Monday, February 10, 2014 – Petroglyphs, Friends and Aliens - Albuquerque to Carlsbad

Waking up on the urban farm we meet all of our host’s animals, the chickens, guinea pigs, goats and rabbits.  The incredibly cute, cuddly animals have completely destroyed her backyard.  Our host is happy, living a vegetarian life surrounded by animals, earning her keep through Airbnb rentals.  She provides insightful information on all Albuquerque tourism opportunities.  She occasionally refers to her dining room table, littered with maps and brochures, handing us the relevant ones.

Today we visit the Petroglyphs National Monument, a bit outside of Albuquerque.  Volcanic activity created basalt escarpments covered over time by a dark desert patina.  People learned to make pictures on the boulders by carefully pecking away the patina revealing the lighter gray rock underneath. The monument preserves 20,000 fragile images painstakingly tapped into the rock by ancestral Puebloan Indians, the Spanish who followed them, and finally the Anglo ranchers. 

Stopping at the visitor center, we gather the all-important national park stamp for our national park passports, our first stamp of the trip.  But my stamp is a bit blurry.  Never fear!  We stamp a piece of paper clearly.  When we return home, we’ll carefully cut out the better stamp and glue it into my passport.  Is this a bit obsessive?  Yes.

Bloodroot and I have separate national park passports.  Back in the 1990s, we bought my passport on our very first trip together when we visited the Grand Canyon.  Since then, through stamps, we've recorded nearly every trip taken in the States. (We do occasionally forget to bring the passports along.)  

Establishing his blossoming manhood and maturity, Bloodroot purchased his own passport in 2012.  Returning home following that trip, he color photocopied, photo shopped and searched the internet to create stamps identical to mine, capturing the same date and color for each stamp. He then carefully cut out each quarter sized stamp and glued them onto the appropriate pages in his passport.    He calls this his four hour ode to Paul Distad (my father) his OCD grandfather.

Today’s extensive travel plans necessitate exploring only a few short trails in the Monument.  We hope to see some petroglyphs.  Despite park literature to the contrary, the boys are sure we’ll find at least one accessible trail. Sensing potential, they send me down a sidewalk.  Looking good!  The sidewalk ends in a hundred feet.  Sven and I return to the picnic table.  The boys disappear, climbing up the Mesa Point trail wandering through cinder cones.  At the trail’s peak, they see the Sandia, Jemez and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  Still no blood they report.

Meanwhile, I look up to see an almost hazy blue sky.  Brilliant sunshine pours down on the volcanic rocks.  I sit out in Mom’s Norwegian sweater and a sunhat and write my five pages.  (My hands refuse to work after five pages.)  The boys wave to me from the top of the hill they've climbed.  They return down the trail.  I’m watching little wispy clouds and the same mountains in the distance.

Using the spotting scope in the picnic area, I too can see the macaw petroglyph, the park’s motto.

Leaving the park, we enjoy a too leisurely lunch with best friend from sixth grade.  We catch up on our lives after forty years’ separation.  Around two, we part once again, dropping her off at her apartment.  We shop for gas, ice, and food. 

By 3:45, loaded up and ready to go, we leave Albuquerque bound for Carlsbad, a journey we believe will take three hours.  Error!  We had originally considered sleeping in Roswell and forgot to update our spreadsheet when we decided instead to sleep in Carlsbad, actually five hours distant.  (Naturally, as an accountant I plan all trips on Excel spreadsheets.  I’ve proudly passed this legacy on to Bloodroot.)

Ah well, off we go down 285.  Leaving the mountains behind, we see plains stretching to the horizon covered in desert scrub.  Eastern New Mexico rolls eternally before us.  Vegetation becomes sparser as we speed south.  We encounter very few other vehicles.  Solitude descends upon our car like a bell, surrounding and containing us, muffling our disturbance of the endless landscape.  Pearl worries.  How will anyone admire her youth, power and beauty out in this endless desolation?

The sun sets; we drive on.  Arriving in Roswell at night, we see a few spaceship logos on hotels and restaurants, not much else.  Only one alien spaceship flies over our car.  Unimpressed, Pearl sniffs, “Is that the best they could do?”  She planned a technology competition with the aliens, confident that she’d win with her retractable ramp. 

After Roswell, we see more traffic.  In another hour, we come to Artesia, a town full of petroleum factories that we smell long before we arrive.  Amidst a trackless desert visited only by aliens, lights erupt from the huge industrial complex, slashing the sky, completely destroying any feeling of night, quiet and solitude.

One last hour hurtling through the dark brings us to our destination-the Rodeway Inn in Whites City New Mexico, located conveniently next to Carlsbad Caverns.

We find a veritable handicapped palace in the Whites City New Mexico Rodeway Inn.  Who would have thunk it?  We have a low bed transfer height equal to the wheelchair height.  I so struggle trying to get into high beds.  When your hip flexors break, you can’t raise your knees to climb into bed.  Over time, I've developed a mechanism where I sit on the bed and violently throw myself back, using momentum to hopefully fling my legs into bed too.  In case of failure, the animals stand by to assist with my errant limbs.

We have a roll in shower with a stool for me to sit on.  The toilet has bars hung beside it.  I've seen bars directly above the toilet tank.  What possible use would a bar above the toilet tank be?  I mean, even if you’re a guy?  Would you place both hands on the bar in back and let your penis just fly free?  This would be really gross.

And I can roll under the sink to wash my hands.  Needless to say, all doors and pathways to the bed accommodate Sven. I write notes singing the room’s praises to the staff and on the internet.  I don’t know if all Rodeway Inns have these amenities, but I know where I’m staying next trip!

Sunday, February 9, 2014 - One Last Day in Taos

We wake to a brilliant blue sky, the weather sunny and warm.  After listening to Keith grumble for two days, the weather sends the clouds packing, allowing him to see the top of Wheeler Mountain, Taos’ tallest peak.  He is happy.  Although the clouds have all run off today, going wherever clouds go, gathering and plotting darkness, they have not ceded their primacy willingly as they wait upon nature’s mischief.  “We’ll be back,” they say, chortling evilly.

Since our Taos arrival, I’ve been watching the Sangre de Cristo Mountains[1], each sunrise and sunset, waiting to see the red of Christ’s blood splashed on the peaks.  I never see it.  Propaganda!

Funny how we cling to the smallest things as cripples.  I still shower at home.  My animal family helps me into and out of the shower, but I sit on my bath chair and wash myself.  Having always done this, I am reluctant to give up one more bit of independence.  This morning I face a dilemma – should I roll Tinky into the shower, sitting on him to bathe, soaking him?  Or should I brace myself standing in the small shower and let my fellow animals wash me?  I choose the latter.  Keith soaps me as I stand under the water for the best shower I’ve had in years.  Now I’m lying down for half an hour recovering from standing for ten minutes.

We pack up, planning eventually to arrive in Albuquerque tonight.   Bloodroot leaves a note in the casita guest book detailing Wiccan moons, ley lines, conversations with demons culminating in the explosion of his spleen charka.  Sighing, I realize I will be developing a new Airbnb persona.

Following my glorious shower, we visit the Kit Carson Home and Museum.  I’ve never thought much about or acknowledged Kit Carson, the quintessential American hero, believing him to be some sort of Indian massacring white dude.  But I have learned only of the dime novel Carson, enshrined long ago as the walking embodiment of the myth of the West.  Kit’s ghost, ably assisted by the museum docent, teaches us otherwise.

Born in the early 1800s, Carson moved west following the shifting frontier.  He married an Arapahoe woman named Singing Grass, paying a large bride price.  Together they trapped all over the Rockies. 

Singing Grass died young and game became scarce.  Carson, a brilliant linguist (speaking at least ten languages), and a preternaturally gifted scout, found his services much in demand.  Possessing a frontiersman’s loyalty, he formed life-long bonds with the Spanish-Americans, the Utes, Apaches, Arapahos and Pueblo Indians.  He had no use for the Navajo, the traditional enemies of his friends.  He held every position the West offered, ranching, guiding and scouting for armies, negotiating between Indian nations, at times also fighting various Indian nations.  Late in life, he used scorched earth tactics to tragically round up the Navajo sending the tribe to a reservation.  He later argued successfully for their release.

Carson spent the last twenty-five years of his life married to his third wife, Josepha, the daughter of a prominent Spanish American family.  He converted to Catholicism, fathered eight children and spoke Spanish at home in Taos.

The obsessed docent talks even more than I do.  She’s met each and every one of Carson’s descendants.  She loves the latest Carson biography Blood and Thunder, claiming it to be as good as the Comanche story Empire of the Summer Moon.  Sold, I buy the book, which I will report makes a good read but is NOT anywhere comparable to Empire of the Summer Moon.  We also purchase a Kokopelli covered bag (made by far eastern Indians) to hang on Sven. 

After Kit’s house, we encounter time constraints.  Should we see D. H. Lawrence’s paintings that accompanied Lady Chatterley’s Lover, deemed obscene and banned by Scotland Yard in the 1920s OR should we visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site Taos Pueblo?

Eschewing possible titillation, we choose the Taos Pueblo.  Nestled under the Taos Mountains, we find an ancient traditional adobe apartment building.  Around 150 people live in the pueblo much the same as they have for the past thousand years.  People access their personal apartments via ladders, carrying water, fuel and food.  The all-important stream runs next to the pueblo, providing water for both the people and the crops.  My soul delights in seeing the Red Willow people sober, healthy and proud, preserving and honoring their traditions. 

One clan, men only, dances a corn dance to bring rain, health and luck to the people.  Each clan has specific dances and responsibilities.  We watch the corn dancers weave in and out of the pueblo.

We visit the church – the best combination of Catholicism and native religion I’ve ever seen.  Mary dominates the church, reigning supreme, her sculpture standing in the center spot usually reserved for Jesus.   Tall verdant corn plants sprouting abundant ears of corn frame her altar.  Jesus hangs above Mary, painted about 1/4^th her size, his unmangled body attached to a cross of equal length beams.  

The people dress Mary and the Saints for each season.  Right now, they’re clothed in white for winter.  Each August, the entire pueblo re-muds this adobe church, using special mud-60% sand.  This church apse also tilts to the left.  Exiting the church, we see Mary robed in blue, shimmering beside and blessing the Red Willow Creek, that selfsame creek that has nurtured the people for years. Mountains rise behind her.

We buy a magnet and some treats from a Puebloan vendor.  He tells us stories of the Red Willow people, handed down through oral histories.  “We were here to greet Coronado.  He sought gold and we sent him on his way.  A black man travelled with him – the first we had seen.  The church tragically burned down 150 years ago.”

What the gentleman politely doesn’t tell us I learn from reading Blood and Thunder.  In 1847 during the Mexican-American war, a few young Pueblo hotheads joined the Mexican locals in a revolt killing the new US governor of New Mexico.  Carson blamed the local priests, unhappy with their diminished role under American rule, for fomenting revolution.  He could never prove his allegations, which remain controversial to this day.  In retaliation, the US Army attacked the Pueblo.  The rebels huddled in the church, believing that God and their eight foot thick adobe walls would protect them.  The army shelled the church, setting fire to the roof and blasting a hole through the adobe, killing anyone trying to escape.  The Puebloans rebuilt the church in 1850.

The tribe recently repurchased a few hundred acres of their traditional land from an elderly woman who only wanted her initial investment back - $3 million.  The estimated land value topped $6 million. 

As they earlier threatened, the clouds return, bringing winter with them.  We leave the Taos Pueblo driving two and a half hours down to our next Airbnb spot, an urban farm in Albuquerque.  With Airbnb, we always can cook.  We enjoy a nice stir-fry dinner of sausage and vegetables and crawl into bed.

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[1] Blood of Christ

Saturday, February 8, 2014 Kamikaze Touring in Taos

The day dawns cloudy, windy and cold.  Taos lies in a dry sage covered plain within the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  The sun peeps out from time to time illuminating sweeping mountain vistas and dry arroyos.  Mist rises from each mountain as the sun strikes snow, yet clouds obscure the peaks.

Taos draws artists like a New Mexican mecca.  Even I feel a compulsion to paint or sculpt or draw or perhaps all three intertwined in an explosion of visual creativity.  This could be downright dangerous; I am a tax accountant. Just think – the Internal Revenue Code sculpted in your backyard!  I’m flexible; I could sculpt any section you liked.  Yet Taos enraptures even me, the one who couldn’t draw her way out of a paper bag.  No wonder so many artists settled here over the past two centuries.

We first visit Taos’ oldest church, San Francisco de Asis (St. Francis of Assisi), finding the large adobe structure closed for winter.  Ugh!  But wait – the unlocked front door opens.  We enter and meet the cleaning crew busy preparing for tomorrow’s masses.  Eschewing compensation, they clean the church each Saturday in a labor of love and devotion.  Moving slowly, mystically, guided by an inner rhythm, they gently and reverently polish each pew, every surface.  They and their families have worshipped here for generations.

Respecting their devotion, we speak softly at length with them while they work.  One of the women sold candles to the parishioners for her first job.  She was ten and the church allowed her to keep the profits.  She’s been hooked ever since.

The Spanish built the adobe church in 1815.  In continuous use since that time, the church houses the oldest extant congregation in the States.  The church has two high bell towers yet maintains the rounded adobe flow, reminding me of Frida Kahlo’s work.  Many Taos artists have painted the structure. 

Once in the late 1960s, the congregants embraced modern technology and plastered the church.  To their abject horror, the building began to crumble.  Adobe has to breathe.  Currently the congregation re-muds the building every June, using the traditional adobe mixture of sand, clay, water and straw.

Inside the church, the congregants have lovingly restored the altar.  After careful research, they found recipes for the original vegetable dyes from the 1800s.  The altar has both painted saints and foot tall wooden carved saints (Santos).  All the saints and deities look Hispanic.

Taking their rediscovered dyes in hand, the congregants also carefully refurbished a second altar. Standing to the right of the apse, the altar depicts eight painted saints, each in its own 1 foot by 2 foot framed square.  St. Francis, tonsured like a proper monk, occupies the lower two squares surrounding a recessed altar featuring Jesus’ mangled body on the cross.  In the right square Francis holds the baby Jesus, while on the left he holds a skull.

The pope outlawed tonsuring of monks in 1972.  But how could a real monk not be tonsured?  Think of all the stories you read as a child!  This one papal act explains the entire problems facing the Catholic Church.  Yep.  Tonsuring clergy again will solve everything.

The pews sit under a 40’ tall pine beam ceiling.  Where the ceiling intersects the right wall, we see a stylized wooden rope running along the crease, traditional for the Franciscan order we hear, although we never learn why.  The building apse leans slightly to the left, copying the direction of Christ’s head on the cross (stage right). 

As we leave we glance up to see a painting of Jesus bleeding from His arm and leg wounds. His arms have sprouted bird feather wings as He flies up to heaven.  Jesus’ wounds shoot laser beams at St. Francis injuring him in the exact same places.  St. Francis recoils.  My fellow animals begin to laugh.  I shush them, attempting to invoke some piety in the lot, an exercise in complete futility.

We exit the church into brilliant sunlight, blinking like owls awakened startled to the day.

We drive out to see the Rio Grande.  The river begins in Colorado, flows through New Mexico, then forms part of the border between the States and Mexico before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.  We expect a small river, gently bubbling along like an eastern stream, ten to twenty feet below a simple bridge.  Our mind’s eye pictures the river’s edge a soft verdant green, abounding with life, squirrels and birdsong.  We discover a bridge spanning a 500 foot chasm, the river invisible below us.  No green in sight.  Locals offer rafting tours.  I’m impressed that anyone crossed the river before the bridge.  You’d spend half a day walking down, ford the river and take another half day to walk back up the opposing side.

We park next to the chasm and hike along the canyon trail (Sven and I motoring along, of course).  The trail never provides any view of the river.  Keith & Bloodroot wander off trail to see the river, leaving Sven and I trailbound stymied by rocks and scrub vegetation. Temperatures have climbed the 40s, but wind cuts through you like a knife robbing you of all warmth, making it feel colder than Denver at 0˚F.  We return to Pearl.  I retrace Sven’s tracks carefully, concerned about damaging the frail, thin desert soil.   Unfortunately, Sven and I have to ride beside the asphalt parking lot for a while before we find a curb we can cross.  My environment guilt skyrockets as we run over the fragile sparse vegetation.  I hope it recovers.

Following our aborted viewing of the Rio Grande, we drive a few more miles out to see the Earthships.  An architect from the University of Cincinnati began designing Earthships in the 1970s, building the first prototypes in the 1980s. Set out in the Taos desert, the Earthships operate off of the grid.

Designed to creatively repurpose as many materials as possible, the Earthship external load bearing walls use old tires as ballast.  They recycle multicolored glass bottles by carefully cutting them in half, matching colors and plastering them into walls.  Once in the walls, the bottles create a Gaudi like spray of colors, especially upon catching the light. I am ever drawn to color.

Hippies build the Earthships into the earth, each with a greenhouse and complex solar electric systems.  They run refrigerators and lights on DC charged batteries and computers on AC.  The Earthships collect water from winter snows and use it four times (potable, washing, irrigating and sanitary) before the septic tank. Although their motto is “Climate Change, Bring It On, We’re Ready” I foresee trouble when the winter snows stop.

Despite the computers, the Earthship community feels as though they left our world in the early 80s, striking out for a recycled utopia.  I smell patchouli.  The time space continuum opens, sucking me into a time warp.  I find myself careening back to the Akron (Ohio) Cooperative Market in the 1980s.  I loved that community which sustained both single parent me and Bloodroot.  For us, that time is so long gone.  I’ve sold out, gotten real jobs, sent my son to suburban schools and moved to Denver.  I feel odd touching it again, as if I’ve moved out of time’s flow.  What if I had stayed on the hippie course?  Would I have ended up owning an Earthship in the desert?  Would I have spent my life building community instead of assisting the wealthy in their travels through US tax land?  Would I have made the world a better place?  I wander through the exhibits contemplating what may have been.

The company adapts Earthships for any climate and location.  They provide interested people with the knowledge and training required to construct an Earthship.  Building Earthships costs around $200 per square foot (reasonable Denver price), depending upon how much of the work you do yourself.  Personally, I see Earthships in Detroit.  Wouldn’t it be cool to remake Detroit’s post-apocalyptic squalor anew?  Who would then care that the wealthy had long ago fled to suburbia, abandoning the rust belt city?  With Earthships, we wouldn’t need any city services.  The fantasized comeuppance tastes so sweet.

The animals confer.  Should we sell our Denver house and buy an Earthship out here in the Taos desert?  Keith would be so happy melding into the art scene here.  But I want to live in the city.  I am also uncomfortable living with such a dichotomy between the rich white people and the Hispanic poor underclass.  I see no middle here.

After the Earthships, we again stop at the Rio Grande.  This time, we park Pearl next to the bridge spanning the river canyon.  Sven carries me out to the middle of the bridge.  What a sight!  The river rushes along far below us, ever deepening the chasm.  But the cold wind still drives his chill fingers into me, ramming his way past my warm windproof coat, grasping at my heart.  Fearfully glancing over my shoulder, I leave the river, motoring back to the car. 

Archaeologists and the Comanche recently found Comanche rock art in the Rio Grande Gorge right here.  The area makes an excellent strategic camp, providing a place for hiding teepees, abundant water and an adjacent natural corral.

Back in the Rio Grande parking lot, we eat lunch inside Pearl, grateful for her heater.  Keith and I polish off the remains of Thursday’s stir-fry, while Bloodroot devours my Taos Inn leftovers, finding the old chicken far more palatable than I had.

Keith fusses about the clouds obscuring the peak of the Taos’ Wheeler Mountain. “I’ll never get to see it,” he groans.  At Taos’ elevation of 7,500 feet, clouds at 10,000 feet will indeed cover mountain peaks of 12,000 feet.  Pearl murmurs, consoling him with the promise of more museums. 

Despite our fervent disavowal of kamikaze touring, we appear to be at it again. The cold strongly suggests selecting indoor venues.  After a whispered conference with the wind, Pearl turns south toward town driving up to the Blumenschein house. 

Ernest Blumenschein studied art in Paris and New York, then spent most of his artistic career painting New Mexico and her people.  We first saw Blumenschein at the DAM in 2008 and fell in love with his work then, entranced by the colors and lighting.

Blumenschein’s original adobe house proves far too narrow and small for Sven.  Bloodroot takes me in Bess, power-lifting me up two curved steps (the absolute worst!).  Bloodroot considers all places handicap accessible, given sufficient force.  This may somewhat contribute to Bess’ repeated repair needs.  We ramble through the Blumenschein house.  In her quest to see all, despite carrying a cripple, Bess knocks down a bit of plaster surrounding a narrow door.  We apologize profusely to the docent.

Exploring Blumenschein’s house, we discover his family’s paintings.  In 1905, Blumenschein married Mary Greene, an artist in her own right.  Greene won the Gold Medal at the prestigious Parisian Salon d’Automne, the first woman winning since Mary Cassatt.  We see her work which mingles flowing art nouveau figures with the hues and faces of the southwest.

The Blumenscheins had one daughter, also an artist.  Their bedroom contains twin beds perhaps explaining the sole child.

Are we seeing the misogyny of the art world here?  Everyone painted, but only Ernest found success.  As a male, he had the freedom to grow and develop his unique style, while Mary met contemporary expectations, giving up art for marriage and home life.  I must admit that I do prefer his paintings over the rest of the family’s.  But what would Mary have become had she pursued art instead of domesticity?  Women hold up half the sky.  What do we lose as a species when we constrain the contributions of half of the people?

After the Blumenschein house, I hit the wall of fatigue.  We visit one last museum, the Harwood down the street.  Collapsed in Bess, teetering between wake and sleep, Bloodroot pushes me into a room full of seven 10’ by 10’ canvasses painted various shades of white.  Two thoughts enter my mind:

1)    People get paid for this, really? 

2)   When will I begin drooling?

We descend back to the street in a creaky scary elevator.  “Enough boys!” I complain, “I just can’t take any more touring.”  “Okay, okay, one last stop,” they agree reluctantly, although time has once again graciously closed everything.

“Just one last stop.  We promise.  Drive through touring.”   Lacking Pearl’s keys I’ve relinquished control.  The boys strap me into Pearl’s passenger seat.  I try not to drool.

For our last event of the day, we drive past the Mabel Dodge Luhan house.  An eastern banking heiress, Dodge lived in New York, California and Florence (Italy) befriending everyone including Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, D. H. Lawrence and Ansel Adams.  Her friends and compadres read like a list of “Who’s Who” of the early twentieth century.  Firmly in charge of her own life, she had affairs with both women and men.  She married repeatedly, finally settling down in a scandalous (for the time) interracial marriage to Tony Luhan, a Taos Pueblo Indian.  Their marriage lasted forty years until death parted them. In Taos, she built a huge adobe house (now a hotel), shocking the locals with her top floor glass solarium and shower. 

We wander through town looking for chicken to buy for dinner.  We’re repeatedly directed to the cheapest places, Walfart and a Super Saver.  But we want organic free range chicken-chickens who we hope had a good life before we eat them.  Taos has the same storm drainage idea as Denver-none.  Just tilt the roads and build high curbs in front of each and every parking lot and the infrequent rains will run off.  Poor Pearl!   She rides very low, burdened with her hat, the 300# wheel chair and the three of us.  “Uff,” she complains to Keith as we scrape bottom once again climbing out of the fifth poorly designed parking lot.

Despite the damage to Pearl, we are ultimately successful. We return to our casita with organic chicken and a bottle of wine.  Completely fried, I nap.  Keith and Bloodroot work together to create a wonderful chicken pesto dish.  I am so blessed to live within the circle of love and happiness created by such kind, caring, capable animals.