The Jay-Blog

The first week in May 2003, I drove from Santa Fe to Las Vegas, then over the Sangre de Christo mountains, through Taos, and a few miles further to my brother's adobe in Arroyo Hondo.

The Sangre de Christo are honest-to-goodness mountains. Desert scrub gave way to pine trees and for a while I was passing by patches of snow. Snow crowned the summits and from the distance it looked like glaciers.

My brother and his wife moved to Arroyo Hondo three years ago. Their place includes orchards, a guest house, a fruit stand they are renovating, ruins of several buildings, terraced fields, and the "wilderness," an untamed patch that attracts bears.

An acequia, sort of a handmade irrigation ditch, passes very close to the house, and my brother was just appointed Mayor Domo. For the coming year, he'll be responsible for overseeing the distribution of water to the forty families bordering the acequia.

The acequias date back several hundred years and are vital to the community. It's rare for an Anglo to be entrusted with the job, and mi hermano figures he will get to know the villagers really well.

Jan, here cradling a neighbor's baby goat, is renovating the fruit stand. It's a mammoth undertaking. She plans to sell fruit from the property, herbal teas, and local arts and craft items. This involves rebuilding stone walls, creating a parking lot, moving fences, child-proofing all manner of dangers, and a lot more that I'd never find the energy for.

Sunset turns the snow on Taos Mountain pink. The is the view from the front yard of the abode. The mountain is sacred to the people of the Taos Pueblo who regained control of it from Great White Father Nixon in 1970.

The Taos Pueblo is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. Only a few of the apartments are occupied full time now but families return to their ancestral condos during feast day ceremonies that take place in the plaza between the two main complexes. The architecture has changed little over the years, with the exception of an innovation borrowed from the Spanish: doors. Originally, all access was from the roof.

The pretty Pueblo church is where people meet to celebrate religion #2, Catholicism.

The people's primary allegiance is to the tribal religion which involves stewardship of nature and the calendar of feast days.

This is the second church at the Pueblo.

The first church is a ruin. During the Pueblo Uprising, an incensed group of Native Americans killed and scalped the governor. The U.S. Cavalry came to town seeking justice. The perpetrators took sanctuary in the church, along with several hundred women and children. When the scalpers refused to come out, the Cavalry obliterated the church (and the women and children) with cannon. The tower is the only thing that remains.

The grave markers are simple, wooden crosses, intentionally short-lived, because plots are recycled.

A few notes on the people of the Taos Pueblo.

• They have no written language.
• The word for "five minutes" is the same as the word for "tomorrow."
• The community has about 3,000 members, mostly living on the surrounding tribal land.

Sun God?

The Martinez Hacienda is a recreation of a colonial home and craft commune circa 1820.

Rooms encircle two small plazas. The Martinez family were well to do by local standards but conditions were spartan.

The kitchen.

The Hacienda has a great display of santos -- statues of saints and the Holy Family. These are particularly graphic, compared to their European counterparts.

Jesus.

The Mexican day of the dead theme gets tangled up with the Biblical.

Moving on, we stopped at one of many roadside stands selling ristras, strings of chile peppers.

The Taos church -- you've seen it in Georgia O'Keefe's paintings -- is over 200 years old. Every year it gets a new layer of adobe.

When adobe buildings are abandoned, they melt. That's why the parishoners apply a new layer of adobe every year.

Mi hermano sent a picture of this ruin to a fellow who wanted to visit, telling him his house was not in great shape to receive visitors.

My brother's neighbors are delightful people with a house packed with beautiful Mexican tile, Oaxaca figures, carvings, and assorted art. Their farm is quite a menagerie. They're raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Here's that baby goat again.

These burros once ran wild.

The rooster is awaiting the arrival of a new group of hens.

It's not as easy as you'd think to tell the sheep from the goats.

This is a portion of the underground Taos Learning Center, usually called the "Growhole." It's a beautiful space not far from the animals above.

Hippies provided most of the labor to build the Growhole. Legend has it that they were paid with acid or marijuana.

Arroyo Grande was ground zero for the commune movement of the late sixties, the home of New Buffalo, the Hog Farm, Morningstar, and others. The commune scene in Easy Rider? RIght here.

The Rio Grande has carved a mini-Grand Canyon through the land. This view is from the Gorge Bridge, a favorite place for local suicides.

Julia Roberts, a reclusive local benefactor, named the playground she donated at the local school for the laster jumper from the bridge.

A few miles upstream you can drive down to the Rio. Locals fish and swim here. We talked with a kayaker who was going to shoot the rapids. Up the hill is a reknowned hot spring. A tranquil spot.

This is a magical spot.