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| The Ghost Church of Santa Rosa de Lima, built in 1734 |
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| The Monastery of Christ in the Desert - Chama River Canyon |
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The Monastery of Christ in the Desert - Chama River Canyon
Designed by George Nakashima. |
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| Cemetery at The Monastery of Christ in the Desert - Chama River Canyon |
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| San José de Gracia Church, Las Trampas, New Mexico |
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| El Santuario de Chimayó |
It's one of the most idyllic settings for a rustic church in the world, settled amongst the tree covered hills in an area long considered sacred by the Tewa Tribe. Legend has it that a beautiful carved crucifix, Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, was mysteriously discovered on the hill. Three times it was taken away. Three times it found its way back to Chimayo. Not long after, in the early 1800s, reports of miraculous healing associated with the "holy dirt" began to circulate and pilgrims began arriving. Regardless of your beliefs, one of the most beautiful qualities of being at Chimayo are the various shrines - behind and around the grounds of the Sanctuary - overflowing with religious objects, photographs, crucifixes, rosaries, testimonies of individual hope and the power of religion to manifest hope. Within the Sanctuary there is an undefinable quality of the sacred. The simple adobe architecture, the legendary crucifix, the masterful reredos and retablos, all add to the pulsing heart of a living belief. To the left of the altar is a small doorway that leads to poignant anterooms full of crutches, canes, photos of lost loved ones and other poetic totems. Towards the back is the small room, El Pocito, with the earthen hole full of Holy Dirt. It is said they replace it from the local hills: over 30 tons a year. Again, no matter your beliefs, those who make the pilgrimage to Chimayo do believe and you can almost see it in the air. It's sorrowful and joyful and desperate and hopeful all at once. It's a beautiful sacred Sanctuary where anyone is welcome to find a moment of peace in a difficult world.
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| El Santuario de Chimayó |
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| El Santuario de Chimayó |
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| El Santuario de Chimayó |
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| Chimayó |
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| Ranchos de Taos - Ruins |
Virgie's Restaurant & Lounge - Gallup, New Mexico
Excellent local restaurant (since 1960). Driving down Route 66, saw the parking lot was full - which is always a good sign. The sheriff was also eating here - extra good sign. The service was friendly and efficient. She brought me complimentary chips and salsa to go with my piping hot fresh coffee - one of the great food combinations. Had an excellent breakfast of scrambled eggs, three strip of bacon, a generous helping of hash browns and toast. I noticed how several folks, including the owner, got up to say howdy to the sheriff, thank him and remind he and the other officer to be careful. Everyone seemed like they knew each other. Several men eating breakfast while wearing their cowboy hats. It was a warm and welcome atmosphere to have a great breakfast. The bathrooms were spotless clean and well supplied. They have free wifi. Sitting in the parking lot, writing this review, a tumbleweed tumbled quietly by, then I heard the distant rumble of the BNSF railroad and watched the bright orange and yellow engine roll through the desert following Route 66. Good Morning, America, how are you?
Canyon de Chelly
Beautiful desert canyons filled with breathtaking views, geological wonders and ransacked ruins of a persecuted people. The South Rim drive, with a trip down to the White House Ruins and the Spider Rock Overlook will take most of the day and be remembered for the rest of your life. Also don't miss The Sliding House Overlook. The North Rim, driving out to the Mummy Cave, is also well worth an afternoon. There's history everywhere here - and a mysterious sacred beauty. And much much more than what you can experience from the distant heights of the Overlooks.
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| White House Ruins - Canyon de Chelly |
Spectacular panoramic views of Canyon de Chelly. The relatively easy to moderate switch-back trail down into the canyon to the White House ruins is, literally and metaphorically, breathtaking. Every turn reveals another beautiful aspect of the land. Towards the end, you pass through a short tunnel, you emerge into what seems a Shangri-La. The fertile canyon bottomlands are filled with yellow flamed cottonwoods (in Autumn), Navaho farmers growing crops, horses idyllically grazing in the golden light. The White House ruins are fenced off for protection, but still afford excellent views and many stunning photographic perspectives. If you get there in the late afternoon, around 3 to 4, the sun illuminates the entire cliff with all of its magnificent weathered striations over the ruins. It's a sublime and sacred, but abandoned, world.
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| Canyon de Chelly |
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| Sliding House Overlook - Canyon de Chelly |
After a short walk on what seems the top of the World, you approach the edge of 700 foot cliffs. There are two walled in "safe" viewpoints, but the rest is vertiginously and thrillingly exposed to a vast view of the canyon below. It's a tiny tilt-shift world down there with model train cottonwoods and houses at the foot of enormous monolithic stone cliffs, amphitheaters of the gods and distant canyon vanishing points. The sky is big as it ever gets and the wind seems always at your back pushing you ever closer to the edge.
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| Spider Rock- Canyon de Chelly |
Spider Rock Overlook and the White House Ruins are the two must experience sites at Canyon de Chelly. Both are along the South Rim drive. Go to Spider Rock later in the afternoon, 2 or 3 pm, so the western lowering sun casts striking shadows over the Canyon bottomlands, also "setting fire" to the rich earthen colors of the canyon walls. At the end of the waking trail, there are also beautiful views of the canyon to the east. It's relatively easy to find a quiet and isolated spot to sit and watch the light move over the world for a few hours, contemplating the Spider Woman who wove and continues to weave the dream of this World.
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| Hogan - Canyon de Chelly |
Hopi Travel Plaza - Hwy 77 and Interstate 40
Weird pseudo-mall travel zone. A lot of truckers idling on their side of the lot. The main store is adequate. But the coffee was old, no 1/2 & 1/2, shelves seemed kind of bare. Employees seemed helpless and uncaring. Kind of a tweaker zombie vibe going on. Big empty fluorescent flickering room except for two old arcade games. Skeletal creatures sitting in quarter-fed massage chairs that are scattered about in odd places - one right outside the bathroom entrance. An intriguing and very well stocked knife shop. Maybe I was there during an off-time. Maybe it's always an off time. It has a sort of surreal William Burroughs Interstate charm.
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Saguaro Cactus - Saguaro National Park
Rincon Mountain District |
Saguaro National Park - Rincon Mountain District
Just a short drive from downtown Tucson, Saguaro National Park is a welcome desert sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the city. The park is divided into two geographically distinct areas: the western Tucson Mountain District and the Eastern Rincon Mountain District. The Rincon Mountain District is part of the Madrean Sky Islands. Entering into these is like finding a Shangi-la. The Rincon Mountain Division of Saguaro, easily experienced via the 8 mile Cactus Forest Scenic Loop, is so rich with biodiversity that it almost seems as if someone had come in a deliberately planted a full desert of beautiful varieties of cactus and desert flora. Stop at any of the frequent pull-ins and wander just a short distance into the cactus wonderland around you. Of course, the Saguaro Cactus are stunning and riveting under the blue desert immensity if the sky.
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| Monte House - Tucson |
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| Monte House - Tucson |
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| Tucson Jewish Community Center |
Tucson Jewish Community Center
An outstanding community center with an excellent state-of-the-art gym. Top of the line treadmills, stationary bikes and related cardio equipment. Each machine has its own media screen - but with a second floor view looking out huge windows overlooking Tucson, who needs TV? The resistance machines are also excellent, clean and well-maintained. There are an adequate number of free weights, plenty of squat racks. Stretching bars and therapy tables, spin cycle rooms. The J is just an amazing cornucopia of fitness and community resources: beautiful swimming pools, basketball courts, aerobic rooms, meeting rooms, event areas. The locker room are elegant, spotless and offer amenities such as soap and shampoo. There is a coed steamroom, sauna and whirlpool. In short, it's the best place to live a good and healthy life in Tucson.
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| Mission San José de Tumacácori |
Whether simply taking a short day trip out of Tucson or stopping on your way to Nogales, Tumacácori is well worth your time. The striking ruins of a late 18th century mission are the main attraction. There is a solemn and haunted quality to the cool interior. The chanting of monks can be heard as you approach the cross of flowers behind the altar. Exiting to the right of the altar, the path leads around to the back of the mission where there stands a roofless mortuary chapel and the remains of an enclosed courtyard cemetery. Several graves, piled over with stones, are marked with simple wooden crosses. Recesses in the crumbling walls marked the stations of the cross. Most of the graves have been desecrated and pillaged and remain unmarked beneath the ground. You can feel the bones shivering to dust beneath your feet. Tubac, a small community about three miles down the road, offers coffee and restaurants - along with the usual tourist oriented shops.
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| Mission San José de Tumacácori |
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| JGM - Tumacácori, Arizona |
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| Mortuary at Tumacácori |
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| Graves at Tumacácori |
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| Nogales, Sonora, Mexico |
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| Nogales, Sonora, Mexico |
I've been in Tucson doing some work cleaning and painting apartments. I considered staying here for the next few months - desert blue skies, temps in the 80s, hard work appreciated - but there is a generic mass cultural malaise here that discomforts me: Tucson is a run-down Ikea city, looks solid but won't endure a good hammering, lifestyles that only require one hex screw tool to disassemble and seems as if they would dissolve into mush under a judgmental rain. Additionally, the University of Arizona library feels like the Gerard Manly Hopkins DMV:
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell
So I'm headed down to San Antonio - Austin. Hope to stay there through the Winter. Waste away some hours at the Ransom Center pondering Ezra Pound's meat cleaver, Sylvia Plath's oven mitt, Wallace Stevens' life insurance policy. Will have to find some manner of gainful employment, hopefully not too soul destroying. The plan is to uncover a few places where I can unobtrusively park periodically. Pull up in the jeep around 9 pm, slip into the back to sleep, wake up at 6 am and drive to the gym to shower, shave, workout, steam and sauna, then head to the library to write until I have to go to wherever I might be working.
I realize now I wasn't in good enough condition - the phrase is apt - to endure the solitude I have been seeking. I'm in much better shape now, each day like a whetstone, time sharpening my formerly dull edge. I hadn't figured on how when the god asks you to bring him a cup of water and you go to river and after you save the drowning dog or woman or child and you make sure you've got enough water to give to all the thirsty burning souls you meet on the way back, I didn't understand you've got to also remember your own thirst and burning flesh. After all that, I ended up just pouring the water over my head and drinking it all down long before I even got close to the exit I was looking for. From what I can see from here, the path back to the bones of the waiting god, the way onward is ever deeper into, and then through, pain.
I was watching the Ken Burns series on Vietnam and was fascinated once again by the images of the Buddhist monk, Quang Duc, burning in the fires of self-immolation. The unimaginable intentionality and discipline there. The incarnation of profound allegory. The indomitable will of such endurance. I wonder often over what singular diamond like thoughts were finally concentrated in Quang Duc's mind. What mantra? What prayer? What emptiness?
So as not to end on self-immolation and emptiness, I'll mention that I watched the Jimmy Stewart film, Harvey, the other night. I saw in it an allegory for belief, for the ghost of god that animates my haunted world. There's an uncanny wisdom to it - like a zen parable. I particularly enjoyed this passage:
"Harvey and I sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella." Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers - soon we have friends. And they come over... and they sit with us... and they drink with us... and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey... " - Elwood P. Dowd
