I can imagine the two very strong-willed people, each staking their creative claim to New Mexico’s high desert, feeling competitive with each other, each trying to make her mark.
Southwest History
Day Trip
The trip was filled with ghosts and they or the land, or both, gripped my soul on this sunny New Mexico day when Kim and I journeyed back in time and experienced the conceived utopia of another era and a sense of the lives lived within it, in old houses and on ancient land.
History of Place: The Mountains of Northern NM
This trio of cultures, Indian, Spanish, Anglo, is what’s left in these small Spanish land grant villages of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In fact the land grant families are still here, many generations later.
Mark of the Ancients, Part 1: Bandelier
I am, once again, living in a place that is surrounded by ancient sites. Some of them are ruins, inhabited only by the spirits of those who went before, some are national parks and some are still active pueblo villages. The living pueblos include Taos, Picuris, San Juan, Santa Clara, Nambe, Pojoaque, Tesuque and San […]
Mark of the Ancients, Part 2: Taos Pueblo
Unlike Bandelier, which is inhabited only by the spirits that went before, Taos Pueblo is a living ancient village. This Pueblo is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the US, formally acknowledged as older than one thousand years. However, the people of the Pueblo say, “The Native legends and detailed oral history […]
The Española Valley, Part 2, Española
Today Española feels as though it is a series of highways and strip malls, with no center, despite its glorious setting and its remarkable history. I’m sorry, but it’s true. It sits right on the Rio Grande and there is no city park or any clear access anywhere to the river!
The Española Valley, Part 1, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo
That first capital of the United States was, in fact, established at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. This detail required some untangling, as several different modern-day places have claimed the first capital as their own.