his corrugated cardboard model of the house remains on display in his studio), and carved essentially all of the profuse woodwork in the style of his birthplace, Kazan, as tempered by his artistic bent. The house is magnificently inviting. Large rooms, with much light, and good sound, but without that isolation from the sense of ‘home’ that comes with almost every other mansion, or even grand house, I’ve been in.
There’s a large music room in the northwestern corner of the first floor, with a piano that his wife, Alexandra, played. Touching the keys, I sensed a room filled with intelligent, creative people, and a sadness that somehow Alexandra didn’t fit the group. Whatever my senses, they divorced, and she stayed in the house until her death. When they divorced, their daughter, Eya, went with her father. She didn’t return until after Fechin’s death in 1955.
It’s upstairs that the most stunning paintings are collected. The reproductions here cannot reveal the complexity and intensity of color, or the startling effects of his application of cubist (he did some of those too) techniques to figurative works. There’s even some Vermeer in the way he uses light. Perhaps my favorite in the museum was the portrait of the Balinese Girl.
The color reproduction is uncertain. The only painting of this group which I saw at Taos was the Balinese Girl. That was more colorful than the reproduction reveals.
Alexandra
Eya in a Peasant Blouse
Balinese Girl
Nude (as if you couldn't tell)
A charming, older woman sells me a ticket, and gives me a brief description of the home as she hands me a descriptive brochure. Nicolai Fechin had been born in Russia, emigrated to the United States in 1923, and moved to Taos in 1927. There had been a thriving artists' community in Taos, rather started by Mabel Luhan Dodge, and Fechin was a member of that community. He designed the home (his corrugated cardboard model of the house remains on display in his studio), and carved essentially all of the profuse woodwork in the style of his birthplace, Kazan, as tempered by his artistic bent. The house is magnificently inviting. Large rooms, with much light, and good sound, but without that isolation from the sense of ‘home’ that comes with almost every other mansion, or even grand house, I’ve been in.
There’s a large music room in the northwestern corner of the first floor, with a piano that his wife, Alexandra, played. Touching the keys, I sensed a room filled with intelligent, creative people, and a sadness that somehow Alexandra didn’t fit the group. Whatever my senses, they divorced, and she stayed in the house until her death. When they divorced, their daughter, Eya, went with her father. She didn’t return until after Fechin’s death in 1955.
It’s upstairs that the most stunning paintings are collected. The reproductions here cannot reveal the complexity and intensity of color, or the startling effects of his application of cubist (he did some of those too) techniques to figurative works. There’s even some Vermeer in the way he uses light. Perhaps my favorite in the museum was the portrait of the Balinese Girl.
The color reproduction is uncertain. The only painting of this group which I saw at Taos was the Balinese Girl. That was more colorful than the reproduction reveals.
Alexandra
Eya in a Peasant Blouse
Balinese Girl
Nude (as if you couldn't tell)Back outside, I went to the outbuilding, which had been Fechin’s studio. It is essentially bare, except for light, and the small cardboard model of the house. Standing at that model, I try to connect with the artist. Suddenly, a door opens not two feet away from me, I jump, and a woman is standing there! A brief exchange of apologies, some pleasantries, and I find that the woman is the curator. She invites me into the offices, and shows me how that part of the building had once been open to the air, a ramada. Going back inside the studio, the woman tells me of the history, the mystery, of the tension between Nicolai and Alexandra. She points out a loft bed over a bathroom in the corner of the studio, and tells me that initially Fechin had moved into his studio before actually leaving Taos. She tells me of Eya’s return, and alludes to the great unknown of why Eya left her mother, refusing even to write or talk with her. She tells me to walk in the garden, for Alexandra is buried there.
I do indeed walk, and find a peaceful grave site in a remote corner of the carefully tended, but not tightly manicured, garden. Some photographs are in order.
The garden (easterly) facade before restoration.
The garden facade after restoration.
Southerly facade, Eya's sunroom
Looking at the exterior of what had been Fechin’s daughter, Eya’s, sunroom. From inside it was absolutely charming, and part of what was really a child’s suite. Fechin had carved the furniture for Eya, and, while not diminutive, it was appropriately smaller. This in a home where all interior passages were smaller than modern. I wonder if Fechin had intended a kind of slowing and obeisance in passing from room to room, thus forcing recognition of the transition, and a visual survey of the new space as it was entered.
The curator had told me that the Fechin property had originally been much larger than the museum grounds it now occupies, and that Eya sold off a part of the property to finance restoration of the house and establishment of the museum. Now, there’s an upscale bed & breakfast behind the museum. While, alone, I’m quite satisfied with the Pueblo Lodge, it strikes me that if I’m ever to return to Taos with company, the Fechin Inn would be an excellent place to stay. And no, Fechin is not pronounced like fetching, with a dropped ‘g’, and the posh Fechin Inn does not thus inadvertently adopt the pun so well suited to all of the motels and motor lodges that sprang up along highways in the 50's. The internet tells me that there is some controversy over the pronunciation of Fechin, apparently stemming from translation from Cyrillic to American. While the “preferred” pronunciation is Fey - chin, a translator indicates that it should be Fey -shin. Its all so much easier when the artist is still alive!
The museum is closing, but the day is not over. Earlier in the day, I had stopped in a gallery near the museum, and asked if they knew of a Buddhist retreat in Taos. The proprietor knew of a stupa north of Taos, in El Rito, north of Questa. I asked for directions, and he told me to drive north to Questa, and I wouldn’t be able to miss it. Back into the SUV, and north!
New Mexico is just enough more southerly than New Jersey that the difference in day length is perceptible. Having left the museum at 4:00, the sun is getting low as I’m driving the 20 or so miles to El Rito. At the edge of the plain, but not yet into the mountains, the road need not wind about, but neither is it dead straight. Instead, the road rises and falls over the gentle mounds in this fringe area. Questa appears, and then disappears, opening up to a straight road over the sagebrush plain. Nothing is in sight, or more correctly, everything is in sight, but no small feature that might be considered to be El Rito, or a stupa. A few more miles, just enough to make me start to wonder if I’ve missed my goal, and then the low sun glints off a golden spire. Farther off the road than I anticipated, the sun has found the stupa, and except for the sun, I would not have.
A narrow dirt road leads into the scrub trees and sagebrush. There’s no sign, but the spire rises above the trees, and I’m able to follow roads, little more than tracks, through the scrub to a small parking lot. There’s nobody about. The sun is still warm, but the west wind has a chill. Except for the wind in the scrub, it is silent. I am amazed!
The stupa is a focal point for the Earth Journey community
Returning to Taos, I stop at the Lodge for a brief rest before dinner. It is there and then that lunch, which seemed so very good when I had it, sours my stomach. Chocolate! Damn! Hungry, but not really wanting to eat, I think that I might walk back into town, check out a bar that had advertised some music, and have a beer to settle my stomach.
Indeed, the bar is about to, have music, but its not to start until 10 PM, its only 9, and the cover is steep. However, they let me in for a beer, there are few seats at the bar, and a beer is poured. The musicians start to set up, a youngish crowd starts to filter in, and before I finish my beer, one of the more interesting encounters of my life unfolds.
I do indeed walk, and find a peaceful grave site in a remote corner of the carefully tended, but not tightly manicured, garden. Some photographs are in order.
The garden (easterly) facade before restoration.
The garden facade after restoration.
Southerly facade, Eya's sunroom
Looking at the exterior of what had been Fechin’s daughter, Eya’s, sunroom. From inside it was absolutely charming, and part of what was really a child’s suite. Fechin had carved the furniture for Eya, and, while not diminutive, it was appropriately smaller. This in a home where all interior passages were smaller than modern. I wonder if Fechin had intended a kind of slowing and obeisance in passing from room to room, thus forcing recognition of the transition, and a visual survey of the new space as it was entered.The curator had told me that the Fechin property had originally been much larger than the museum grounds it now occupies, and that Eya sold off a part of the property to finance restoration of the house and establishment of the museum. Now, there’s an upscale bed & breakfast behind the museum. While, alone, I’m quite satisfied with the Pueblo Lodge, it strikes me that if I’m ever to return to Taos with company, the Fechin Inn would be an excellent place to stay. And no, Fechin is not pronounced like fetching, with a dropped ‘g’, and the posh Fechin Inn does not thus inadvertently adopt the pun so well suited to all of the motels and motor lodges that sprang up along highways in the 50's. The internet tells me that there is some controversy over the pronunciation of Fechin, apparently stemming from translation from Cyrillic to American. While the “preferred” pronunciation is Fey - chin, a translator indicates that it should be Fey -shin. Its all so much easier when the artist is still alive!
The museum is closing, but the day is not over. Earlier in the day, I had stopped in a gallery near the museum, and asked if they knew of a Buddhist retreat in Taos. The proprietor knew of a stupa north of Taos, in El Rito, north of Questa. I asked for directions, and he told me to drive north to Questa, and I wouldn’t be able to miss it. Back into the SUV, and north!
New Mexico is just enough more southerly than New Jersey that the difference in day length is perceptible. Having left the museum at 4:00, the sun is getting low as I’m driving the 20 or so miles to El Rito. At the edge of the plain, but not yet into the mountains, the road need not wind about, but neither is it dead straight. Instead, the road rises and falls over the gentle mounds in this fringe area. Questa appears, and then disappears, opening up to a straight road over the sagebrush plain. Nothing is in sight, or more correctly, everything is in sight, but no small feature that might be considered to be El Rito, or a stupa. A few more miles, just enough to make me start to wonder if I’ve missed my goal, and then the low sun glints off a golden spire. Farther off the road than I anticipated, the sun has found the stupa, and except for the sun, I would not have.
A narrow dirt road leads into the scrub trees and sagebrush. There’s no sign, but the spire rises above the trees, and I’m able to follow roads, little more than tracks, through the scrub to a small parking lot. There’s nobody about. The sun is still warm, but the west wind has a chill. Except for the wind in the scrub, it is silent. I am amazed!
The stupa is a focal point for the Earth Journey communityReturning to Taos, I stop at the Lodge for a brief rest before dinner. It is there and then that lunch, which seemed so very good when I had it, sours my stomach. Chocolate! Damn! Hungry, but not really wanting to eat, I think that I might walk back into town, check out a bar that had advertised some music, and have a beer to settle my stomach.
Indeed, the bar is about to, have music, but its not to start until 10 PM, its only 9, and the cover is steep. However, they let me in for a beer, there are few seats at the bar, and a beer is poured. The musicians start to set up, a youngish crowd starts to filter in, and before I finish my beer, one of the more interesting encounters of my life unfolds.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Into the Myth, or A Morning in Taos
Thursday, October 7, 2010: Leaving the parking area, the developed areas of Taos can be seen to the right, extending southerly along the foot of the mountains. An intersection, with a traffic light is reached, and a right turn leads towards whatever it is Taos has to offer. On reaching the outskirts, the speed limit drops to 35, various shops abound, the roadway turns more or less sharply to the right, and some lodging appears on both sides of the street (Paseo del Pueblo Norte). I could stop here, but traffic is light and my usual technique for a strange city is to go towards the center, get the feel of the organization of the place, and then find lodging. Suddenly, I see a Radio Shack! Now normally that is of little interest, but you may recall that my camera is malfunctioning, and batteries seem the problem (not so, but I don’t know that yet). I stop right in front, and go shopping.
As I try to pay for the batteries that were easily found (they are special, but are also readily available in the right place), the attendant cautions me not to trip on my shoelaces. Indeed, one is untied, and I bitch about the epidemic inability for shoe manufactures to sell shoes with appropriately sized shoe laces (New Balance, very nice hikers, big bucks, wretched laces). We also talk about altitude effects, and she tells me that there is an Oxygen bar just across the street. An Oxygen bar? Yes, and she says that I should try it out even if I’m not feeling sick! I’m starting to wonder why so many people are cautioning me about the altitude. (Later, at home, when I’m trying to reverse diagnose some ailments I was feeling, I learn that altitude sickness is a very real problem, even at 6000 - 7000 feet some 25% of people - regardless of physical health, fitness or prior experiences - are affected adversely; and I realize that many of the things I had been feeling had been the early indications of altitude sickness). What was her prescience? I should have listened!
Most importantly, the woman tells me that its less than a mile walk to the Plaza, and that people commonly walk from the lodgings nearby to the Plaza. A block or so back is the Pueblo Lodge, with a “vacancy” sign! Even looks like a large version of the types of ‘Motor Lodges’ that I used to stay in as a kid when traveling with my Mom. Now those were adventures! 1948 Pontiac. Wool seats. No A/C. Vacuum wipers. AM radio. 9 year old kid navigating with Esso (sometimes Flying A) maps, playing alphabet games with license plates, and reading Burma Shave signs! We need more Burma Shave signs, and fewer cell phones!!!
Anyway, a nice room at the back (for quiet) is available, and I check in. Shower, some telephone calls, a walk to the Plaza, a look around, and then some food and a beer at a place called Eske’s. Some Brach’s Autumn Mix (it used to be only Farley’s was made with honey. Now Farley’s isn’t available, but Brach’s notes that their candy corn is made with honey. It’s the honey!) for dessert, read a bit, and sleep.
Friday, October 8, 2010: There was a thunderstorm in the early morning, which woke me, but I interpreted it as a train. Not that I’d seen any rails since Cerrillos, but trains do get tucked away. At daylight, a visit to the very popular Michael’s Kitchen, where I get both coffee and into the middle of a conversation (sitting at a counter) between some people complaining about house prices, lack of work and foreclosures. Lot of anger about banks refusing to re-negotiate rates, in favor of foreclosing on houses they can’t re-sell. Go figure!
Breakfast was good - New Jersey diner style - and I’m not talking about those modern diners, I’m talking those 1920 - 1960 diner style breakfasts! No, I wasn’t alive in 1920, but a few of those diners were still around until the 70's and they served large quantities of wonderful high carb, high fat, great smelling foods. Just what you needed the morning after carousing in bars on Staten Island, or getting ready to go fishing or sailing!
Out of Michael’s and into town. Kit Carson house and museum - cool place. A stop at a shop next door that sells used hats and cowboy paraphernalia. There’s sun in NM, and my panama was at home. I had seen one straw cowboy hat in Madrid, but I thought I looked silly in it. There were some great looking hats in the window of this shop though, and after a brief browse I found exactly what I wanted. That is, exactly what I wanted except for fit! Lamenting that inexorable fact, the hat went back on the rack. The proprietor, a tall cowboy looking character wearing a great looking black hat, asked if he could help. I said, “Sure”, and he proceeded to give me a 45 minute lesson in hats, hat sizing, hat design, and hat wearing.
I asked him, “If I move to Taos, do I have to learn to ride?” He said no. He also sold me a great hat, which affords outstanding sun protection, but unfortunately can’t be worn in a car because of the headrest. I think if I move to Taos I too will get myself one of those 1950's - 1960's pick up trucks (an acquaintance from Dallas calls them “pick em up” trucks), that are fairly common out here. Sometimes rusting in the side yard, sometimes rolling wonderfully down the street. Might even get me a gun rack! So there! I’ll be lookin’ right sporty in my hat, checking out the young, female tourists! Might even keep an Oxygen bottle on the seat next to me.
Time to move on. I keep on walking, note that in a store on the Plaza they’re selling Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. Now, you might not remember that stuff, but it was one of the better 50's candies. Went off the market in the early 70's. Rectangular slabs of essentially pure sugar, cooked and worked and flavored to make a sometimes sticky, sometimes brittle substance sure to delight orthodontists. I think it was 5 cents - a nickel - and one of those proud buffalo nickels - not those insipid Jefferson nickels we have now. Bring back REAL money, Walking Liberty in my pocket! Enough with living in the past, reminiscing on the busts of politicians, let’s go back to fantasies of glory and a bright future!!! Ah-h-h, the delights the vision of a bar of Bonomo’s brings!
On to a Western Store. Still looking for a straw hat, and maybe a Western yoke shirt. No hat, no shirt, but a belt for my son.
There’s a parade brewing, and the Paseo is blocked by NM State Troopers. Back to the motel, pick up my SUV, get stuck behind a car with New York plates (?), and find away around the parade route towards Ranchos de Taos. Spend some time in the only traffic jam I ever saw in NM, and certainly the best behaved traffic jam I’ve ever been in. Finally get back to the main road, looking for the San Francisco de Asis Mission church.
South of Taos is where the box stores are, and I’m very glad I didn’t approach Taos from the south, I would have had a completely different impression of the city. Looking for the Mission, I’m expecting something imposing, but it’s surrounded by commerce and not readily seen from the road. Eventually, I realize that I’ve just passed it, turn around and stop for lunch before going to the Mission.
Lunch is at a tiny, roadside New Mexican restaurant. Looks to be mostly takeout, but there are a couple of tables indoors and a picnic table outdoors. Young man is working the counter, and a woman, perhaps his mother is cooking. The place is named after her, and I can’t remember the name. There’s a simple and interesting menu, from which I order a chicken mole, with corn tortillas and a mango drink (diluted mango juice served over ice cubes - very refreshing. So much so that I wind up ordering a second to go). The mole was delicious, and I’m thinking what a great find this was, as I finish off the stack of tortillas.
The Mission is but a hundred yards away, and I park in what appears to be the appropriate lot, but which I found out was the lot serving the shops in the Ranchos Plaza. Curiously, the Mission Church does not face the road, its back does. Earlier experiences have led me to believe that churches always face their plazas, but apparently, Ranchos Plaza has been so over built that any vestiges of the original traveled ways have disappeared.
What had been a plaza in front of the church has been turned over to parking, and the lot delightfully allows stepping back from the courtyard and getting a good vista of the small complex. The church is magnificent! Massive adobe in the most intriguing peach/ochre color.
St. Francis himself is in the courtyard, and I hang out with him awhile. I’m not Catholic, but I have affinities for both St. Francis and St. Catherine, and any time I’m in a place dedicated to one or the other I take the time to meditate and connect with them. I’ve got to mention that I had a seriously powerful experience with Catherine in Siena! But, Francis was a peaceful, retiring man, and he’s not pushing me to more revelations. So, I accept the simple peace of this delightful courtyard, take some more photos, make a donation and head on back to Taos.
As I try to pay for the batteries that were easily found (they are special, but are also readily available in the right place), the attendant cautions me not to trip on my shoelaces. Indeed, one is untied, and I bitch about the epidemic inability for shoe manufactures to sell shoes with appropriately sized shoe laces (New Balance, very nice hikers, big bucks, wretched laces). We also talk about altitude effects, and she tells me that there is an Oxygen bar just across the street. An Oxygen bar? Yes, and she says that I should try it out even if I’m not feeling sick! I’m starting to wonder why so many people are cautioning me about the altitude. (Later, at home, when I’m trying to reverse diagnose some ailments I was feeling, I learn that altitude sickness is a very real problem, even at 6000 - 7000 feet some 25% of people - regardless of physical health, fitness or prior experiences - are affected adversely; and I realize that many of the things I had been feeling had been the early indications of altitude sickness). What was her prescience? I should have listened!
Most importantly, the woman tells me that its less than a mile walk to the Plaza, and that people commonly walk from the lodgings nearby to the Plaza. A block or so back is the Pueblo Lodge, with a “vacancy” sign! Even looks like a large version of the types of ‘Motor Lodges’ that I used to stay in as a kid when traveling with my Mom. Now those were adventures! 1948 Pontiac. Wool seats. No A/C. Vacuum wipers. AM radio. 9 year old kid navigating with Esso (sometimes Flying A) maps, playing alphabet games with license plates, and reading Burma Shave signs! We need more Burma Shave signs, and fewer cell phones!!!
Anyway, a nice room at the back (for quiet) is available, and I check in. Shower, some telephone calls, a walk to the Plaza, a look around, and then some food and a beer at a place called Eske’s. Some Brach’s Autumn Mix (it used to be only Farley’s was made with honey. Now Farley’s isn’t available, but Brach’s notes that their candy corn is made with honey. It’s the honey!) for dessert, read a bit, and sleep.
Friday, October 8, 2010: There was a thunderstorm in the early morning, which woke me, but I interpreted it as a train. Not that I’d seen any rails since Cerrillos, but trains do get tucked away. At daylight, a visit to the very popular Michael’s Kitchen, where I get both coffee and into the middle of a conversation (sitting at a counter) between some people complaining about house prices, lack of work and foreclosures. Lot of anger about banks refusing to re-negotiate rates, in favor of foreclosing on houses they can’t re-sell. Go figure!
Breakfast was good - New Jersey diner style - and I’m not talking about those modern diners, I’m talking those 1920 - 1960 diner style breakfasts! No, I wasn’t alive in 1920, but a few of those diners were still around until the 70's and they served large quantities of wonderful high carb, high fat, great smelling foods. Just what you needed the morning after carousing in bars on Staten Island, or getting ready to go fishing or sailing!
Out of Michael’s and into town. Kit Carson house and museum - cool place. A stop at a shop next door that sells used hats and cowboy paraphernalia. There’s sun in NM, and my panama was at home. I had seen one straw cowboy hat in Madrid, but I thought I looked silly in it. There were some great looking hats in the window of this shop though, and after a brief browse I found exactly what I wanted. That is, exactly what I wanted except for fit! Lamenting that inexorable fact, the hat went back on the rack. The proprietor, a tall cowboy looking character wearing a great looking black hat, asked if he could help. I said, “Sure”, and he proceeded to give me a 45 minute lesson in hats, hat sizing, hat design, and hat wearing.
I asked him, “If I move to Taos, do I have to learn to ride?” He said no. He also sold me a great hat, which affords outstanding sun protection, but unfortunately can’t be worn in a car because of the headrest. I think if I move to Taos I too will get myself one of those 1950's - 1960's pick up trucks (an acquaintance from Dallas calls them “pick em up” trucks), that are fairly common out here. Sometimes rusting in the side yard, sometimes rolling wonderfully down the street. Might even get me a gun rack! So there! I’ll be lookin’ right sporty in my hat, checking out the young, female tourists! Might even keep an Oxygen bottle on the seat next to me.
Time to move on. I keep on walking, note that in a store on the Plaza they’re selling Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. Now, you might not remember that stuff, but it was one of the better 50's candies. Went off the market in the early 70's. Rectangular slabs of essentially pure sugar, cooked and worked and flavored to make a sometimes sticky, sometimes brittle substance sure to delight orthodontists. I think it was 5 cents - a nickel - and one of those proud buffalo nickels - not those insipid Jefferson nickels we have now. Bring back REAL money, Walking Liberty in my pocket! Enough with living in the past, reminiscing on the busts of politicians, let’s go back to fantasies of glory and a bright future!!! Ah-h-h, the delights the vision of a bar of Bonomo’s brings!
On to a Western Store. Still looking for a straw hat, and maybe a Western yoke shirt. No hat, no shirt, but a belt for my son.
There’s a parade brewing, and the Paseo is blocked by NM State Troopers. Back to the motel, pick up my SUV, get stuck behind a car with New York plates (?), and find away around the parade route towards Ranchos de Taos. Spend some time in the only traffic jam I ever saw in NM, and certainly the best behaved traffic jam I’ve ever been in. Finally get back to the main road, looking for the San Francisco de Asis Mission church.
South of Taos is where the box stores are, and I’m very glad I didn’t approach Taos from the south, I would have had a completely different impression of the city. Looking for the Mission, I’m expecting something imposing, but it’s surrounded by commerce and not readily seen from the road. Eventually, I realize that I’ve just passed it, turn around and stop for lunch before going to the Mission.
Lunch is at a tiny, roadside New Mexican restaurant. Looks to be mostly takeout, but there are a couple of tables indoors and a picnic table outdoors. Young man is working the counter, and a woman, perhaps his mother is cooking. The place is named after her, and I can’t remember the name. There’s a simple and interesting menu, from which I order a chicken mole, with corn tortillas and a mango drink (diluted mango juice served over ice cubes - very refreshing. So much so that I wind up ordering a second to go). The mole was delicious, and I’m thinking what a great find this was, as I finish off the stack of tortillas.
The Mission is but a hundred yards away, and I park in what appears to be the appropriate lot, but which I found out was the lot serving the shops in the Ranchos Plaza. Curiously, the Mission Church does not face the road, its back does. Earlier experiences have led me to believe that churches always face their plazas, but apparently, Ranchos Plaza has been so over built that any vestiges of the original traveled ways have disappeared.
What had been a plaza in front of the church has been turned over to parking, and the lot delightfully allows stepping back from the courtyard and getting a good vista of the small complex. The church is magnificent! Massive adobe in the most intriguing peach/ochre color.
Walking around the church, photographing it, I discover that an aspen has been placed in a south window, really the only south window, and it is glowing with the sunlight shining through the Palladian arched window. I don’t think the Spanish missionaries used Palladian windows, so I’m supposing that it was a renovation, set into what I’m supposing was the original rectangular window underneath the archaic lintel. That’s OK, may not be authentic, but it looks good.
St. Francis himself is in the courtyard, and I hang out with him awhile. I’m not Catholic, but I have affinities for both St. Francis and St. Catherine, and any time I’m in a place dedicated to one or the other I take the time to meditate and connect with them. I’ve got to mention that I had a seriously powerful experience with Catherine in Siena! But, Francis was a peaceful, retiring man, and he’s not pushing me to more revelations. So, I accept the simple peace of this delightful courtyard, take some more photos, make a donation and head on back to Taos.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Epiphany at the Rio Grande
Rio Grande Gorge, about 3:00 - 4:00 PM, looking downstream at the western wall from the center of the Rt. 64 bridge
Rio Grande Gorge, same time, looking upstream at the eastern wall, from the center of the Rt. 64 bridge. San Cristobal Mountains in the background!
Looking towards Wheeler Peak from the center of the Rt. 64 bridge. Taos is towards the right, at the feet of the mountains and far out of this photo's field.The parking lot at the easterly end of the bridge is in the foreground, just to the right of the photo.
Taos! Its become mythic, my expectations are high! The road runs east-southeast, towards the mountains, and also slightly southerly. Still no significant signs of a city, a few small homes, some outbuildings here and there, but that’s not been unusual so far. On the left appear some very modern looking structures, long, low, with glass reflecting strongly in the westerly light. I’ve no idea what they are, but they certainly appear to be some forward thinking builder’s attempt to create a land hugging solar home. A small development, spread over many acres, but nevertheless a concentration. I’m later to find out that these are the Taos Earthships, and two days later I stop for a visit on my way towards Durango. More on those later.
Suddenly, I’m driving over a highway bridge. The terrain gives no indication, no expectation of a bridge. There are people walking on the narrow walkway between the roadway curb and the guardrail, and there are cars and campers parked in a lot beyond the bridge. Perhaps because of the pedestrians, perhaps out of habit, but anyway fortunately I look to my right, and down into a chasm! Stunned, I pull over into the parking lot on the easterly end of the bridge. I should have learned back in Carson, that the Gorge gives only the slightest signal of its existence in the plain, but I had forgotten.
Grabbing my camera, and knowing now why people were walking that bridge, I head back. The designers thoughtfully put lookouts, perhaps 10 feet wide and extending another 4 feet over the gorge, on each side of the bridge, at the center of the span.
The sun is shining strongly, but it cannot penetrate to the depths of the chasm! Probably only around midday does the sun reach the river below. It is again the Rio Grande, and the sky reflects off of the water, some 800 feet below the bridge.
My camera refuses to work!
I walk back to the parking lot, and for what is likely the first time in my life, the vison of the land brings me to tears. The sensation is indescribable. Struck with the absolute realization that humans are ultimately insignificant on this enormous terrain, insignificant in time, and yet profoundly arrogant, I’m thinking how could any person assert that some deity created us in their image, or cares one whit about any individual or synthesis of human society; and simultaneously I think how right the so-called pagan religions got it, how fundamental is every living being’s connection to the planet and to each other. No deity is needed. Good people of wisdom, shamans, prophets surely, but those only to help guide us to our individual recognitions of the resonance of all life. Maybe I’ve been to such powerful places before, but never before have I experienced such. If I had to go home tomorrow, still the purpose of this trip would have been fulfilled!
In the day and a half that follows, I meet many Taos residents. When I try to explain what happened out there at the Gorge to two of them, they both look directly into my eyes, don’t let me finish, and each in their own way tell me that they too have had that epiphany, and that no words can convey the experience. When I talk with one man about living in Taos, he tells me that I must not try to commit to the place, I must try it out, for Taos accepts some, and rejects others (chews them up he said) - and there’s no way to find out until you try to live there. He’s a cowboy, about my age, perhaps a bit younger, and a merchant - about the last person I’d expect to be so spiritual - but we’ve connected on a plane that cannot be explained.
I know now why people live in Carson, or on those sparse plains on the road to Taos. For now, I turn back to my SUV, and move on towards the City of Expectations.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Ojo! Or, How I Discover the Delights of a Soak in the Arid Lands!
With a full belly from the Poco Loco, the general store in Carson, and a full tank of gas, I went to the resort. Rather expansive and rather posh. I didn’t really want to stay there, just wanted to sample the springs, so I bypassed the hotel desk and went up to the cute young woman who was tending to reservations for the various spa comforts and to entry to the springs. I totally flustered that young woman, who - when I asked her how I could go into the springs - said “Take off your clothes and jump in!”. Thinking that a good idea, but noticing that all of the people I could see were wearing bathing suits, I pursued more exacting information. Ultimately, I rented a pool and went for a soak.
Now, Ojo offers various pools, including Arsenic and Lithium! I’m wondering why anybody would want to soak their bodies in Arsenic? And, not feeling particularly manic, I was wondering why I would select Lithium. My soak in “mixed” waters was delightful, if lonely, and thoroughly relaxing - must have been the Lithium in the mix. As I was leaving, I noticed some people who were hanging out in the Lithium pool, and more specifically noticed that they were lightly encrusted with a white powder. Since they were fairly passive, I assumed that they had not been buttering themselves and rolling in fortunes of cocaine, but instead had repeatedly dipped themselves in the Lithium salts and air dried between dips, like making a candle. Curious.
Back onto the highway, driving north to approach Taos from the northwest. It was a long ride over extraordinarily open terrain. Sometimes inclines, but mostly flat, lots of sagebrush, massive blue mountains in the distance. I’ve left the edges of the multiple shifted plates between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and am now driving on the eastern backs of those plates. There are few physical landmarks (other than the roadway itself), against which one can measure progress. The best comparison I can make is sailing open waters on a compass course. Even with land in the distance, one’s relative position to that land seems unchanging, and progress is only measured in time. So too is progress towards Taos.
Now I know some of you have GPS systems, and they will measure progress towards a goal, but I’m a 21st Century Luddite, and GPS seems like cheating the Fates. The Hertz counterman had offered me a Mercedes SUV with GPS, but thinking that a bit extravagant, I turned it down, settling for a Chevy. Now, if he had offered me a Lamborghini I might have taken him up on it, but a mere Mercedes? No way! Anyway, no GPS, just dead reckoning. A road, and a clock, and a goal.
At one point I noticed smoke rising from the forests (indicated on the map) to my northwest, and wondered what import that might have to my future travels. I later found out that it had been a controlled burn in a different portion of the Carson National Forest, a portion I was later to cross on my way to Durango.
Road repairs, then finally the right turn towards Taos. Now, I’m driving towards those mountains in the distance, and I know that Taos lies at their feet. I’m anxious to get there, and a bit concerned about finding a place to stay. Its been a long day, I’m hot, my eyes are tired from the sun shining from my left and sneaking behind my sunglasses, and I’m getting hungry again.
Now, Ojo offers various pools, including Arsenic and Lithium! I’m wondering why anybody would want to soak their bodies in Arsenic? And, not feeling particularly manic, I was wondering why I would select Lithium. My soak in “mixed” waters was delightful, if lonely, and thoroughly relaxing - must have been the Lithium in the mix. As I was leaving, I noticed some people who were hanging out in the Lithium pool, and more specifically noticed that they were lightly encrusted with a white powder. Since they were fairly passive, I assumed that they had not been buttering themselves and rolling in fortunes of cocaine, but instead had repeatedly dipped themselves in the Lithium salts and air dried between dips, like making a candle. Curious.
Back onto the highway, driving north to approach Taos from the northwest. It was a long ride over extraordinarily open terrain. Sometimes inclines, but mostly flat, lots of sagebrush, massive blue mountains in the distance. I’ve left the edges of the multiple shifted plates between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and am now driving on the eastern backs of those plates. There are few physical landmarks (other than the roadway itself), against which one can measure progress. The best comparison I can make is sailing open waters on a compass course. Even with land in the distance, one’s relative position to that land seems unchanging, and progress is only measured in time. So too is progress towards Taos.
Now I know some of you have GPS systems, and they will measure progress towards a goal, but I’m a 21st Century Luddite, and GPS seems like cheating the Fates. The Hertz counterman had offered me a Mercedes SUV with GPS, but thinking that a bit extravagant, I turned it down, settling for a Chevy. Now, if he had offered me a Lamborghini I might have taken him up on it, but a mere Mercedes? No way! Anyway, no GPS, just dead reckoning. A road, and a clock, and a goal.
At one point I noticed smoke rising from the forests (indicated on the map) to my northwest, and wondered what import that might have to my future travels. I later found out that it had been a controlled burn in a different portion of the Carson National Forest, a portion I was later to cross on my way to Durango.
Road repairs, then finally the right turn towards Taos. Now, I’m driving towards those mountains in the distance, and I know that Taos lies at their feet. I’m anxious to get there, and a bit concerned about finding a place to stay. Its been a long day, I’m hot, my eyes are tired from the sun shining from my left and sneaking behind my sunglasses, and I’m getting hungry again.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Carsulae, Italy - August, 2001
Written after an unexpectedly difficult navigation in Tuscany, but an amazing find well worth the difficulty. I still wish that woman had been with me! I probably wouldn’t have written the following, but....
Knowing that a Roman ruin exists is not the same as finding it, or enjoying it. Too often ruins have been so scavenged, or so overbuilt that they are scarcely recognizable as Roman, much less than having once been a part of ancient activity, or commerce, or spirit. I had heard of a particular ruined town, Carsulae, supposedly only partially excavated, and otherwise untouched. The provincial map showed it to be south of the villa where I’m staying, just off a major highway, but with no road leading to it. Perhaps that is just as good, for if there were a good road, the site would have been overrun. With knowledge that the best of maps are not accurate, but feeling adventurous, I try to choose a route, starting from the dirt road that fronts the villa. Not 50 meters from the villa drive, there is the first intersection, and I make my first unmapped choice.
Although the dirt road I choose seems to go both south, towards Carsulae, and down hill, towards the river I must cross to get there, the road soon disappoints me. Coming out of the woods, the road begins to meander through the fields, then to ascend the hill, and finally intersects with other unmapped but nearly identical, and also unmarked, dirt roads. Each intersection is a gamble, there are no signs, no names, no indicators of population centers. The land ascends or descends seeming without being directed towards a ridge or river. There is no foresight except the sun, but as the road follows the contours of the volcanic hills, any attempt to follow the sun is meaningless.
Sometimes the roads are no better than Jeep tracks, over which my rented Opel protests the ruts and rocks. Although the roads are dry, the ruts are fossils of heavy rains, which must have come in the spring, turning the narrow tracks into impassable, probably dangerous, drainage channels. But now, clouds of dust trail every vehicle that moves; clouds that take minutes to settle, clouds that cover the car with a crust of white ash, build clods on the dead air portions of the bumpers and rear window. Following another car within a hundred meters is impossible.
Where there are any relatively level places, huge potholes, half the length or width of the car, force a twisting path along the already narrow track. Where the roads slope most severely, where the waters ran the fastest, the gullies must be bridged. Every entry to the beginning of a gully is with a strain to see the end, in the usually vain hope that the it will end without needing to be crossed.
I long for my Jeep, although I would not like to feed it the $100 every tank full would cost.
There is no turning back, for there is no place to turn. The fields along each side have been plowed by great rippers behind crawler tractors, and even my Jeep would founder if but a single wheel went off the dirt track. Finally, after some interminable time in first gear, a paved road is reached, with however the same unmarked choices as the dirt tracks I just left. Now trusting in
the sun, I make a choice, and finally a significant intersection is reached. That is, one intersection that must have caused so much confusion as to have propelled erection of some signs.
Now it is important to understand the vagaries of Italian road signs. As any road can, through manifold connections, lead to any place, no sign does any more than point out a general trend. And since, at the preceding intersection some particular array of signs had been placed, at each successive intersection honor must be given to a separate set of towns, and a different roster is posted. Sometimes, the best way is determined by aiming towards some remote place, as if to say that since Milan is generally northwest of Rome, and Venice is generally northeast, if you want to go from Todi to Perugia obviously the road to Venice is superior to the road to Pisa (of course Milan is not mentioned - one must innately understand that the way to Milan lies through Pisa). However, when there is just ahead, a town that does not appear on any map, or whose name has changed since the last cartographer recorded the town’s existence, then the priority of that town supplants any guide to the place you might actually want to get to.
Regardless, in twice or thrice the time it would have taken, had I originally backtracked the known route instead to having tried to find some direct path, I reach the highway. The highway alongside which Carsulae lies. Of course there is no mention of Carsulae on the highway exits, so once the general region is reached the challenge begins again. People ask what I saw in Italy, and seem surprised at the relatively small number of significant places I’ve been, but they do not understand the incredible amount of time it takes to find your way to any particular place. I lost track of the places I passed, and wanted to return to, but could not find again for the lack of the proper mistake at the beginning of my search. But, of such is the adventure made.
Following the same process as I used to get to the highway, and after innumerable sips at my water bottle (here, in recognition of the dry heat, water is sold in two liter bottles, not those piddling 12 ounce or 16 ounce bottles we get), I reach a fenced entrance to Carsulae. The gate is open, although I must park on the public road. As I’m locking the car, what appears to have been a student video crew, three men and a woman, are packing up their car. I take this as a good sign, an indication that there are things of visual interest within the fence.
Immediately upon entering, I am walking on a pavement of roughly shaped, large basalt cobbles. A sign announces that this is the via Flaminia, which I know from a prior trip is one of the old, primary Roman roads. Thus, this ghost town, which dates from a few years B.C., had once been a major highway settlement. Following the road, I try to catch the spirits of the thousands who must have passed here, two millennia ago. The road passes a small church, a mere 900 or a 1000 years old, which nonetheless is quite charming. Having been built after the fall of the empire, but before the elaborate designs of the urban cathedrals had filtered out to the provinces, the church is very simple. The sole remaining decorations are some worn frescos, and a window behind the altar. On examining the window, I discovered that it is not stained glass, as it first appeared, but a thin, rectangular slab of stone. It appears to be agate, it has the ochre stripes, but it may be a colored form of the alabaster that is so prevalent in the area of Volterra.
A man has read my entry into the guest book. He turns to me and my children with a broad smile, and thickly accented, says “Welcome New Jersey, welcome to this place”. I smile back, thank him in English, and then realizing that he has apparently exhausted his supply of English, I switch to my meager supply of Italian and thank him thus. He seems satisfied, and rejoining his wife and children, continues his investigations of the town.
I continue to follow the via Flaminia, there are ruins on both sides, arrayed like the buildings we see clustered along the main street of any large American town. There are many signs about, all in Italian, which announce on one side that I am standing in the temple of Gemini, then in front of the civic building, then near one of the four cisterns providing water. On the other side, there is the basilica, another cistern, then the amphitheater and finally the theater itself.
The amphitheater is small, nowhere near the size of the Flavian amphitheater, mis-named Colosseum in much later years. But, walking into the field, which has only been half excavated, and looking up into the stands, it is easy to transport myself, and wonder if I had lived here, would I have been in the stands, or part of the entertainment. The hot sun, and silence except for a few flying insects, helps the fantasy.
Seeking shelter from the sun, I wander towards the old, semi-circular theater. There are alleys and passageways between the theater and amphitheater, indicating that they had some combined function. Walking around the theater, I notice a series of chambers, arrayed beneath what had once been the theater seats. There are no signs to tell me what these were, but these chambers look most like cells. I suspect that they had been the cages for the wild beasts that were slaughtered for the games in the neighboring amphitheater.
Each of the chambers is about the size of a small bedroom, the walls are diamond blocked. The ceilings, which once must have been fairly low, are long gone, as are the loose stones which must have fallen from the groined arches which supported the seats, and formed the chamber tops. Open to the sky for some millennia, the sun shines into each chamber, but as the chambers are arrayed around the half circle, one can choose a space in which the position of the light and shadow is to your preference.
Entering a few, I find one chamber which seems cooler than the rest, and I pause to collect my energy, and think upon my next adventure. There is more to be seen in Carsulae, but I have absorbed a sense of the place, and I like it much. A search for food will follow, and then a return to the villa to cool off in the pool, and rest, and write. I turn, as if to share my thoughts with someone, but there is nobody near. My children are off, Anna is pouting for being forced to walk, and Ross is thinking about being a gladiator. My mind turns to reverie, as if to satisfy my need to share.
I want to draw you into one of those little cloisters, to embrace you in this soundless place. From the sunny side, I can see your form shimmer in the shadow, and I long to press your strong body against the cool side of that chamber. Against those ancient bricks, against that ruined wall that once some Roman laborer may have pressed his love, who came to feed him as he built it. I long to feel your lips, to taste the sweat upon your neck and from between your breasts. But I turn from that empty chamber, before the love and lust splits my sanity, before I pound and claw that wall like one of those disenfranchised, doomed beasts, two millennia ago. I turn back into the safe Italian sun, and towards the meandering roads.
Knowing that a Roman ruin exists is not the same as finding it, or enjoying it. Too often ruins have been so scavenged, or so overbuilt that they are scarcely recognizable as Roman, much less than having once been a part of ancient activity, or commerce, or spirit. I had heard of a particular ruined town, Carsulae, supposedly only partially excavated, and otherwise untouched. The provincial map showed it to be south of the villa where I’m staying, just off a major highway, but with no road leading to it. Perhaps that is just as good, for if there were a good road, the site would have been overrun. With knowledge that the best of maps are not accurate, but feeling adventurous, I try to choose a route, starting from the dirt road that fronts the villa. Not 50 meters from the villa drive, there is the first intersection, and I make my first unmapped choice.
Although the dirt road I choose seems to go both south, towards Carsulae, and down hill, towards the river I must cross to get there, the road soon disappoints me. Coming out of the woods, the road begins to meander through the fields, then to ascend the hill, and finally intersects with other unmapped but nearly identical, and also unmarked, dirt roads. Each intersection is a gamble, there are no signs, no names, no indicators of population centers. The land ascends or descends seeming without being directed towards a ridge or river. There is no foresight except the sun, but as the road follows the contours of the volcanic hills, any attempt to follow the sun is meaningless.
Sometimes the roads are no better than Jeep tracks, over which my rented Opel protests the ruts and rocks. Although the roads are dry, the ruts are fossils of heavy rains, which must have come in the spring, turning the narrow tracks into impassable, probably dangerous, drainage channels. But now, clouds of dust trail every vehicle that moves; clouds that take minutes to settle, clouds that cover the car with a crust of white ash, build clods on the dead air portions of the bumpers and rear window. Following another car within a hundred meters is impossible.
Where there are any relatively level places, huge potholes, half the length or width of the car, force a twisting path along the already narrow track. Where the roads slope most severely, where the waters ran the fastest, the gullies must be bridged. Every entry to the beginning of a gully is with a strain to see the end, in the usually vain hope that the it will end without needing to be crossed.
I long for my Jeep, although I would not like to feed it the $100 every tank full would cost.
There is no turning back, for there is no place to turn. The fields along each side have been plowed by great rippers behind crawler tractors, and even my Jeep would founder if but a single wheel went off the dirt track. Finally, after some interminable time in first gear, a paved road is reached, with however the same unmarked choices as the dirt tracks I just left. Now trusting in
the sun, I make a choice, and finally a significant intersection is reached. That is, one intersection that must have caused so much confusion as to have propelled erection of some signs.
Now it is important to understand the vagaries of Italian road signs. As any road can, through manifold connections, lead to any place, no sign does any more than point out a general trend. And since, at the preceding intersection some particular array of signs had been placed, at each successive intersection honor must be given to a separate set of towns, and a different roster is posted. Sometimes, the best way is determined by aiming towards some remote place, as if to say that since Milan is generally northwest of Rome, and Venice is generally northeast, if you want to go from Todi to Perugia obviously the road to Venice is superior to the road to Pisa (of course Milan is not mentioned - one must innately understand that the way to Milan lies through Pisa). However, when there is just ahead, a town that does not appear on any map, or whose name has changed since the last cartographer recorded the town’s existence, then the priority of that town supplants any guide to the place you might actually want to get to.
Regardless, in twice or thrice the time it would have taken, had I originally backtracked the known route instead to having tried to find some direct path, I reach the highway. The highway alongside which Carsulae lies. Of course there is no mention of Carsulae on the highway exits, so once the general region is reached the challenge begins again. People ask what I saw in Italy, and seem surprised at the relatively small number of significant places I’ve been, but they do not understand the incredible amount of time it takes to find your way to any particular place. I lost track of the places I passed, and wanted to return to, but could not find again for the lack of the proper mistake at the beginning of my search. But, of such is the adventure made.
Following the same process as I used to get to the highway, and after innumerable sips at my water bottle (here, in recognition of the dry heat, water is sold in two liter bottles, not those piddling 12 ounce or 16 ounce bottles we get), I reach a fenced entrance to Carsulae. The gate is open, although I must park on the public road. As I’m locking the car, what appears to have been a student video crew, three men and a woman, are packing up their car. I take this as a good sign, an indication that there are things of visual interest within the fence.
Immediately upon entering, I am walking on a pavement of roughly shaped, large basalt cobbles. A sign announces that this is the via Flaminia, which I know from a prior trip is one of the old, primary Roman roads. Thus, this ghost town, which dates from a few years B.C., had once been a major highway settlement. Following the road, I try to catch the spirits of the thousands who must have passed here, two millennia ago. The road passes a small church, a mere 900 or a 1000 years old, which nonetheless is quite charming. Having been built after the fall of the empire, but before the elaborate designs of the urban cathedrals had filtered out to the provinces, the church is very simple. The sole remaining decorations are some worn frescos, and a window behind the altar. On examining the window, I discovered that it is not stained glass, as it first appeared, but a thin, rectangular slab of stone. It appears to be agate, it has the ochre stripes, but it may be a colored form of the alabaster that is so prevalent in the area of Volterra.
A man has read my entry into the guest book. He turns to me and my children with a broad smile, and thickly accented, says “Welcome New Jersey, welcome to this place”. I smile back, thank him in English, and then realizing that he has apparently exhausted his supply of English, I switch to my meager supply of Italian and thank him thus. He seems satisfied, and rejoining his wife and children, continues his investigations of the town.
I continue to follow the via Flaminia, there are ruins on both sides, arrayed like the buildings we see clustered along the main street of any large American town. There are many signs about, all in Italian, which announce on one side that I am standing in the temple of Gemini, then in front of the civic building, then near one of the four cisterns providing water. On the other side, there is the basilica, another cistern, then the amphitheater and finally the theater itself.
The amphitheater is small, nowhere near the size of the Flavian amphitheater, mis-named Colosseum in much later years. But, walking into the field, which has only been half excavated, and looking up into the stands, it is easy to transport myself, and wonder if I had lived here, would I have been in the stands, or part of the entertainment. The hot sun, and silence except for a few flying insects, helps the fantasy.
Seeking shelter from the sun, I wander towards the old, semi-circular theater. There are alleys and passageways between the theater and amphitheater, indicating that they had some combined function. Walking around the theater, I notice a series of chambers, arrayed beneath what had once been the theater seats. There are no signs to tell me what these were, but these chambers look most like cells. I suspect that they had been the cages for the wild beasts that were slaughtered for the games in the neighboring amphitheater.
Each of the chambers is about the size of a small bedroom, the walls are diamond blocked. The ceilings, which once must have been fairly low, are long gone, as are the loose stones which must have fallen from the groined arches which supported the seats, and formed the chamber tops. Open to the sky for some millennia, the sun shines into each chamber, but as the chambers are arrayed around the half circle, one can choose a space in which the position of the light and shadow is to your preference.
Entering a few, I find one chamber which seems cooler than the rest, and I pause to collect my energy, and think upon my next adventure. There is more to be seen in Carsulae, but I have absorbed a sense of the place, and I like it much. A search for food will follow, and then a return to the villa to cool off in the pool, and rest, and write. I turn, as if to share my thoughts with someone, but there is nobody near. My children are off, Anna is pouting for being forced to walk, and Ross is thinking about being a gladiator. My mind turns to reverie, as if to satisfy my need to share.
I want to draw you into one of those little cloisters, to embrace you in this soundless place. From the sunny side, I can see your form shimmer in the shadow, and I long to press your strong body against the cool side of that chamber. Against those ancient bricks, against that ruined wall that once some Roman laborer may have pressed his love, who came to feed him as he built it. I long to feel your lips, to taste the sweat upon your neck and from between your breasts. But I turn from that empty chamber, before the love and lust splits my sanity, before I pound and claw that wall like one of those disenfranchised, doomed beasts, two millennia ago. I turn back into the safe Italian sun, and towards the meandering roads.
The illusions of New Mexico roads!
Photographs, as I noted earlier, do not - cannot - reveal the immensity of the surroundings in New Mexico, or the sense that any precipice one encounters is merely the visible part of an infinite chasm. I’ve driven on narrow, unguarded mountain roads before, but not since I was 24! Then, in Switzerland, driving on paved roads clinging precariously to the sides of the granite Alps, I thought how Darwinian those little concrete pyramids between the pavement and the precipice were, and how much the Swiss must trust the skill of their drivers! I knew then that I wasn’t going to even graze those lumpy warning devices. But, at 24 I had never experienced brake failures, or power steering hose failures, or having a little ledge at the shoulder defy my efforts to turn back onto the pavement.
Couple a more mature understanding of the frailties of motor vehicles with the omnipresent altitude effects, dehydration, the unfamiliar scale - and thus depth perception, and an unfamiliar vehicle; and those dirt roads running along sandstone cliffs often become uncertain at best. Part of the adventure.
If you want to see a truly tense, and excellent, film about roads, check out 'Wages of Fear' (1953). French, about a road trip in Central America. I guarantee you won’t ever forget the film.
Couple a more mature understanding of the frailties of motor vehicles with the omnipresent altitude effects, dehydration, the unfamiliar scale - and thus depth perception, and an unfamiliar vehicle; and those dirt roads running along sandstone cliffs often become uncertain at best. Part of the adventure.
If you want to see a truly tense, and excellent, film about roads, check out 'Wages of Fear' (1953). French, about a road trip in Central America. I guarantee you won’t ever forget the film.
Photos can not tell the story
I have been taking photographs since I was 10 (Kodak Brownie Holiday - 127 film and proud of it!) and more or less semi-professionally since the early 80's - that is, I take routinely take photographs in the practice of my profession, but I don’t sell the photographs. And no, I’m not using the Brownie anymore. And, if you think its getting hard to find 35 mm film, try finding 127!
I’m not fond of taking photographs when I’m playing, it seems entirely too much restriction on experiencing. However, I do like to look back at photographs, because, like scents and sounds, they can vividly bring back the experiences surrounding what had been happening when the photographs were taken.
Taking photographs in New Mexico is as technically challenging as anything I’ve ever shot. Not only is the dynamic range of light far greater than film is capable of recording, there is the omnipresent strong ultraviolet component from the high altitude. When spot metering the observation of interest, shadows and highlights are inevitably extreme. Some of that was compensated for by using a circular polarizer, which for most orientations to the sun corrects the sky colors to something approaching the experience, as opposed to the outpouring of UV washing out the image. If I found that digital cameras were capable of greater dynamic range than color film, that would be a reason to switch. Bruce, what’s your take on that?
BUT, nothing - NOTHING - can capture the immensity of the vision in the high desert. Even a panoramic camera could not capture but a small portion of all that is in view. I’ve experienced that before, on the water, but almost always on the water one is trying to image a specific thing, not the immensity of the water and sky. On the high desert, there simply is never one thing of visual interest - the WHOLE HEMISPHERE IS SAYING SOMETHING! That can be felt, but not really seen, and no camera - no panoramic device, no fish-eye lens - can ever capture what is experienced. It is photographically very frustrating. Quite literally, you have to be there to comprehend it.
Those of you who have been in the high desert know what I’m talking about. Those who haven’t, you must go. You must go.
I’m not fond of taking photographs when I’m playing, it seems entirely too much restriction on experiencing. However, I do like to look back at photographs, because, like scents and sounds, they can vividly bring back the experiences surrounding what had been happening when the photographs were taken.
Taking photographs in New Mexico is as technically challenging as anything I’ve ever shot. Not only is the dynamic range of light far greater than film is capable of recording, there is the omnipresent strong ultraviolet component from the high altitude. When spot metering the observation of interest, shadows and highlights are inevitably extreme. Some of that was compensated for by using a circular polarizer, which for most orientations to the sun corrects the sky colors to something approaching the experience, as opposed to the outpouring of UV washing out the image. If I found that digital cameras were capable of greater dynamic range than color film, that would be a reason to switch. Bruce, what’s your take on that?
BUT, nothing - NOTHING - can capture the immensity of the vision in the high desert. Even a panoramic camera could not capture but a small portion of all that is in view. I’ve experienced that before, on the water, but almost always on the water one is trying to image a specific thing, not the immensity of the water and sky. On the high desert, there simply is never one thing of visual interest - the WHOLE HEMISPHERE IS SAYING SOMETHING! That can be felt, but not really seen, and no camera - no panoramic device, no fish-eye lens - can ever capture what is experienced. It is photographically very frustrating. Quite literally, you have to be there to comprehend it.
Those of you who have been in the high desert know what I’m talking about. Those who haven’t, you must go. You must go.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Photos - Finally!
Looking westerly from the parking lot on the left bank of the Rio Grande, just downstream of the bridge.I've no idea what the structure is on the right (western) wall of the gorge.
My first realization that there was actually a road on the other side of the bridge.
Looking downstream from the Pilar bridge. See the fisherman? 
Looking upstream from the Pilar bridge.
Road from Pilar to Carson, looking down one of the long, gentle slopes running parallel to the side of the gorge. I wasn't stopping for photos on the switchbacks!
Carson plain. That dark line to the right of the image is the top of the Rio Grande Gorge!That red thing at the left is the "mid-size" SUV I rented.
Looking southeasterly from the General Store, towards the Rio Grande Gorge. That rusted car you see in the front yard is typical of what you see, and is apparently not a decoration!
Carson General Store! Organic lamb burrito suitable for dinner! Water! Carson Curmudgeon!
Out of Madrid and Towards Ojo Caliente!
Although invited to breakfast at the BBQ in Madrid, I was feeling time pressure (I guess I hadn’t yet escaped the NJ blight), and I was hoping to meet up with a friend in Taos on Friday. So, although I stopped at a jewelry supply house on the outskirts of Santa Fe (I had mentioned to the proprietor of Chumani that I was interested in inlaying turquoise into guitar rosettes, and he suggested an inexpensive source of ground turquoise to experiment with), I bypassed Santa Fe as a fairly large city, and I was trying to escape the urban stress. Still, I’d like to see it someday, and after finding the old district of Albuquerque much later, I realize that I made a mistake to bypass Santa Fe’s old district.
Up the road towards Taos, to Espanola. There were a lot of ristras there, and I realized that one of the peppers I had been unsuccessfully trying to grow here in NJ were the Espanola variety. A little research here at home revealed that indeed, the Espanola pepper is named for Espanola, NM. Now also that I comprehend the existence of green chili sauce, and I recall that my problem with the peppers (also Conquistador) was that the season is too short for more than a couple to ripen to red, I will again try growing Espanola (and probably Sandia), from which I can make my own New Mexico green chili sauce! I was able to get a nice crop of Cayenne peppers this year, but as they ripen when the weather is humid, it is hard to get them to dry without molding (I see a solar dryer in the future).
Anyway, at Espanola I had thought to detour towards Ojo Caliente (on recommendations). However, I missed the turn, and wound up driving along the southeastern bank of the Rio Grande directly towards Taos. Ah well, of such mistakes adventures are made, and this was to prove true again! The river is beautiful there, perhaps a little wider than the Musconetcong, perhaps a bit shallower, and potentially much, much fuller. In October, there were a few people playing in the river, fishing, rafting, wading. Not many, but enough to see that the river was being enjoyed!
On getting to Pilar, not too far from Taos, I noticed on the map that there might be a bridge across the Rio Grande, a bridge which could return me towards Ojo Caliente. I had rented a mid-size SUV (large to me, perhaps twice the size of a Jeep Wrangler, but who is to say what mid-size means to American auto marketing departments!), so that I wouldn’t be intimidated by any poor roads I might encounter. Those of you who read my account of Carsulae might recall my then longing for my Jeep as I attempted to negotiate a rutted agricultural road with my rented Opel. A quick left turn and I was on my way to Ojo Caliente!
OK, OK, I’ll post Carsulae next, as a historic reminiscence. But please recall that I was younger then!
Off the main road, quite soon I reached an open gate, and a sign announcing that I was entering a fee based, Bureau of Land Management area. I pondered the fee, decided I wasn’t intending to use the services, all I wanted to do was use the public road to pass through, and sallied forwards. I passed idyllic camping areas, more casual users of the river, and finally reached a steel truss bridge. Nice bridge, but it didn’t seem to go anyplace - just directly into the cliff on the opposite side of the Rio Grande. I parked, got out my camera, and took some photos of the gorge. While doing so, and walking onto the bridge itself, I realized that there was a dirt road on the right bank, and saw a pickup truck descending that road, slowly.
Thinking that I’ve seen worse roads, back to my SUV and upwards! Well, the road itself might not have been worse that the dirt road I once used to ascend a mountain on the Olympic Peninsula, but unlike that rainforest track, the road up the side of the Rio Grande gorge skirted crumbly cliffs of increasing height without suggestive benefit of any guardrails. Really beautiful ascending, but I quickly decided that I did NOT want to descend it in ANY weather. I felt like I might put on the brakes, and slide on the loose earth right off a cliff! Not so, as I met up with somebody towing a trailer down the road, but ....incipient anoxia again!
On getting to the top, which is now nearly 7000 feet elevation, there’s a broad sagebrush covered plain. Have I mentioned the sun? Have I mentioned that its 50 miles between gas stations? Have I mentioned that I’m on 1/4 tank of gas, out of water, and have no intention of going back DOWN that road? Trusting to the map, which had already gotten me across the Rio Grande, I enter the Carson National Forest, where I have no expectation of finding either gas or water. I had ignored the advice of a fiend who lives in Colorado, that essentially being - don’t leave the main roads without a full tank of gas and a lot of water! I was later to take that advice - and to value it!!
The land is flat. Stopping for photos, I note that the Rio Grand Gorge, which is about 650 feet (Google Earth) deep at Pilar, does not appear from the top as anything other than a darker line across the plain. At night, off the road, it would be invisible. Tough on the bison. Luckily, it is daytime, and I am on the road which is again paved. Rounding a bend, I drop into a shallow valley, and on the far side I notice two buildings. One a post office? The other looks like a farmhouse. No farm. Passing the building, it turns out to be a general store, and I wisely stop for lunch and water. Really is a general store, everything you could actually need (not want) was there. Lunch got me into a conversation with one of the old hippies who had settled there in the 70's, a sweet woman named Cricket. She showed me stones that people had collected from the area, talked about the various locals, and was generally quite welcoming, as if I had just met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years and there were details to be caught up on! I guess there were.
I asked the proprietor about gas, and was told that I could find it in Ojo Caliente, and before I left I was encouraged to purchase for $3 the Carson Curmudgeon. Finally reading that at home, I was struck by the tenacity that residents of that high, dry plain displayed in staying there. And, that post office? According to Ripley’s Believe it or Not - before replacement it was the smallest in the Nation - 8 feet by 12 feet! Another reason I wish I had gone west in 1972.
Driving towards Ojo Caliente, through the Carson National Forest, I got the first dose of agoraphobia I’ve ever had. There’s no shelter except the car, there’s no water except what I carry, and it’s a long - and very sunny - walk to anyplace where there might be shelter or water. I recall feeling something similar, when I first sailed out of sight of land in my ailing old sailboat, with responsibility for my passenger, and I suddenly realized that our lives were dependent on me having made sound repairs; making correct decisions about charts, wind, currents and compass direction; and avoiding other vessels. But, just as then I was committed to that salt water crossing, now I was committed to crossing the high plain, and while I was to feel the exposure again later, this first experience was quite a surprise to somebody who is fundamentally claustrophobic!
Finally, the main road! No gas, but turn left towards Ojo Caliente, and FINALLY a gas station. Gotta love those dead dinosaurs!
Up the road towards Taos, to Espanola. There were a lot of ristras there, and I realized that one of the peppers I had been unsuccessfully trying to grow here in NJ were the Espanola variety. A little research here at home revealed that indeed, the Espanola pepper is named for Espanola, NM. Now also that I comprehend the existence of green chili sauce, and I recall that my problem with the peppers (also Conquistador) was that the season is too short for more than a couple to ripen to red, I will again try growing Espanola (and probably Sandia), from which I can make my own New Mexico green chili sauce! I was able to get a nice crop of Cayenne peppers this year, but as they ripen when the weather is humid, it is hard to get them to dry without molding (I see a solar dryer in the future).
Anyway, at Espanola I had thought to detour towards Ojo Caliente (on recommendations). However, I missed the turn, and wound up driving along the southeastern bank of the Rio Grande directly towards Taos. Ah well, of such mistakes adventures are made, and this was to prove true again! The river is beautiful there, perhaps a little wider than the Musconetcong, perhaps a bit shallower, and potentially much, much fuller. In October, there were a few people playing in the river, fishing, rafting, wading. Not many, but enough to see that the river was being enjoyed!
On getting to Pilar, not too far from Taos, I noticed on the map that there might be a bridge across the Rio Grande, a bridge which could return me towards Ojo Caliente. I had rented a mid-size SUV (large to me, perhaps twice the size of a Jeep Wrangler, but who is to say what mid-size means to American auto marketing departments!), so that I wouldn’t be intimidated by any poor roads I might encounter. Those of you who read my account of Carsulae might recall my then longing for my Jeep as I attempted to negotiate a rutted agricultural road with my rented Opel. A quick left turn and I was on my way to Ojo Caliente!
OK, OK, I’ll post Carsulae next, as a historic reminiscence. But please recall that I was younger then!
Off the main road, quite soon I reached an open gate, and a sign announcing that I was entering a fee based, Bureau of Land Management area. I pondered the fee, decided I wasn’t intending to use the services, all I wanted to do was use the public road to pass through, and sallied forwards. I passed idyllic camping areas, more casual users of the river, and finally reached a steel truss bridge. Nice bridge, but it didn’t seem to go anyplace - just directly into the cliff on the opposite side of the Rio Grande. I parked, got out my camera, and took some photos of the gorge. While doing so, and walking onto the bridge itself, I realized that there was a dirt road on the right bank, and saw a pickup truck descending that road, slowly.
Thinking that I’ve seen worse roads, back to my SUV and upwards! Well, the road itself might not have been worse that the dirt road I once used to ascend a mountain on the Olympic Peninsula, but unlike that rainforest track, the road up the side of the Rio Grande gorge skirted crumbly cliffs of increasing height without suggestive benefit of any guardrails. Really beautiful ascending, but I quickly decided that I did NOT want to descend it in ANY weather. I felt like I might put on the brakes, and slide on the loose earth right off a cliff! Not so, as I met up with somebody towing a trailer down the road, but ....incipient anoxia again!
On getting to the top, which is now nearly 7000 feet elevation, there’s a broad sagebrush covered plain. Have I mentioned the sun? Have I mentioned that its 50 miles between gas stations? Have I mentioned that I’m on 1/4 tank of gas, out of water, and have no intention of going back DOWN that road? Trusting to the map, which had already gotten me across the Rio Grande, I enter the Carson National Forest, where I have no expectation of finding either gas or water. I had ignored the advice of a fiend who lives in Colorado, that essentially being - don’t leave the main roads without a full tank of gas and a lot of water! I was later to take that advice - and to value it!!
The land is flat. Stopping for photos, I note that the Rio Grand Gorge, which is about 650 feet (Google Earth) deep at Pilar, does not appear from the top as anything other than a darker line across the plain. At night, off the road, it would be invisible. Tough on the bison. Luckily, it is daytime, and I am on the road which is again paved. Rounding a bend, I drop into a shallow valley, and on the far side I notice two buildings. One a post office? The other looks like a farmhouse. No farm. Passing the building, it turns out to be a general store, and I wisely stop for lunch and water. Really is a general store, everything you could actually need (not want) was there. Lunch got me into a conversation with one of the old hippies who had settled there in the 70's, a sweet woman named Cricket. She showed me stones that people had collected from the area, talked about the various locals, and was generally quite welcoming, as if I had just met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years and there were details to be caught up on! I guess there were.
I asked the proprietor about gas, and was told that I could find it in Ojo Caliente, and before I left I was encouraged to purchase for $3 the Carson Curmudgeon. Finally reading that at home, I was struck by the tenacity that residents of that high, dry plain displayed in staying there. And, that post office? According to Ripley’s Believe it or Not - before replacement it was the smallest in the Nation - 8 feet by 12 feet! Another reason I wish I had gone west in 1972.
Driving towards Ojo Caliente, through the Carson National Forest, I got the first dose of agoraphobia I’ve ever had. There’s no shelter except the car, there’s no water except what I carry, and it’s a long - and very sunny - walk to anyplace where there might be shelter or water. I recall feeling something similar, when I first sailed out of sight of land in my ailing old sailboat, with responsibility for my passenger, and I suddenly realized that our lives were dependent on me having made sound repairs; making correct decisions about charts, wind, currents and compass direction; and avoiding other vessels. But, just as then I was committed to that salt water crossing, now I was committed to crossing the high plain, and while I was to feel the exposure again later, this first experience was quite a surprise to somebody who is fundamentally claustrophobic!
Finally, the main road! No gas, but turn left towards Ojo Caliente, and FINALLY a gas station. Gotta love those dead dinosaurs!
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