New Mexico and Colorado Trip II

One of the basic principles of life I am gradually learning is that, in the normal course of living, nature and life give you generous "hints," clues or invitations to pursue things more deeply, so that through these clues we can learn to "listen" to life in its rich symphonic brilliance. That is, if you are alert to many things around you, you are brought into remarkable depths and questions which you didn't even know existed a few minutes previously. For example, while I was in Taos, NM in my recent vacation (June 19-21), I decided to visit the Kit Carson home and museum near the Plaza. I suppose I didn't know too much more about Carson than the average student of the American West, but after I visited his home, I began to yearn to know so much more.

What is it that "set me off" in this quest to learn more? Well, it was a little letter displayed on the wall of one of the rooms of Carson's home. This letter was written from the home in January 1849 by John C. Fremont, the famous Western explorer, to his wife Jessie. Fremont wrote it while he was recuperating at Carson's home after a near-fatal expedition to try to cross the Rockies in the dead of Winter. I remember reading the letter, in which Fremont celebrates the kindness of Carson's hospitality just weeks after he was facing the most extreme circumstances, and thinking...what is going on here? Why did Fremont take a trip into the Rockies in the dead of Winter? What was his aim? What was his route? Who accompanied him? How did he get from the Rockies to Taos? Did men get killed on the trip? Why did he stop in on Carson? What effect did this trip have on Fremont in the short and long run? That is, one paragraph of one letter on the wall began to make me yearn to know about the relationship of Fremont and Carson, the careers of each and, ultimately, the nature of Western exploration in the 1820s-1850s.

This is almost always how it works for me and, if you seek detailed mastery of knowledge, how it will probably work for you. You don't get inspired to pursue something "in general": motivation, in contrast, comes from wanting to clear up the mystery of one thing. You want to understand a word, a phrase, an event, a reference, a quotation. Then, after searching out that one thing, you see how, in Robert Frost's memorable line, "way leads to way," and then you are implicated full-time and full-heart in a knowledge quest in life.

Back to My Trip

I tell this story to begin this essay because it precisely characterizes what I would call the "knowledge seeking" part of my vacation, from arrival in Santa Fe on June 17 to my return home to Oregon on June 21. Of course my trip consisted of many things, but I would like to mention six things of my last three days that are now motivating me: (1) the historical museum in the Palace of the Governors at Santa Fe; (2) the Gloria O'Keeffe art museum in Santa Fe; (3) the Taos Pueblo outside of Taos; (4) the Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos; (5) the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Southern CO; and (6) the historic mining town of Leadville, CO. I could add to this many things about the Kit Carson/John Fremont relationship, some words on St. John's College in Santa Fe, and reflections on some of the people buried in the Kit Carson cemetery in Taos. I will also want to write about words galore---that I missed in Cheyenne, that stimulate some pictures in my mind, etc. Let me be very brief--about a few of these.

The Historical Museum

We celebrate in 2007 the 400th year anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, VA. People in the East think of the East coast as providing all the oldest European settlements in America, but the story of Santa Fe is just as interesting and nearly as old. The Palace of the Governors Museum in Santa Fe presented pictorial and written description of the Spanish period of Santa Fe (1610-1821), the Mexican period (1821-1846) and the United States period (1846-present, though statehood didn't come until 1912). When you begin to break down the former period into sub-periods, you understand the flow of this first historical period. The 17th century saw Indian revolts, attempts to put down the revolts and, finally, the emergence of Spanish power throughout the region. Mexican independence allowed trading between the United States and Mexico, thus leading immediately to the opening of trade through the Santa Fe trail. The lore of the Santa Fe trail was also something that I longed to explore. I knew that the Westernmost battle of the Civil War took place in New Mexico, but only upon visiting Santa Fe and its environs did I begin to learn a little about the Battle of Glorieta in 1862. Thus, Santa Fe put itself firmly on my historical "map."

A Word on Georgia O'Keeffe

I will write in more detail on this most significant female artist in American history (1888-1987) in another essay, but suffice it to say here that she first came to New Mexico in the summer of 1929 to stay at the Taos home of Mabel Dodge Luhan, immediately fell in love with the place, and finally was able to live full-time in New Mexico from 1949-1987. Her husband, the significant New York photographer and gallery owner Albert Stieglitz, never really wanted to leave his New York world, and so she had to wait until after his death in 1946 and his estate was settled in order to venture off on her own at Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, NM. So many fascinating things were in the O'Keeffe museum but the one thing that I most appreciated was her "redefining" her life in NM from the 1930s until her death. Her husband had cast her, in a 1920s photoshoot, as a sensual and carefree "girlish" type of person in order to fit the "wild and crazy" 1920s in the East. This "sexual" O'Keeffe then became the template through which her artistic work was interpreted--the petals of flowers became images of the vulva; pelvis bones superimposed on the moon became erotic symbols. Yet, in a fascinating series of 1960 photos by Michael Vaccaro, presenting O'Keeffe in a number of unique New Mexico roles, from observing nature to standing in the desert, to making a pay phone call from a phone booth, we get the impression that she is trying to "redefine" her life in a way that fits her New Mexico consciousness. We live our lives and we define our lives, as did she.

Conclusion

I see I am out of space and I really have only just begun to describe in general terms the contours of my trip. But I will close with a word on Leadville, CO. Its current population of about 2,700 lives in the highest (altitude, that is) town in North America (10,200 feet in elevation). Even though one has interesting saloons from 1879 or the Delaware Hotel from 1886, built during the town's silver boom, the most dramatic thing to me about Leadville was the view West down fifth street of Mount Elbert and Mount Massive, the two highest peaks of Colorado's 14,000' club. And, just with this one fact or two you could go on forever. You could study a list of the 53 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado; you could seek to understand how a peak is defined (has to be at least a 300-foot saddle between it and another 14,000 foot peak); you could look at the individual peaks; you could study the history of the mining interests in Leadville; and tons of other topics. I stop here, now, and encourage you to notice the little thing around you for which you would like an explanation...

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