Footsteps
New Mexico!
My husband Richard was born in this US State which calls itself the land of Enchantment, in Taos. He spent his first 12 years in the lovely 8,000 feet high plateau resort of Eagle Nest, and that was where we headed first as we drove south from Colorado.
We have learned as Benny, our intrepid truck, pulls Jet, our 38 foot long 5th wheel trailer, that we can negotiate our way over scenic mountain passes and along river valleys with relative ease, as long as there is little traffic. And generally the routes we have chosen have been fairly quiet and easy to drive, with faster traffic able to overtake up steeper climbs by means of short stretches of dual carriageways or strategically placed parking areas. The pressure is definitely on, however, when the road is narrow and manic local drivers stalk us, with no sign of a lay-by ahead.
This was the case on the hair raising 23 mile narrow curving road between Taos and Eagle Nest, which climbs more than one thousand feet. You can imagine how happy the sight of Richard’s former home town made us!
A lot has changed since Richard’s parents bought and ran a garage and motel here during the resort’s heyday in the late 40’s and 50’s. By the time Richard was entering his teens, the summer tourists on whom the town’s fortunes depended were going elsewhere to spend their recreational dollars, and the Tepe family was forced to move to Oklahoma to make a new living. The town has grown a fair bit in the intervening years, but we got the impression from the number of tourist stores that the economy is still very much dependent on summer trade, and the locals were complaining that tourist numbers were down again.
As we explored the pretty area, and Richard retraced his childhood footsteps, he recalled many happy memories of when the Tepe boys roamed the hills and played in the fields behind their motel, even though their mother Clarabel was often afraid of the havoc her three mischievous sons might have wreaked whilst she taught Home Economics in nearby Cimarron to make ends meet.
How strange it must have been to see all remains of the garage and motel rooms obliterated and the house he once lived in remodelled to accommodate a café. The only sign of his former home was exactly that – an actual sign put up by the local historical society, briefly telling the part his family played in the town’s history.
I was quite touched and proud that his family’s short-lived footprint here was commemorated in this way.
The nights were much colder at this high altitude, even at the end of August, and I was glad when we left for the warmer temperatures of Santa Fe. I couldn’t help wondering how the present day locals fared during the long snowbound winters. I imagine many of the new buildings are summer or weekend residences only.
I guess Richard’s parents realized that their family’s survival was dependent on either being innovative to adapt to their change of economic circumstances, or leaving this lovely but harsh area to find new beginnings.
I am a great believer in synchronicity. It seemed the Tepe family emigration story echoed more loudly in my mind since learning the history of the Ancient Ones at Chimney Rock National Monument a few weeks before, and, of course, about the Syrian Refugee crisis in Europe.
Our guides, both at Chimney Rock and in Mesa Verde, a rather more visited abandoned Ancient Puebloan homeland within the Four Corners area, speculated on the reasons why the inhabitants left their mesa top rock hewn homes around 1300AD. I am sure, just like in the 1960’s, climactic changes, tough economic times, and an inability for the area to support the needs of a growing community, would all have contributed to force people to look for other homes to raise their families and ensure their survival.
In the last month, Richard and I have visited several more sites inhabited by different clans of these same ancient peoples, and what we have learned has left us amazed at just how innovative and civilized the inhabitants of this corner of North America were, prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1540.
Just like this rather colorful woodpecker,
(which visits the cactus outside our 5th wheel every day to tap into the juicy flesh between sharp needles), has adapted to find food sources in the harsh, arid high desert of New Mexico, the ancient pueblo Indians adapted their natural surroundings to create shelters from the elements, using locally sourced implements and rocks, only to abandon them when conditions changed.
Mesa Verde communities built adobe bricks from the mud gathered in the valleys and on the mesa top where they grew their crops and created houses on natural wind excavated rock ledges, giving them much needed shelter from the frequent thunderstorms and winter snowstorms ten or twenty feet above them.
The Ancient Puebloan communities in the Bandelier National Park area grew their crops in canyons and built their houses into large villages the Spaniards later named Pueblos directly on the valley floor,
and also at ground level backing onto the natural wind excavated rock caves the length of south facing canyon walls, with bricks hewn out of the local Tuff, a pumice-like rock.
Most surprising for me was the size of these communities. It is quite staggering to realise that what Europeans thought of as savages, were a highly civilized, innovative and self-sufficient populace, who lived in spiritual harmony with their surroundings, traded as far south as Columbia and to both eastern and western oceans, and adapted to change perfectly well until the arrival of the aggressive and land hungry Europeans.
How awful to learn of the brutal arrogance of the Spanish in their attempts to show the locals what it meant to be civilized. Our visits to the approximate site of first human contact of American Indians with Francisco Vásquez de Coronado at the Kuaua Pueblo in the Rio Grande river valley just north of Albuquerque, http://www.nmmonuments.org/coronado and the stone ruins of a 500 year old Indian village and the San José de los Jemez Mission church dating from 1621 made this only too clear. http://nmmonuments.org/jemez,
More visits to other museums in Santa Fe (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, New Mexico History Museum and The Palace of the Governors) broadened my appreciation of the skills and forbearance of those native peoples who have survived the bloody history of New Mexico as ownership was wrested to and fro between the Spanish, Mexicans, French and Americans, and its indigenous population was decimated.
I commend modern New Mexico for learning the lessons of history and producing these numerous tributes to the wonder of the indigenous civilization - small steps to paying homage to their ancestors.
And while I am on that topic, I am overjoyed to tell you that while I have been lucky enough to be here in the USA, having chosen my new life so I can tour this land and learn its fascinating history, my son, Drew, who left Scotland to forge his future with his wife Sarah in Australia, has created his own piece of history.
In fact, he will be leaving his own imprint on that particular continent.
As I traipsed through Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument,
wondering at the miracle of nature, my first grandchild, a little girl named Madeleine, was born.
Whilst I was admiring the local architecture – based on the Pueblo style,
my grand-daughter was experiencing and puzzling over her first hic-coughs.
Whilst I was watching one of the many dramatically beautiful New Mexico sunsets,
my precious Maddie was lulled to sleep by her first game of rugby after a belly filling suckle of her mother’s milk.
In a year she will be taking her own little footsteps.
Isn’t life amazing?
My husband Richard was born in this US State which calls itself the land of Enchantment, in Taos. He spent his first 12 years in the lovely 8,000 feet high plateau resort of Eagle Nest, and that was where we headed first as we drove south from Colorado.
We have learned as Benny, our intrepid truck, pulls Jet, our 38 foot long 5th wheel trailer, that we can negotiate our way over scenic mountain passes and along river valleys with relative ease, as long as there is little traffic. And generally the routes we have chosen have been fairly quiet and easy to drive, with faster traffic able to overtake up steeper climbs by means of short stretches of dual carriageways or strategically placed parking areas. The pressure is definitely on, however, when the road is narrow and manic local drivers stalk us, with no sign of a lay-by ahead.
This was the case on the hair raising 23 mile narrow curving road between Taos and Eagle Nest, which climbs more than one thousand feet. You can imagine how happy the sight of Richard’s former home town made us!
A lot has changed since Richard’s parents bought and ran a garage and motel here during the resort’s heyday in the late 40’s and 50’s. By the time Richard was entering his teens, the summer tourists on whom the town’s fortunes depended were going elsewhere to spend their recreational dollars, and the Tepe family was forced to move to Oklahoma to make a new living. The town has grown a fair bit in the intervening years, but we got the impression from the number of tourist stores that the economy is still very much dependent on summer trade, and the locals were complaining that tourist numbers were down again.
As we explored the pretty area, and Richard retraced his childhood footsteps, he recalled many happy memories of when the Tepe boys roamed the hills and played in the fields behind their motel, even though their mother Clarabel was often afraid of the havoc her three mischievous sons might have wreaked whilst she taught Home Economics in nearby Cimarron to make ends meet.
How strange it must have been to see all remains of the garage and motel rooms obliterated and the house he once lived in remodelled to accommodate a café. The only sign of his former home was exactly that – an actual sign put up by the local historical society, briefly telling the part his family played in the town’s history.
I was quite touched and proud that his family’s short-lived footprint here was commemorated in this way.
The nights were much colder at this high altitude, even at the end of August, and I was glad when we left for the warmer temperatures of Santa Fe. I couldn’t help wondering how the present day locals fared during the long snowbound winters. I imagine many of the new buildings are summer or weekend residences only.
I guess Richard’s parents realized that their family’s survival was dependent on either being innovative to adapt to their change of economic circumstances, or leaving this lovely but harsh area to find new beginnings.
I am a great believer in synchronicity. It seemed the Tepe family emigration story echoed more loudly in my mind since learning the history of the Ancient Ones at Chimney Rock National Monument a few weeks before, and, of course, about the Syrian Refugee crisis in Europe.
Our guides, both at Chimney Rock and in Mesa Verde, a rather more visited abandoned Ancient Puebloan homeland within the Four Corners area, speculated on the reasons why the inhabitants left their mesa top rock hewn homes around 1300AD. I am sure, just like in the 1960’s, climactic changes, tough economic times, and an inability for the area to support the needs of a growing community, would all have contributed to force people to look for other homes to raise their families and ensure their survival.
In the last month, Richard and I have visited several more sites inhabited by different clans of these same ancient peoples, and what we have learned has left us amazed at just how innovative and civilized the inhabitants of this corner of North America were, prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1540.
Just like this rather colorful woodpecker,
Mesa Verde communities built adobe bricks from the mud gathered in the valleys and on the mesa top where they grew their crops and created houses on natural wind excavated rock ledges, giving them much needed shelter from the frequent thunderstorms and winter snowstorms ten or twenty feet above them.
 |
| You can see where wooden beams of the roofs were forced into the rock |
How awful to learn of the brutal arrogance of the Spanish in their attempts to show the locals what it meant to be civilized. Our visits to the approximate site of first human contact of American Indians with Francisco Vásquez de Coronado at the Kuaua Pueblo in the Rio Grande river valley just north of Albuquerque, http://www.nmmonuments.org/coronado and the stone ruins of a 500 year old Indian village and the San José de los Jemez Mission church dating from 1621 made this only too clear. http://nmmonuments.org/jemez,
I commend modern New Mexico for learning the lessons of history and producing these numerous tributes to the wonder of the indigenous civilization - small steps to paying homage to their ancestors.
And while I am on that topic, I am overjoyed to tell you that while I have been lucky enough to be here in the USA, having chosen my new life so I can tour this land and learn its fascinating history, my son, Drew, who left Scotland to forge his future with his wife Sarah in Australia, has created his own piece of history.
In fact, he will be leaving his own imprint on that particular continent.
As I traipsed through Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument,
Whilst I was admiring the local architecture – based on the Pueblo style,
Whilst I was watching one of the many dramatically beautiful New Mexico sunsets,
In a year she will be taking her own little footsteps.
Isn’t life amazing?
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