NM Day 4 - Cliff Dwellings, Controversial Art, and Colorful Prisms
Today I got a little bit of a late start because I slept in, so I went back to Bad Ass Coffee because it was close to my air bnb, I liked them, and most importantly they had a drive thru because I had some driving to do today and time to make up for.
My first destination of the day was Bandelier National Monument, which was supposedly one of the must see spots in New Mexico. To get there though, I had to drive up through the Jemez Mountains. Before I could even get to Bandelier though, I had to stop multiple times just to take in those vistas.
Bandelier National Monument is located in a canyon in these mountains and the area is just stunning. Because of the Rio Grande cuts through it supplying a steady stream of water, it's abruptly much greener than the surrounding areas (though it's still the Southwest so green is relative). The vegetation combined with the towering brown and red rocks on every side of you really makes it a sight to behold. The area is what is called an ecotone because the range of elevations up from the canyon to the peaks actually marks a transition from one kind of biome to another. I decided to hike the main trail loop which is relatively gentle and only about a 1.2 miles long so you get some decent exercise to compliment the gorgeous views, but you don't have to do anything too strenuous. I actually accidentally started at the end of the trail and worked my way all the way back to the gift shop before I realized what I did, so I could have seen the whole park without paying but I ended up just acting like I was about to start and giving them the parking fee anyways because I think at this point Trump was actively threatening the National Parks Service (from my vantage point writing this in the future I can now wonder which time was that?) so I wanted to help them out.
As amazing as the views are though, the real claim to fame that earned them National Monument status is the preserved cliff dwellings of Puebloan peoples dating back as far as 1150 CE. These were really mind-blowing both in that they were made at all and also that they were so well preserved. Best of all, you could actually go inside some of the best preserved ones. It's amazing how well adapted these were as permanent settlements because they were literally rock solid, and it was considerably cooler inside which was a must to survive Southwestern summers. You also get the sense that this was a real, complex society as opposed to just a ragtag group of misfits deciding to live in caves to stick it to their parents. The insides of the dwellings were divided with different sleeping areas and communal areas and designated spaces for food preparation. There were also little pathways between each one so you got the sense that people really had their own spaces but also didn't mind visiting the neighbors. Some of the caves even still had preserved petroglyphs, which could have denoted a shared religious space or what I like to think of as the first artist's loft.
Besides the caves, there were also some other Puebloan structures still intact including a communal fire pit and a well. The most impressive thing to me though was the preserved garden that demonstrated that they had already built irrigation systems and figured out how to allot water in ways that let them grow several staple crops almost year round despite living essentially in a dessert. It was pretty remarkable.
After the gentle hike, I was worn out and needed some food in me, so I drove to nearby Los Alamos, former super secret site of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb turned quiet suburb. I went to a cute kinda bougie cafe called the Blue Window Bistro. I ordered the shrimp tacos lunch plate which consisted of three white corn tortillas loaded with citrus and cilantro marinated shrimp, chopped cabbage, fresh pico de gallo and Thai chile aioli. The tacos were a perfect light summery lunch (even though this was in March) and while I'm not sure where you get shrimp in New Mexico I didn't question anything because it tasted too good, with a nice hint of citrus and a good little kick from the aioli. The meal came with a side of black beans blended with melted cheese that was shockingly good for something so simple.
I didn't see any Manhattan project sites that were open while I was there, but the restaurant had photos and little descriptions of all the major players with some of the photos signed by surviving members when they came back to visit. This probably wasn't supposed to be my takeaway from this display but all I could think about was how much young Robert Oppenheimer looks like David Bowie.
After lunch, I set out to drive to Taos to see the famously large Taos Mountain and also some dirty pictures drawn by a famous modernist writer. Along the way I drove by Don Quijote's Winery and Distiller, purportedly the first and oldest distillery in New Mexico. I had to go because they had free tastings and also chocolates and also sometimes pursuing comedy feels like charging at windmills. Everything they used to make their wines and spirits was grown locally, and they had some funky uniquely southwestern concoctions including blue corn bourbon and gin made from native herbs. For wines, tried the Manhattan Project dry white and kind of port their known for called Angelica, which they claim was invented by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s making it the oldest port in the country and maybe the world. The Angelica was very sweet, and while it tasted amazing, it was definitely a small doses kind of beverage unless you wanted a mouth full of cavities. On the harder side, I tried two variants of the blue corn bourbon, which were both very good though I'm not sure I personally could tell the difference between using the blue corn as opposed to a different grain, and I also tried the grappa, an Italian grape based brandy with a very high alcohol content. I found the grappa dangerously tasty, and I can see why Hemingway wrote so much about it. After my tasting, I also tried a little bit of their homemade chocolate, and that was probably my favorite part of all.
After my little windmill-hunting diversion, I made my way to Taos where I was greeted by this impressive if slightly ominous sight of the mountain off in the distance.
My first stop was the Hotel la Fonda de Taos in the heart of downtown. The hotel is a scenic and historic building in its own right, but the claim to fame that brought me there is that it houses the largest collection of the writer D.H. Lawrence's "Forbidden" Paintings. While most known for his novels, particularly the controversial Lady Chatterly's Lover, Lawrence loved to paint as well, and in 1929 he got an exhibition of his works up at the Warren Gallery in London, where they caused quite a stir. They're relatively tame by today's standards, but, much like with his writing, the frank and honest portrayals of human sexuality in the paintings as opposed to more romanticized representations was just too much for delicate Victorian sensibilities. It probably didn't help that Lady Chatterly had only just come out the year before, so he was already being labeled as a pornographer in Britain's press. The backlash against Lawrence's work was so strong that police came into the gallery and confiscated them. They threatened to destroy them, and the only way Lawrence was able to get them back was if he promised that they never returned to London again. Lawrence died a year later of tuberculosis at the age of only 44. The paintings ended up in Taos when his wife, Frieda, brought them with her after his death when she moved their full time with her new husband. The Lawrences lived there for two years starting in 1922, because a wealthy woman there was a fan of his and gifted him a ranch in exchange for the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers. It was technically the only property he ever owned, so that's where Frieda returned when she chose to settle down. When Frieda passed away, the owner of the hotel, a friend of the family and an avid art collector, purchased the paintings from her second husband. The paintings were displayed just as the original hotel owner intended, in a conference room behind a black curtain that was only opened up to those in the know. The experience also came with a voice over recording explaining most of the story I just relayed about how the paintings got there. I don't personally know much of Lawrence's writing except for some short stories, but I really liked what I've read. As for his abilities as a painter, I was surprised and impressed. His figures were kind of grotesque and exaggerated in a Dali-esque way, so I don't know that I'd want them hanging in my living room, but they had their own unique style and magnetism. The hotel only owns nine of the original oil paintings but they have a little booklet on the coffee table that shows the rest. Unfortunately, my favorite painting wasn't one of the nine. It was entitled Throwing Back the Apple, and it shows Adam and Eve throwing the apple back at a cowering God, which I thought was just an incredible turning of that story on its head.
After the naughty pictures, I wandered around Taos for a bit and got some coffee at a cute place called Coffee Cats which also sold ice cream, and I think I showed remarkable self control in not getting any. The town itself was really neat, because aside from the natural beauty of the mountain, there were also all these old Puebloan buildings and plenty of local art galleries and antique shops with funky window displays. There was also the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and all that self control I was proud of myself for with the ice cream completely withered in the face of a giant homemade peanut butter cup that unfortunately did not last long enough for a photo opportunity.
My last sight seeing stop of the day was to the small town of Las Vegas, which was wildly different than it's more famous counterpart in Nevada. It's a a very tiny rural town in the hills, where half the dirt roads get closed if it starts raining and dogs just seem to run wild and chase after slow moving cars trying to figure out where the hell they are (it might have just been the one dog, but it made an impression). But then up a hilly road, is UWC-USA, the only United States branch of the interconnected United World Colleges. UWCs are two year boarding schools that teach high school students from all over the world in an International baccalaureate program, and this one in New Mexico is the only in the United States (although students from the US could potentially end up in any of the sister schools in different countries). I had never heard of the UWCs before my freshman year of college, but since then they've been an oddly recurring theme in my life as two of my roommates attended them (one in Wales, and one in the Netherlands). One of those two roommates was also the president of the UWC Club, so our room was always a hot spot for meet ups among former UWCers both at our own school and whenever someone happened to be passing through town. By all accounts, they seem like pretty magical places.
Interestingly having said all that, I had no idea I was even heading towards a UWC, and I was only trying to make it to one unique feature of this one that I had read (apparently not too thoroughly) about on the Atlas Obscura called the Dwan Light Sanctuary, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the UWC logo on the horizon. The school did sort of stick out like an architecturally stunning sore thumb though, as to both house and teach all those students its campus was far and away the largest collection of buildings in probably a ten mile radius. The fact that the main building looks a bit like a cross between a castle and a Victorian mansion also made it stand out a bit from the other nearby buildings. Also much fewer wild dogs.
courtesy of google, since it was getting dark out by the time I got there and also it would have felt kinda creepy aimlessly wandering around an active high school.
The reason for my trip was the Dwan Light Sanctuary, a marvelous and whimsical bit of design created by Virgina Dwan and intended to be a place of quiet reflection for all peoples. From the outside it appears to be stone, and looks a bit like a mix between a church and an observatory, but when you walk in, it's really not like anywhere else I've ever been. That's because the inner walls are all stark white, and the windows are not windows at all but carefully arranged prisms that fill the space with rainbows. You can't see many rainbows in my photos unfortunately because there wasn't much ambient light left to speak of but there were still some brave color bands turning the space into something out of a fairy tale.
After taking some time to reflect among the refractions, I set out for my air bnb of the night and had a different sort of adventure all together. It was a two hour drive away (and still two more hours from Roswell, my destination for tomorrow), and by the time I arrived I was very tired and ready to crash. As it turned out, not only was my host not there, but based on the address I had been given, the building did not seemingly exist which is less than exciting when you are in the middle of an unfamiliar place, and you've already booked the only thing in your price range fro miles. Close to two hours of phone calls later, Air BnB decided that after they also could not find my host nor house and that I was not making my story up so they gave me a refund and comped my stay at the nearest Motel 6. Both financially and personally, I prefer the hominess of Air BnBs (though every once in a while you get a real stinker) to the coldness of motels, but I guess for at least this one night I got the true road comic experience.
Favorite Random Sightings: Cash Store (I'd like some of that); Buffalo Thunder Road; a display about an animal called the Pleasing Fungus Beetle; a big ol billboard announcing "Abstinence is the way of love"; Martyrs Steakhouse (fascinating choice for a restaurant name); "Do Not Drown" signs near rivers (very helpful); Pork Chop Hill
Regional Observations: I had never heard of Green Chile as opposed to any other kind of chile, but it is super popular here and also super delicious.
Albums Listened To: Road to Ensenada by Lyle Lovett (an uneven blend of really fun songs and super cheesy ones); Roadrunner: The Beserkely Collection by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (just I'm a Little Airplane, because my friend Emily used to put this song on at band parties and crash into dancing people with her arms outstretched like an airplane and it always makes me smile to think of); Rock and Roll EP by Frank Turner; Rock and Roll Music to the World by Ten Years After (I downloaded my dad's whole collection of their music all at once so it blends together in my head and I always forget how good they are); Rock Art and the X-Ray Style by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros (Triumphant post-Clash return by Joe); Rock of Ages by the Band (phenomenal live album); Rock the Plank by Mad Caddies; Rock: The Train Kept A Rollin' by Various Artists.
People's Favorite Jokes:
Nothing today, so the internet must provide:
A 3 years old boy sits near a pregnant woman.
Boy: Why do you look so fat?
Pregnant woman: I have a baby inside me.
Boy: Is it a good baby?
Pregnant woman: Yes, it is a very good baby.
Boy: Then why did you eat it?!
Songs of the Day:
I love that people are throwing things at them the whole time. Good Boston boys
It feels like they’re on the verge of totally losing control the whole time and they never do and it’s pretty impressive
Them ruffles