July 2013 – Becca Tarnas

Have you ever done yoga while a sheet of rain obliterates all visibility of the world around you? Or tasted drinking chocolate so rich and spicy that you would swear you are holding a melted bar of pure chocolate in the cup before you—or somehow been transported to the seductive marble counter of Vianne Rocher’s French-Mayan Chocolaterie? Or sat in a hot bath with crimson and peach rose petals strewn over the surface, the scents of jasmine and ylang ylang spiraling with the steam towards the ceiling, while bells toll the hour softly out the open window? This is just a taste of the joys I had the great privilege to experience in the second half of my visit to New Mexico, a week I am now looking back on with awe and gratitude for the level of both bliss and adventure I was able to experience.

On the afternoon of the day I wrote my last post, I went with the friend I was staying with to pay a visit to an acquaintance of hers who is now a retired harp maker. His business was called Harps of Lorién, so I had a good feeling we would get along well. He had only kept two of his harps for himself—the last ones he made—and I had the great joy of being able to play them for a little while. The larger of the two harps had just under five octaves; a beautiful creation with a rich sound, especially in the upper register. The other harp was a lovely little lap harp with 27 strings, the kind I could easily imagine myself carrying on my back on some mythical adventure. Playing them I was reminded of a trilogy I recently read that a friend recommended to me: Riddle-Master by Patricia McKillip. The series is composed of three books, The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, and Harpist in the Wind. As one can imagine from the final book title, harps play a significant role in the unfolding of this story.

From harps we moved on to chocolate, a transition no one I know could complain of. I was brought to the Kakáwa Chocolate House where we were greeted with an extensive menu of both European and Meso-American drinking chocolates. After tasting several different samples I settled on the Chile Chocolate, which was made of 100% chocolate, coconut sugar, chile, and Mexican vanilla. The thick liquid was both sweet and spicy, rich and rounded, calming and awakening. It was, to say the least, amazing. Truly an extravagance.

Our evening plans brought us into central Santa Fe where we had dinner at a restaurant called Blue Corn, followed by drinks at a nearby bar called Thunderbird. My astrological twin and I, of course, ordered the same drink, a cocktail of vodka and crisp pear. Our parallels no longer surprised us, especially when it was something as simple as choosing a drink, or wearing identical socks or pants. Our differences were becoming far more interesting to discover and explore.

The following day, Sunday, my friend and I went back to the land in Glorietta to hike around the area where she and her partner are building their home. The day was cooler than when we were up there on July 4th, or perhaps I was just becoming acclimated to the altitude and desert sun. Clouds were gathering on the edges of the horizon but we still baked under the clear blue of the sky directly over our heads. Walking through the forest of ponderosa pine and cedar I started to notice a distinct smell that would hit me every so often, almost like kaffir lime leaves. What was an essential ingredient of Thai food doing out here? Finally, when I smelled the scent again I stopped and looked all around me, making note of any different plants that might be nearby. To my right was a low tree with gnarled bark and pointed, needle-like leaves. Silver-green berries grew in clusters between the leaves. I took a step closer, realizing the kaffir smell came from this tree. A juniper. I never would have guessed the two smells would be so similar except through this accidental discovery.

Passing under the eaves of this sparse forest we walked out into an open meadow, a long, snaking expanse of shrub-covered ground that formed a valley between two wooded hills. Gazing overhead we saw a hawk soaring, a local inhabitant my friend recognized because of the distinctive missing feather she had in one of her wings. We climbed up one of the hills to look back down on the meadow we had just crossed. Directly opposite on the hill facing us, at a point not much higher than where we stood, the dark entrance of a cave was just visible between the trees. My friend speculated that this cave might be the home of the hawk that was still circling above us, although she was not sure.

After returning to downtown Santa Fe, I spent the rest of the afternoon on a quiet meander through the town’s streets, pausing at the stalls of artists and vendors, admiring the bright silver and turquoise that was a prominent theme of the jewelry for sale here. The clouds continued to gather in the sky, making their way towards the town, their dark underbellies heavy with rain. Finding myself in the grassy plaza I sat beneath a tree and took out my watercolors to begin painting a scene I had been holding in my mind since that morning.

The sunset that night was so brilliant—an explosion of bleeding vermillions and reds, rosy oranges and deep purples—that no photo could even begin to capture it. I sometimes wish I could bring a painting forth all in an instant, the colors pouring from my open imagination directly onto the page. But the exact wash of that particular sunset, the ways its unique colors flowed together and blended, is fading from my memory with as much certainty as it faded from that night sky.

In many ways I feel my time in New Mexico was like that sunset: so beautiful and profound, surprising and unexpected, a crescendo of connection and experience. Returning to the grey fogs of San Francisco felt a little like a shock, the stark white of the sky such a contrast to the desert colors I still held within me, memories like precious gems, each expressing different emotions through their dynamic colors. My astrological twin and I are two Sagittarians who walked together down a spiraling path of an eternally growing checklist of activities: from baking cookies and pumpkin pie to turning our toenails into artistic canvases; from sampling at a delicious gluten-free bakery to a morning of pampering at the spa; from astrological readings and healing massages to crafting beautiful gift collages; from deep conversations and gorgeous laughter to the freedom of just being utterly silly. So much of what happened during my week in New Mexico was so simple, an extended playdate between two sisters, butterfly twins who had somehow only recently met—at least in this lifetime.

New Mexico has always called me, yet somehow this is my first time here. I came to Santa Fe seeking an adventure, and also the companionship of a new yet dear friend, someone who happens to be my astrological twin. It is a strange, amazing experience to find someone whose life seems to be a synchronicity with your own, from the profound to the mundane: from taking nearly the same picture at the same time in separate places, to owning the exact same dress given to us by our mothers, to having parallel life-transforming experiences at the same time. As we spend each day talking and sharing our lives, I find myself at this point more surprised by the differences than the similarities.

Flying out of San Francisco, as I did a few days ago, I always find thrilling, perhaps because the plane rises first over the turquoise waters of the Bay and for a moment no land is visible from the tiny window. As the plane arcs over San Francisco I am always surprised at how compact and familiar the seven-by-seven miles of my home city are, how easily I can recognize the contours and shapes of the cityscape. The ragged edges of the retreating fog I see have left my home in summer sunlight. The line of fog continues along the coast as far as the eye can see. Turning inland the landscape rapidly becomes the dry reds, yellows, and browns of a water-starved world. Checkerboards of farmland dominate the landscape, then give way to the tangle of hills and mountains. Further east the mountains are dotted with the dark of sparse tree cover. The occasional vein of snow lies in a forgotten alpine crevice. Then clouds roll in below us and the white is blinding. I retreat into Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I arrived in Albuquerque and my friend and I drove north through the hilly desert landscape to Santa Fe and her beautiful home. The day unfolded idyllically, with yoga to shake off the air travel and a home-made dinner with kale, beat greens, and lettuce we harvested right from the garden outside. The rains started as we were eating, and our desert was a magnificent double rainbow arching across the sky. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. We went for a walk in a nearby park that is a prairie dog sanctuary where we traversed the spiraling path of a labyrinth crafted right out of the red soil, almost like it was part of the landscape. A single tree grew out from near the labyrinth’s center. To my amazement, this was the third completely unique labyrinth I had seen since arriving here.

July 4th, or Interdependence Day as the morning’s yoga teacher renamed it, we spent out in Glorietta on the land where my friend her partner are in the process of building their own sustainably constructed home. The area is forested but not densely; the hot sunshine easily passes through the pine and cedar leaves and branches to bake the red clay below. We walked up to view the deep hole in which they will soon put their home’s foundation. The house will be set beneath a towering ponderosa pine that seems to reign over the area. A small garden is thriving with squash and bean plants that have happily taken to the soil in this isolated location.

A group of us, with members coming and going all day, spent the afternoon by a lovely swimming hole dug on a communal part of the property. A barbecue was burning most of the day by the waterside, and the food table was overflowing with abundance. The pond was a cooling relief as the day seemed to get hotter and hotter. Thick, lush grasses line the edge of the pond and the soft mud at the pool’s bottom is as gentle as a spa treatment. We swam and floated while a flock of swallows soared and darted overhead, occasionally diving down to the water’s surface for a drink or a bath. Staring up into the clear blue of the sky I felt a great sense of peace, watching the birds weaving their invisible wild weft overhead.

The blue stillness of the sky gave way to a live painting of dynamic clouds, shifting and turning over each other, changing shape and color by the moment. The day cooled into evening as the Earth turned away from the fiery Sun that defines the desert days, concealing it behind a stand of trees on the western hills. The twilight air took on shades of rose and violet, and a deep indigo spread out like ink on wet paper from the zenith of the sky.

The following day, my friend and I made a road trip up to Taos, which I had been told by several people I had to see if given the opportunity. On the drive we passed a camel shaped rock, open fields with horses, red and gold desert plains, rising mountains, a wide winding stream. I really began to feel the magic of New Mexico, something that seems to spring from the alchemical mixing of the red land with the dynamism of the skies.

Taos is enchanting, its adobe style buildings the same colors as the landscape, with overflowing planters of flowers hanging from the wooden eaves surrounding the plaza in the town’s center. Artists’ tents were set up in the plaza where jewelry, pottery, and paintings were displayed. We wandered for some time, stopping here and there, following the shade from place to place. We had a long lunch at a restaurant off the plaza called G, where we split huevos rancheros and blue cornmeal blueberry pancakes. I don’t know if I could ever get tired of the flavors of New Mexico, the green chile that graces most dishes.

The clouds gathered in the sky and heavy drops began to descend as we left downtown Taos and headed west to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. As the two of us walked out onto the bridge the winds were so strong we had to hold onto the railing to not be blown off the sidewalk. The wind was powerful enough that it could even flutter my eyelids, holding them open to the spectacular view before me. The Rio Grande Gorge is a tectonic chasm yawning 800 feet below the slender span of the bridge on which we stood. The reddish-brown cliffs, dark in the stormy light, descended to a seemingly narrow river of silver-white waters. Lightning flashed in the distance illuminating looming, dark mountains while clouds raced like chariots across the sky. In this setting, the gorge looked less like it had been worn down over millennia by the perpetual flow of the river, but rather like it had been cloven by one of the mighty lightning flashes splitting the sky asunder.

Overpowered by the wind we retreated to the car just as the rain began to fall in earnest. Taking a winding route we searched for the Hanuman Temple that was located somewhere in the lush green valley between the gorge and downtown Taos. Our many mistaken turns, caused by a lack of street signs and a hilariously mis-proportioned hand-drawn map, took us past green fields and farms, some with horses and foals, others with herds of black cattle. The adobe houses looked almost as though they had arisen from the landscape itself, so well did they blend in. At last, just as we were giving up on the idea of finding the temple, the elusive road appeared to us and we drove up to an exquisite cluster of hand-built structures surrounded by an abundance of flowering gardens.

Walking through the rain on a narrow path beneath plum and apple trees, we entered the Hanuman Temple where a brief ceremony was about to begin. A resident stepped forward to orient us, offering food and chai and the opportunity to explore the grounds. As singing swelled from the inner sanctum of the temple, we returned outside with chai in hand to see the open grassy fields and vegetable gardens. The land was amazingly lush compared to everywhere else I had seen so far in New Mexico. Following a strange bird call we found ourselves by a large sanctuary housing four peacocks. A tree grew in the center of the structure, and perched near the top was a large male whose magnificent tail feathers cascaded down the trunk. The smaller females were perched elsewhere around the sanctuary, or wandered along the ground below paying little attention to our presence.

We departed from the temple as late afternoon faded into early evening and made the drive back south to Santa Fe, all the while exchanging more parallel stories of our lives. The molten gold of the setting sun broke through the cloud cover creating a double rainbow that led us all the way home, its colored arches forming a gateway that we always seemed about to pass under, only to find it had once again retreated from our grasp.

Month: July 2013

Sweet Sunset

The Dynamism of New Mexico’s Skies