Visiting Taos (New Mexico) for Hispanic Christmas Celebrations with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
One year after Christmas my family took a vacation to New Mexico with my mother.
It took us a day to drive down California where we turned
left at Needles to head towards New Mexico.
We saw Joshua Trees in Arizona.
The eroded rock on the way there clearly shows layers or strata. I wanted to be a geologist and look for
fossils in some of it. Mt. Humphrey in
Flagstaff, Arizona had snow on it.
We squealed when we saw the snow, because we had been living
by the ocean in Monterey, California for several years. We stayed overnight in Flagstaff and played
in the snow. Flagstaff is ski territory
that sits 7,000 feet above sea level.
The pressure going up the mountains caused all my pens to leak ink in my
purse.
On the way to Albuquerque, I suggested that we go to Taos,
which is considered to be a great arts center.
The road there was very scenic.
It was narrow and squeezed between the Rio Grande River and huge
mountains. Sometimes you could see three
ranges of mountains at a time. The Rio
Grande River even carved a valley in some places that looked like a miniature
Grand Canyon.
We passed many roadside crosses with flowers, indicating
where people had died in accidents. All
through Arizona and New Mexico, there were signs that read, “Don’t Drink and
Drive.”
Taos was a treat. I
love peach-colored adobe buildings.
There was a lot of traffic getting into the central plaza area. The locals must have hated the traffic I
thought.
I was making a groupie pilgrimage to Taos. Two of my favorite writing inspirational
teachers had homes there: Nathalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron. I had fun working through their books alone
and with my first writing group.
Taos galleries sell a variety of things such as Navajo
blankets, pottery, and jewelry. I found
the gallery that sells Nathalie Goldberg’s artwork and had my photo taken
outside of it. I like French provincial
style for decorating, but I saw a glass-topped coffee table that I liked with a
Wild West theme. It was held up by
bronze horse heads with flying manes at each end.
The plaza in Taos was all done in wood and adobe. The adobe was restored and painted. We went to some souvenir shops where I bought
Florence a brown, lacquer cross. Laurent
bought a bolo tie with a buffalo on it.
All around the plaza were brown paper bags with sand in the
bottom in them with a candle inside each bag that had been burned. Later in the day, I learned that these are
called luminarias and are usually placed outside on Christmas Eve.
We ate lunch at a charming, touristy place above the central
plaza in Taos. We had a window table
where we could look out on the plaza and admire the luminarias that the
restaurant had set up on its balcony.
We all ate chicken in some form. I ate chicken mole. Mole is a savory and spicy chocolate sauce
with no sugar added to it. The
restaurant’s version of mole had more cinnamon in it than in the versions I had
eaten previously.
We left Taos while the sun was still shining to drive down
the curving road through Santa Fe. We no
doubt crossed the Santa Fe Trail, which pioneers followed on their way
west. We found no parking in Santa Fe
and had to call it a day for any more tourism.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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