Why Taos?

   Detail of Illustration from New York Times, 1992, by Johnathon Rosen

Some years ago the New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a long article on how money moves around the world. The piece was accompanied by a two-page illustration picturing an octopus/robot-like creature sitting on Manhattan, with tentacles running out to major financial centers around the world. Two-third of the way along the tentacle from New York to Los Angeles was a little spigot and under it the word “Taos.” Certainly the illustrator wasn’t including Taos because of its monetary riches (Taos wasn’t mentioned in the article). Rather, I suspect, he regarded it as an interesting, somewhat quirky place, a town that occupied a special niche in his – and I suspect the national psyche. Many have heard of Taos, some have visited, but few can define just why it is so special. Is it the ancient Taos Pueblo, the great sweep of the high desert valley, the fabled light? Or maybe the spirit of rebellion, from Po’pay leading of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, to the first territorial governor of New Mexico losing his scalp in the revolt of 1848 and the hippie influx of the 1960s. Or the art, from the Taos Founders of the early 1900s to the world renowned contemporary artists living here today.

   Petroglyphs north of Rinconada, NM

After nearly 40 years here, it’s the history that continues to captivate me and the way in which the history is literally embodied in the landscape. I try and get out once a week to wander across the desert or climb a mountain – I think of it as getting to know the neighborhood. I walk and climb to gain access to new views of this extraordinary landscape. But I’m also always on the lookout for links to the past, and I almost always find something – a pot shard or an arrow head that might have lain on the earth for 800 or a thousand years since the last human touched it. Recently I was hiking on a rough trail that ran along a ridge just north of the village of Rinconada, along the Rio Grande about 20 miles south of Taos. After 30 or 40 minutes I was drawn, who knows why, to some rock amongst the pinons off to the left of the trail and there, suddenly in front of me, was a house-sized boulder covered with petroglyphs. Many times I’ve stumbled onto such treasures and every time it’s a thrill.

Over the next few weeks I’ll ramble on in this blog about some of the Taos treasures that make the place so distinctive.