State Number 44: New Mexico

Of course, a chance to see my friend Anne Carolyn perform at one of the best young artist opera programs in the country is an excellent reason to go anywhere, but it didn’t hurt that I got to add one more state to my arsenal. I was also pleased with the proximity to Texas and Oklahoma, visiting which would bring me up to 46 states. I don’t know anyone in either, and don’t know any reason off-hand that I would take a trip specifically to either (although I’m happy to take suggestions if anyone has any), so I thought I would kill three birds with one stone. Yesterday evening, though, or rather late last night, Ian and I sat down and really discussed what we wanted to do today, and it turns out a trip to Texas and Oklahoma would have been feasible, but it would’ve taken a minimum of 10 hours, we’d have to get up early, we’d only see the barrenest, tiniest corner of each place, and all for me to put a couple notches in my belt. After not too much careful consideration, we decided to sleep in, and then visit some of the fine sights of the state we’re in. Besides, 800 miles in one day in the no-cruise-control/no-overdrive/no power-window white Ford Focus sounded like just a touch too much torture.

Instead, we went up to Taos. This part of New Mexico is quite forested (much to our surprise. We were expecting something more like Arizona away from the Canyon), and crossed by countless arroyos that fill with raging rivers quickly enough to drown unsuspecting hikers. Particularly at this time of year—the monsoon season when thunderstorms and accompanying rain gushers crack open the sky—stay on the roads. The pine forests, low sparse scrub, dry earth, narrow roads, and tiny hamlets of a half-dozen houses perched on hilltops, reminded us of Rhodes, Greece (minus the Mediterranean, of course). In Taos itself we pretty much drove straight through town (so no Julia sightings), as it appeared to be a cute and dense, but immensely tourist-populated, mall. We lunched near the Pueblo at a Tiwa “Indian home-cooking” restaurant, where we gobbled down burritos made with fry bread and buffalo (Ian) and chicken (me), homemade sauces, fried zucchini and corn, and wild rice. Dessert was more fry bread with a homemade organic chokecherry syrup; sweet, deep red, and with a tiny bitterness that made it interesting. Afterwards, we visited Taos Pueblo.

I had mixed feelings about visiting it, but wanting to won out. It’s a World Heritage Site, and at about 1,000 years old, one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the US. That’s right, it’s still inhabited. People live there, raise their children and pets there, work there. And tourists come and pay $10 each, and $5 more for a photo permit, to wander around and watch all this. It’s only open for 6 ½ hours per day, and many residents sell handmade art from little storefronts throughout the adobe buildings—intricately-detailed hand-painted and thrown pots, woven blankets, silver and turquoise jewelry. Having their site open for tourism undoubtedly brings a lot of money into the community . . . and that’s why we went. That, and the fact that the residents of this amazing, organic place have been here for centuries longer than us, and I wanted to honor that, and appreciate it. But there’s always that misty, insubstantial line between traveling and tourism, gawking and learning, and sometimes it’s hard to know which side of it you’re on.