northern new mexico

Rebecca October 5, 2014 0 Comments Tags: summer

All photos August 2014 – Santa Fe, Taos, or in between

Northern New Mexico reminds me of the importance of geography. Geography is everything. Geography cannot be fudged.

Everyone says the light New Mexico is transcendent and they’re right. Because it is. And the sky does go on forever. And there’s no way you could be untouched by the grandeur of the sky and the shifting moods of the clouds as they move along from horizon to horizon.

Mikhail and I agreed that the unusual thing we noticed in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado was that the landscapes and the sky had a feeling we could only describe as spiritual. Neither of us are the kind of people who go around looking for spiritual connections under every rock, so the fact that we both independently came to this conclusion means something to me.

Northern New Mexico is the kind of place that I can see myself returning to over and over again. The kind of place I’d like to build a relationship with as time goes on.

It was monsoon season

I had been to Santa Fe twice before. The first time was with my family, when I was a young teenager. I remember shopping at rock shops, and walking up one particular ramp outside a big, adobe building, thinking it was hot.

We hit a lot of weather while driving, sometimes scary

This time, I took the kids rock shopping, and I saw that building.

Boys playing the “Thunder Drum,” Taos Drums

The second time Mikhail and I went in the wintertime, just before we were pregnant with Elan. We helped move his grandmother Georgia from her house into an assisted living facility. Even with the sadness and stress of that visit, I remember loving Northern New Mexico. It snowed, and we went walking in this thin layer of snow lying over the desert. It reminded me of home, but with a different quality.

I had never been to Taos before, but I knew I would love it from Natalie Goldberg’s books. I wasn’t disappointed.

Taos Pueblo, continuously occupied for 1,000 years

Emry played with a boy from the Pueblo (also 3 years old and long haired)

who was dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

It was a most interesting cross-cultural experience.

I found myself thinking how cool it would be to come back to this part of the world year after year, deepening the connection the way repeated knowings of a place deepens our knowledge of it.