The Magic of Chimayó
MAGICAL REALISM WAS NOT SIMPLY a literary genre when I spent summers in Chimayó during my youth. It was a lived experience. I’d venture into the hills behind my grandmother’s home, just a stone’s…
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Why We Love NM: We Express Ourselves On Wheels
AS A CHILD SPENDING SUMMERS IN CHIMAYÓ with my grandmother, I felt a great deal of excitement about the lowriders that rolled by on the dirt roads on weekends and during the annual Good Friday cruise…
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The Feather and the Cellphone
MY COMPANIONS AND I LABORED THROUGH DEEP SNOW for 15 long minutes—and this after driving through two-foot-deep drifts on the way up to the caldera on a frigid February evening. Now, as we trudged on…
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The Museum That's Saving a Community
Above: Visitors dance at the Chimayó Museum's fiesta. Photographs by Don J. Usner. MARTA TRUJILLO MARTINEZ LABORS to lift herself up from her folding chair in the shade of a giant cottonwood along…
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Lowriders: Riding High
Above: Mike Montoya applies a finishing touch for the 2012 MainStreet ShowDown car show in Española. IT WAS A HOT SUMMER DAY in Chimayó, cicadas buzzing in the junipers and dogs panting in the…
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Dropping Out, Tuning In
Above: Simple pleasures achieve the sublime at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. FOR LONG MOMENTS the sight holds us mesmerized: diamonds and ripples of golden light reflecting off the river and…
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On the Mary and Joseph Trail
THE SKY FLARED WITH A BLOOD-RED sunset and then went black as I drove north from Santa Fe on a cold December night last year. I was on my way to Santa Cruz, one of New Mexico’s oldest villas , as the…
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Finding the Right Words
I grew up in northern New Mexico, spending most of my time in Los Alamos but making frequent trips to visit my grandmother and other relatives in Chimayó. Spanish was the common language down in “the…
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