Month: October 2019

On Friday morning we had breakfast at Pasqual’s Cafe. The wait was super long so we took a stroll to the basilica nearby.

I don’t know how I feel about this statue. On one hand, I appreciate the representation of a Native American woman, but on the other hand I am kind of distressed that she’s taken on the religion of her oppressors.

Then we were soooo ready to eat. The food at Pasqual’s was AMAZING.

After breakfast we drove up through Taos to the Taos Pueblo, which is a world heritage site. It has been continually inhabited for 1,000 years. It was so wonderful to explore and admire it with a sense of humility and respect for its inhabitants. In my Mormon days, I believed Native Americans were the descendants of Lamanites who lost their land because God punished them for wickedness. Up until 2010, the Book of Mormon described the Lamanites as “dark, filthy, and loathesome” people. If I had visited this pueblo during those days, I would have probably had the idea that I knew the true spiritual story of the people I was meeting, and that would have colored the way I viewed them. As it is, I was in awe of their kindness and resilience in the face of so much heartbreak, tragedy and oppression. And I found value in the way one of them described his spiritual tradition to me. It did not seem degraded at all, and in fact, because he was describing a connection to the earth, it struck me that much of what he was saying would exactly remedy the spiritual and environmental ills of today.

After the pueblo, we stopped by the church that Georgia O’Keefe painted.

Then we drove all the way to Carlsbad. On the way we passed through Roswell. All of the museums were closed, but there were still alien statues by the road, and those were fun for all of us to point out. We also saw some gorgeous scenery that we could not capture in photographs, but here are some attempts:

On Thursday Abe drove me up to Ojo Caliente hot springs spa and left me there the whole day. Ojo Caliente is built over natural hot springs that are different from each other in chemical composition. It is the site the Apaches used to use for peace talks.

I ate breakfast, did yoga in a yurt, bathed in the iron springs, the lithium springs, the soda springs, and the arsenic springs. I skipped the mud pools and then ate lunch. At first I tried to be healthy and just eat a carton of fresh tomatoes for lunch, but then my stomach growled and I ate a salad and bread pudding before going to get an two and a half hour massage and facial treatment. It was insanely self-indulgent and I would have felt guilty if my conscience were more alert, but honestly I just enjoyed myself the whole time. Going through a faith transition in the heart of Utah County and raising four kids has really taken it out of me, and Abe was so wonderful to insist this day happen.

I didn’t take any pictures except for while I was waiting for my massage:

And one right after of one of the arsenic pools:

In the meantime, Abe was super-dad-ing it with all of the kids. He took them to the Santa Fe Children’s Museum and to Petroglyph National Monument in Albequerque. They thought the museum was sooooo fun and didn’t ever want to leave.

Clarissa spent a solid thirty minutes at this machine:

They all painted each other’s faces. Lydia painted Abe’s, Abe painted Clarissa, Ammon painted himself, and Abe can’t remember who did Mary.

Ammon and Mary fell asleep quickly in the car:

For dinner Abe took the kids to Village Inn or Denny’s. I can’t remember which. It was someplace that does smiley face pancakes and breakfast for dinner.

On Wednesday we drove to Banelier National Monument and took the shuttle down to the cliffs. I am always a little nervous to be separated from my car and dependent on public transportation with my little kids. It ended up being a close call, but we made it there and back without any tantrums on the shuttle.

The cliffs were inhabited 10,000 years ago by the ancestors of the pueblo people. Exploring them felt like we were stepping into a different time period or different country. And it was terrifying because I was afraid my kids would fall off of the cliffs. I can’t imagine how people raised children in these homes so long ago! At one point I just clutched Clarissa and made my way back down as fast as I could, and when I got down I looked back up and felt certain Ammon would run ahead of Abe and topple to his death. Abe was busy helping the girls up and down the ladders so they could explore the cliff dwellings, but some kind tourists helped out and kept Ammon from killing himself. There are such good people everywhere.

After this hike, Clarissa started to get really focused on the idea of her bottle. We had forgotten to bring it, and so we hightailed it back to the shuttle stop and tried very hard to distract her until it came. The next hour was spent getting back to our car and to her milk, eating lunch at the Fig and Pig restaurant, and then jumping in the car and driving a couple hours to Fort Union National Monument, which closed five minutes before we arrived. The ranger in charge was so nice and let Abe run in and explore it quickly anyway. (Ammon and I got stuck in the bathroom, so we just peaked at the fort from a distance.)

The ranger told Abe all about a famous hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico that we should check out. So we went took his advice and learned all about what a crazy history Las Vegas, NM has. It used to be the most dangerous town in the West. Teddy Roosevelt visited the hotel we ate at and announced from its steps that a new civilized era was dawning the West. Las Vegas really needed that message because things were so bad that the town’s kids had been so influenced by the constant violence and public executions that they acted out by hanging their pet dogs on the city water wheel. So gruesome and sad. We learned all this while eating dinner on the hotel porch. We had it to ourselves so the kids could run crazy and wild.

In the morning we drove to Tia Sophia’s where we ate deeeeelicious cheese enchiladas, huevos rancheros, blue corn pancakes and french toast for breakfast. Then we drove to the Randall Davies Audobahn Center and hiked a trail behind it to watch birds. We didn’t identify a single one, but we heard so many beautiful calls. Also, Lydia peed on the trail. I told her to pee off of it, but she saw a sign that said, “Stay on trail” and so before I could say a word she was squatting and letting it go right. on. the. trail. That’s my obedient girl. (She gets it from Abe.)

Then we drove to The Chocolate Maven for treats before heading to the Kasha- Katue Tent Rocks National Monument. The kids LOVED this hike. Like, it was their favorite hike they’ve ever done, ever. And Abe and I felt the same. Mary and I finished by literally running the last quarter mile back so she could make it to the potty, but that was blissful. I loved running with Mary and just feeling so happy to be with her. She is such a sweet, darling, kind-hearted child.

Most of our pictures haven’t uploaded yet, but here are some:

 

In the evening we went to a restaurant called Sweetwater and ate so much that we never need to eat again. (Just kidding. I ate the leftovers again when we were home.)

On Monday I was having a General Conference hangover, which was funny because this is the first time I haven’t watched ANY conference. But I made the mistake of checking social media and found out the entire conference center ( 20,000 people) laughed at a woman for having questions about eternal polygamy. And then I heard that one speaker said that those who leave the Church never had a testimony in the first place.

So I was pretty upset all morning, and I was not fun to be around. The morning ended with me telling Abe how mad I am that he can still love an institution that is so toxic. And then I started sobbing, and then he hugged me, and then we both felt better.

Before this we went to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. I was in a terrible mood so I didn’t enjoy it, even though I love Georgia O’Keefe. I ended up taking Ammon and Clarissa out of there after Ammon collapsed a table umbrella on top of an elderly family while Abe and I were chatting. They were not amused.

Abe took pictures and even though he didn’t know anything about Georgia O’Keefe, he is an artist at heart and immediately told me that her paintings were very feminine and sexual. I mean, I knew that because I have studied O’Keefe, but he just took a look at her paintings and knew. I don’t think I’m that astute.

Here I am still in a bad mood, but my kids are showing me what they learned at the O’Keefe museum.

After we were all feeling better, we headed to The New Baking Company and picked up pueblo pie and other treats before going to Meow Wolf. I really don’t know how to describe Meow Wolf. It’s basically a house that turns into a sci-fi novel and plays with your sense of reality, dimension, space and maybe even time. It’s fascinating. And very harrowing with young children because they can do things like slide down the dryer into another part of the house/world or open a fridge that’s a secret passage to another dimension…and if you’re not on top of it, they’re gone. Abe and I didn’t lose any kids, though, so we were really proud of ourselves.

After Meow Wolf we headed to the park and played.

Then we went to a diner in Santa Fe and ate yummy enchiladas. Oh, they were so good.

On Sunday I got the date wrong for Richard Rohr, so we went to El Rancho de las Golondrinas, which is a living museum. It’s a ranch from the 18th and 19th centuries, so there are people in costume teaching about the functions of the buildings and things on the ranch. The kids made leather bracelets, watched molasses being made, rolled and cooked tortillas, watched apples being pressed, grapes being stomped, rode a hayride, tasted fresh tamarind, watermelon, and cantaloupe juice, watched yarn being dyed (that was our favorite! –We learned so much.) and pet a very fuzzy alpaca or llama. I can’t tell the difference. It was a full morning.

After the ranch we drove to Albuquerque where I had some mommy-daughter time with Lydia. We looked in some shops and then everyone had ice cream. After ice cream I snuck into the church on the square and meditated a little before we headed to the balloon festival.

I have never in my life seen so many people as at the balloon festival! We watched the balloons being blown up and then we watched them twinkle before they deflated again. Clarissa was wild and went running through the millions of people many times with Abe and I chasing madly behind. Thankfully there was a police station where we could register our children in case they got lost. We did that first thing, just in case.

 

Ammon made a friend! They built a grass house together.

After there were two fireworks shows. The first was a show put on by sky divers who shot the fireworks off of their person at each other. I don’t know how they survived the show. It was insane. And then after there was a huge standard show that we all watched as a family in the parking lot. It was a sweet moment where we all just appreciated something beautiful together.

On Saturday we left early and drove almost without stopping all the way to New Mexico. We made such great time that we arrived at the Ghost Ranch (one of Georgia O’Keefe’s homes) around 5pm and then went on a hike to see the scenery that inspired her. Unfortunately, our first experience with the healing, spiritual vortex of Santa Fe’s landscape left some of us pretty traumatized.

First we turned onto a path that said “restricted to painters” and that had Lydia freaked out. She kept asking if we were sure it was okay to walk, and then stumbled into some thorns. After that she screamed the rest of the hike thinking that she was stumbling into more. So I held her hand for a lot of the hike and tried to reassure her, and that ended up being a bonding experience.

Near the end of the hike Ammon was skipping down the trail and fell onto the clay at an angle, so half of his face scraped off. Well, not half but a huge strip from his eyebrow to his lip. And then I was carrying him but he wanted to keep walking, at which point he walked into thorns himself. And at the beginning of the hike he fell and scraped his knee, so by the time we reached the car he was sobbing and saying, “That was an ow-y hike.” Welcome to New Mexico!

But our airbnb was so cute and welcoming, and we didn’t get in at midnight, so that was great.