March 21-24, 2009 Taos, NM
We stopped in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this morning for a short visit. It is a pretty city, although compared to Mexico, everything looked a touch too sanitized. I felt as though we were walking through the backdrop of a Hollywood film.
After a quick lunch, we headed to Taos, New Mexico, to visit with friends we’d met in Sayulita. Taos more than made up for what Santa Fe lacked in character. While it does have its touristy side, you can sense that this town has a life of its own, independent of the tourist trade. Taos is located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and retains much of its original charm. Its main square is a lovely assortment of earthtone adobe architecture and boasts a variety of funky shops. My favourite was Twirl, a magical little toyshop loaded with every toy imaginable, from magic kits, to dress up clothes, to live miniature frogs. The shop is run by our friend Molly, who seems to thoroughly enjoy herself there, and it’s not hard to imagine why. The building itself is a wonderful, sprawling 150-year-old Adobe structure located on a mysterious little alley just off the historical town square. Just touring inside is worth the visit, especially if accompanied by a child or a childlike imagination. It contains a well-stocked fishpond, wishing well, secret staircase with dragons and snakes, and Ali Baba fireplace. While the inside is enough to keep a child’s imagination full, the backyard is filled with play structures to keep their energy tapped as well (check out their website at http://www.twirlhouse.com).
Our friend Anaïs is a graphic designer (and fabulous artist) and is responsible for Molly’s advertising arts (and the above website). She asked Sienna to sit in on a photo shoot for an advertisement in a local magazine. It was probably more exciting for me than for Sienna, but she had a good time of it and cooperated nicely. Molly let her pick out a gift from the store and Anaïs is going to send me a copy of the advertisement as a memorabilia.
Anaïs emailed us the day before our arrival with an offer we couldn’t refuse. Her husband Arron’s mom would be away for a few days and had offered us the use of her house, an authentic New Mexican adobe home. Moments after we’d arrived, Sarah and her husband Aren (not to be mistaken with Arron) dropped by with their daughter Hannah, before heading out to the river with their kayaks. Sarah and Aaron met as a result of their shared passion for kayaking and now own a whitewater kayaking company named RX Rivers. They are experienced guides who host people from around the world at their lodge in Patagonia, Chile, located right on the Rio Futaleufu, one of the top 10 rivers in the world (check out their website at http://rxrivers.com/) Sarah offered to take us out kayaking on Monday and we jumped at the opportunity (fine – I admit my heart did a strange flip which was probably more linked to fear than excitement, but there’s no way I’d pass up an chance like this!)
Molly and her husband Kyle were having a birthday party for their 4 year old daughter, Helena, on Sunday and invited us to join them. It was a busy day, with what seemed like 120 children busily milling about, laughing and playing happily. True to her Twirl background, Molly had them well organized throughout the day with mural painting, T-shirt design and cupcake decorating. Sienna was delighted to be in the midst of such a hive of juvenile activity, giving Dave and I the chance to visit with our friends. Kyle is a contractor and shared tales of his work, which currently involve working on Julia Robert’s guesthouse in an undisclosed location. Anaïs’ husband Arron is an actor with a great sense of humour and a natural flare for entertaining, and we all had a fun afternoon in the warm sun watching the kids tear it up.
On Monday, the sky was heavy and grey, carrying with it the threat of snow. It seemed like a better day to read by the fire with a cup of hot chocolate than to squirm into a stiff wetsuit and jump into a cold river with a kayak. We drove into the mountains to the Rio Grande, where Sarah greeted us with a smile. She excitedly showed us her daughter’s miniature gear, saying that if Sienna was interested, she could try it out as well. I thought, “Who, my cautious daughter? I doubt it!” But when we asked, she was eager to get in. We all geared up and Sarah took us each into the river, one at a time. I enjoyed the experience and was happy to discover that I could reasonably avoid rolling, and hence getting wet. Of course, without rolling you don’t get the true experience, but at least you stay dry! Sienna couldn’t get enough of it and kept asking for another turn in the water. Dave handled the kayak really well and had a good time in the river too. When we were done, we all piled into the Westy and I warmed up some soup. As we were leaving, snowflakes began to fall from the sky.
We drove back to Taos along a scenic drive following the Rio Grande Gorge. Further along, we passed Two Peaks, an isolated community created in the early 1960s when lots were given away for free at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair to lure visitors to the Buick Pavilion. The area, which seems to attract many people with borderline personality disorders and trustafarians, has been humorously coined as the world’s largest open air asylum. The properties here are completely “off the grid” in that they have no municipal electricity, gas or even water. In fact, even the road system is virtually non-existent, consisting of nameless pitted dirt roads, which many locals refuse to have improved in order to limit access to the community. It was fascinating to see the half buried buses used as homes, and the earthships, a form of sustainable desert dwelling specific to the New Mexico area (see http://www.architecture.uwaterloo.ca/faculty_projects/terri/earth.html for pictures).
