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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.