All content on this page is copyright © Paul J. Lorona 2009. Please do not use images from this page without written permission.
Uncredited images are by Paul using a Canon EOS 20D digital SLR with the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens or a Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens.
Images credited to Gloria taken with a Canon A95 digital.
Images credited to Fred taken with a Canon Rebel XT with the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.
Some things you just have to do.
When I was a small pup the southwest, particularly that part of it around the "Four Corners" area where the states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet, was an oft-visited place where we went as a family to recreate and recuperate from whatever life had been dishing us. Back in the day my folks were quite the trail-blazers and explorers, over the years using an assortment of four-wheel drive vehicles from International Harvester and Jeep to explore the many scenic wonders that comprise the greater southwest. I could not begin to recount all the places I have seen and experienced as a result of their efforts on our behalf. I was a very fortunate pup indeed.
My folks made a lot of friends in those many places over the years. Like us, many of those friends were flesh and blood, and aged with us. Some are already gone. Hattie and Willie Cly and their daughter Betty, Bill Crawley, and Emery Hunt come to mind. Others friends are rock and sky, and are as gorgeous and inviting today as they were fifty years ago. Or five thousand, for that matter. They are eternal, while all we have of the former are fond memories and a few images.
As we age it can become more and more difficult to experience the companionship of some of those friends that are farther away than our own immediate neighborhoods. As our joints and organs conspire against us, plot to keep us near hearth and the bosom of family that will protect us, we tend to wistfully, in the end sadly forego our friends in far away places. We tend to look at those old pictures and reminisce about the good times had in the halcyon days. We tell stories around the evening fires and endeavor to impress upon our young the same respect for the land and its inhabitants that we grew up with. And our memories slowly grow dim.
It was with this in mind that my Fox and I offered to take my folks on a small tour of some "old friends." One of them is flesh and blood, just like us. Paula lives in Albuquerque in the heart of New Mexico ("ABQ" to many of us), and has been a friend of the family for over twenty years. Another dear old friend is northern New Mexico itself, long cherished especially by my mom as "the place" to be. Still another is Monument Valley in the Four Corners region. So my Fox and I plotted our course east on I-40 to ABQ, then northwest on US-550 and US-64 via Farmington to the Four Corners, and then eventually home by way of US-160, US-89, and I-40 again.
It should not escape the attention of the fan of Precious Cargo that much of this route from the Four Corners area back towards our home is described in some detail in the opening chapters of that story. Then again, Transport unfolds in this area as well. Obviously I have invested a lot of myself in this land, the southwest. It is a part of my soul, as it is a part of those souls who raised me, and will hopefully be a part of the souls I am raising. So this tour was much more than a mere vacation. It was a cathartic "last hurrah" for one generation even as we introduced the region to the next. My daughter Katie rounded out the crew on the beast, bringing our number to five.
So with a mixture of trepidation and joy we set forth. Next stop, ABQ.
Albuquerque has existed for over three hundred years, originally forming as a community in 1706. This church, Iglesia de San Felipe de Neri, was built in 1796 and has been in continuous use ever since. It replaced the original structure, called Iglesia de San Francisco Xavier, which was constructed on this site between 1706 and 1719 and which collapsed in a storm in 1792. We are on the plaza in Old Town Albuquerque, looking west.
Near the southwest corner of the Old Town plaza I found this little side yard. For me it epitomized the New Mexico lifestyle with the well made adobes, gaily colored outdoor furniture, and the chile ristras hanging in abundance.
Image by Gloria
We spent a couple of evenings with Paula. Our current economy is such that it wasn't in her cards to take time off to travel with us, much as we would have enjoyed her company. We did share some wonderful meals and conversation in Paula's home over those couple of evenings, during which time we made the acquaintance of Paula's two companions, Maggie May and Scooter. Here Katie and Maggie pause briefly from play to regard one-another, a new friendship building before our eyes.
Paula treated us like family, and we left her company late each evening well fed. She is a dear friend.
During her work day we explored, visiting other old friends of another type.
This is Iglesia San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos De Taos, just south of the city of Taos, New Mexico. It was constructed between 1772 and 1816, and has been in continuous service since completion. Ranchos De Taos was originally settled in 1716. This view looks northwest.
This building was made famous through paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe and photographs by Ansel Adams.
Looking northeast from the courtyard, formerly the camposanto of the Iglesia in Rancho De Taos.
The Sangre De Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. The tallest of these peaks on the Carson National Forest are over 13,000 feet in elevation, rising six thousand feet above the plain shown here. At the left edge of the picture one may see the Gorge of the Rio Grande. Most folks think of the "Big Muddy" down on the Texas - Mexico border when they consider the Rio Grande. We know it as a much smaller river of clear, cold water up here. I plan to re-visit the headwaters of the Rio Grande some day, high in the shining San Juan Mountains above Creede, Colorado. View here looks north - northeast on a cool afternoon in early spring. Snow showers were falling above Taos.
My Fox on that blustery afternoon overlooking the Rio Grande near the village of Pilar.
Later that afternoon, as the sun danced among the clouds and the shadows grew long, we visited another historic village and the Santuario De Chimayo. Built on the site of the discovery of a miraculous cross on the night of Good Friday in 1810, the sanctuary was constructed between 1814 and 1816. It is sometimes referred to as the Lourdes Of America. Many have sought the restoration of their souls, their health, their very lives here.
It was a quiet early evening when we visited. No one was about save for an old horse in a barren pasture below the back of the sanctuary, and a dusty pooch that roused itself off a wooden porch to come say hello. Yet the smell of piñon smoke told us meals were being prepared and adobes were being readied for the cool night air. The temperature dropped perceptibly as we wandered around, trying to soak up some of that mysterious whatever it is that draws so many here.
So after a couple of days of visiting these old friends we took our leave of Paula and ABQ. It seemed like we had just arrived, and I hated to leave without being able to spend a full day with her. But life is what it is, and we needed to move on. My mom was enchanted with our visits to the sanctuaries and the old villages of Santa Fe and Taos, but something over the horizon drew us on.
I had an opportunity to fondly think of my friend Aramis Dagaz the day we left ABQ. He and Tigermark and I have shared many a conversation and not a few chuckles while concocting a story called A Little Nothing. I mention that here because this huge, volcanic monolith was the inspiration for a location in that story, a similar edifice called Tsé Bit’ A’í, (the Rock With Wings).
This is Shiprock. It is located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, west of US-666 and south of US-64, not too far from the town that shares its name. 1,800 feet high and about 27 million years old, this peak figures prominently in Navajo creation myth and legend. The presence of people on the peak is forbidden in their culture.
Shiprock supposedly was named because it bore, in the eyes of those anglos who "discovered" it, a remarkable resemblance to a huge 19th century Clipper Ship. I don't see it. Old Navajo lore tells of how the Diné originally lived on the peak, shortly after coming up from Third World. They only came down to the desert floor to plant fields and get water. One day lightning struck the mountain, cleaving off one end of it and stranding the women and children on it while the men were below.
The creation story of the Navajo is quite interesting. A brief version of it can be found at the Lapahie portal to the Navajo internet. A more complete discussion of Navajo Creation (By Hasteen Klah as told to Mary C. Wheelwright in 1942) is hosted at the Internet Sacred Text Archive.
Much further west are volcanic "plugs" which are similar to Shiprock but much smaller, created in the same manner over eons and which are all part of the same volcanic field. The closest one in this image is known as Church Rock and stands about 300 feet high. Far in the background rises another, much larger "plug" called Agathla, or as the Spanish Conquistadors called it, El Capitan. This view looks north in mid afternoon.
Image by Gloria
Aboard the beast as we descend into Kayenta.
Ford Point, Monument Valley. The most prominent butte in the center of the picture is Merrick Butte. This butte and a nearby companion, Mitchell Butte, were named after two soldiers of Kit Carsons who participated in the Long Walk. Mustering out after returning to the region with the Navajo, they searched for a silver mine in Monument Valley and are reputed to have found one. They were warned to stay out of the area by none other than Chief Hoskininni, but persisted and were eventually killed by the Navajo, Mitchell dying on the talus slopes of the butte named after him. Merrick was buried by the Navajo near the butte named for him. The silver mine was never located by anglos again ...
The Yei Bi Chei (on the left) and the thousand foot tall Totem Pole. Very old and dear friends of my folks, along with virtually every other "monument" in the area. In the innocent times before hippies and yuppies and boomers, the Navajo shyly welcomed visitors to their historic and sacred homeland. During those days my folks explored virtually every inch of this valley, taking only pictures and leaving behind only tire tracks and boot prints, and making friends with those they came in contact with. And so the Clys (Klahs), the Hollidays, the Hunts, and the missionaries at the Seventh Day Adventist church in Gouldings came to be familiar faces to us, and we to them.
Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for us, the Navajo are quick students of the human condition. As the anglos began to flood their homeland in the sixties and seventies with their peculiar, self-centered view of things, destroying the terrain as they blazed trails to remote places where they dumped their trash and defaced or stole sacred things, the Navajo did what any rational people would do ... they shut the door.
For years it was not possible to enter the valley without a Navajo guide accompanying you. We wistfully respected the rights of a great people to control their land, and kept our distance, viewing the park from the paved highways that skirt it. But then last December we discovered that anglos could once again enter the valley unescorted, provided they remained on designated driving trails, and the plan immediately formed between my Fox and I that we should bring my folks back to see that which had figured so prominently in their lives.
Image by Gloria
My dad, still standing tall in the back country at 83 years of age. Still indulging himself the passion of photography that has been his joy all of my life, and then some.
Image by Fred
This is my kind of joint. And before anyone gets any preconceptions, remember that you cannot buy alcoholic beverages on the Navajo Nation. This business used to be located a block away from its present location in a larger building, but it is still owned and operated by the Crawley family, more old friends of the folks. In fact, on the occasion of our first meal here, my mom kept watching an elderly Navajo man across the room, and eventually went over and introduced herself to a gentleman who turned out to be another old acquaintance who remembered her as well.
In any event, the food here was wonderful. I highly recommend the Navajo Taco. The coffee was hot, and I never did see the bottom of my cup. The one girl waiting all the tables in the room was running her tail off, and I complimented her on her work and energy over the course of our meal. She struck us as a sweet, caring, and industrious young woman, typical of the Navajo. Quite good looking as well, although I downplayed that in conversation with my Fox ...
Image by Fred
My father recognized the Diné in this large photographic print hanging on the wall inside the Golden Sands Restaurant and pointed them out to my mom, who immediately called them by name. The image is by an unknown photographer, taken many, many years ago at Ford's Point.
A classic picture of what was once Arizona Highway 464, now US-163. The faint remains of the original dirt trail into the area can be seen heading off to the right of distant Agathla, the razor-edged volcanic monolith on the right horizon. Compare this image to the following image -
This image was taken forty one years ago, in March 1968, by my father. The location is a few hundred yards north of where I was standing to take the color image above. Arizona Highway 464 reaches for the horizon between Owl Rock on the left and Agathla on the right, and the old highway, which was replaced in 1959 by Highway 464, is faintly visible heading across the field of view from left to right. The juniper tree on the left has long since gone the way of the dinosaur.
My dad recorded this scene two years later in March 1970 following a snowfall. It is taken from virtually the same spot I used to record the color image above. My folks first entered the valley in 1954 using the original dirt road highway that is visible even under this blanket of snow. Another decade or so and folks who don't know to look for it will no longer be able to see the original unpaved highway.
This entire area northeast of Kayenta has been recorded in many movies, among the best a couple of westerns by John Ford (of John Ford's Point fame) : Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). Much later in 1973 Electra Glide In Blue was also filmed here.
We learned a lot about traveling together in one vehicle after all these years. I'm not sure if we'll do that again, but it was gratifying seeing my folks have so much fun.
Thanks for riding along with us.