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New Mexico 99: The Move | Old Friends | At Play
At Play in New Mexico, Summer 1999
The ruins of the Puye Cliff Dwellings, on the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation. A beautiful morning's hike.
At Puye, the view from inside a kiva (round chamber dug into the earth; site of sacred male rituals. To point out the aspects of womb envy would be to belabor the obvious.)
Believe it or not, in 1957, after her freshman year at Lebanon Valley College, Shirley spent the summer in northern New Mexico as a missionary in training. One of her memories is of the cholla cactus in bloom. She ignored the warnings against picking it, and acquired a fingerful of thorns.
What impressed her even more back then was the mission church in Chimayo, known then as the "Church of the Miracle Mud." For centuries before the Catholic Church came, the land there was believed to have the power to heal. Still today, one can collect the "holy dirt" (now blessed by a priest). Thousands of pilgrims do so each year, and so did we.
This mission church at the Taos pueblo was burned twice in its history. First, by the Spanish in the late 1600's, in retaliation against the Taos pueblo for having led the rebellion of the pueblo peoples that expelled the Spanish for twelve years. 150 years later, it was bombed by the United States army during the Mexican American war, while 150 people were taking refuge inside.
Naomi took us on a four-mile walk (Shirley says it was six) around Arroyo Seco, which she had come to know while living in the youth hostel there. When Susan spotted this great photo opportunity (a happy conjunction of sagebrush, Taos Mountain backdrop, and sunset), she asked Naomi and Shirley to squat and pose. Shirley was in sandals and complained of having to walk into that "field full of gluck." That is not a smile on her face; it is a grimace. Good picture, eh?
We took a flatwater raft trip down the Rio Grande. Next time, Susan and Naomi would like to do whitewater; Shirley would not.
Other highlights:

When the week was done, Shirley thougtht we had overdone it, Susan wished we'd done more, and although she had enjoyed our company, Naomi was glad to see us go.