Less is More, Sometimes: A Slide Show

Our world can be overwhelmingly complicated. Despite the seeming simplicity of binary systems, this digital age is, except for the initiated, of mind-boggling obtuseness and sometimes depressing frustration. Then there is deep science. No matter how moving it is to hear great physicists talk about the “elegance” or the “simplicity” of this or that set [...]

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Snow Snow Snow: A Slide Show

A few days ago, Oregon coast folks skidded on slippery roads and snapped lots of pictures. A once-in-five-years snow storm blew in from the Pacific.  A couple of inches, on that boundary between slush and real snow.  A few years ago, in Albuquerque, beautiful clouds foretold a winter storm. A few inches of drier snow [...]

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The Photographer’s I: Sunset Country

In extreme northwest Victoria, Australia, where the outback begins, lies a dry eucalyptus land called Sunset Country. I have never seen this place, but the name itself is its own reward.  Imagine—the evocation of the mere word sunset. What comes to mind?  Of course dazzling reds and oranges, reflected in the water or across desert [...]

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Salinas, Part 5—Twilight of the Gods

At all three, Salinas Puebloans had to deal with the ecclesiastical demands on their time and souls, and civil demands for annual payments of goods, including corn, salt and cloth. Both “kings” expected labor. And while at first allowing the kiva rituals to continue, by the mid-1600s the priests had outlawed them. But, at least [...]

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Salinas, Part 4—Quarai

Of the three pueblo missions in the Salinas Monument, Quarai’s sheltered location up a narrow canyon complete with spring and cottonwoods is undoubtedly the most felicitous. With their neighbors at Tajique and Chilili just north, Quarains worked joint fields of corn. Across the valley, less than fifteen miles east, were numerous dry lakes, a vital [...]

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Salinas, Part 3—Gran Quivera/Las Humanas

Gran Quivera/Las Humanas (the original Spanish name) is the farthest south of the three units that make up Salinas Monument.  President Taft designated Gran Quivera a National Monument in 1909. The people of Las Humanas were different from their Quarai and Abó neighbors. They painted or tattooed the upper half of their faces, like the [...]

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Salinas, Part 2—Abó

The first time we visited Abó was in the early 1980s. Back then it was a state monument, its ruins partially restored by the Museum of New Mexico in the 1930s. Manning the visitor welcome center, a miniature adobe room heated by a potbellied stove, was a local Hispanic man who, once Abó was added [...]

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Salinas, Part 1—Some Background

Scattered north, west and south of Mountainair are the three units of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument—Quarai, Abó and Gran Quivera/Los Humanas. A little-known Monument (less than 38,000 visitors in 2009), the three units offer a remarkable window into the earliest intersection of Native Americans and the Spanish in New Mexico. I think the [...]

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Heading Out East

A roadmap of New Mexico is a study in economy. Here we waste no time on dizzying polyglots of roads and highways. Mostly the map shows tinkertoy connections of tiny village dots, the lines heading north/south or east/west and very occasionally on some diagonal.  Even in convoluted subdivisioned Albuquerque, more often than the traveller it [...]

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The Cienga Trail

It’s been blazing hot in Albuquerque since the 4th of July. No rain, 100°+ days, 75° at night. There’s been no break for anything to cool down. The grapevines were wilted yellow and the leaves on the oak and hackberry looked drooped and dejected. Friday we decided to try the east side of the Sandias [...]

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