In order to get to Old Pecos Trail from the Santa Fe Plaza you will have to go down streets crowded with people, some with fake cowboy hats on. They come from Tulsa, Manhattan and Berlin. They are here to experience the vast, contemplative region of the Great American Southwest. So, they go shopping. Many loom over the ladies who sit on the ground with their backs up against the old Palace of the Governors. These ladies, and some men, have been sitting on this ground for a long time. Some of the ladies have a twinkle in their eye and talk to you pleasantly about the jewelry that is laid out before them. Others seem bored and look away when you stop to examine what they have on the blanket in front of them. Others chat with the lady next to them, barely recording your presence.
The ladies are Indians, mostly Pueblo Indians, and they must know secret stuff. The symbols on the jewelry or the pottery all must have some hidden meaning. I am too embarrassed to ask them what it all means. Other people ask in loud voices, “What does this arrow mean? Why is there a lightning bolt on this?” The ladies seem to have soft voices and some answer politely. Or, sometimes, they just shrug, “It’s just a nice design. Try it on. See if it fits you.”
A lot of the shops in Santa Fe that sell jewelry and pottery are owned by guys from the Middle East now. The stores used to be owned by tall, dry people whose father might have owned a trading post up near Farmington. They figured they could make a good living if they had a store where more tourists were. Or, the stores were owned by women or gay men. A lot of them had been art history majors, who fell in love with Georgia O’Keefe and Maria Martinez, and were encouraged by their friends and given loans by their parents, with the hope that that damn degree might be able to support them in some way or another.
Far be it from me to stereotype anybody, but I will anyway. The Middle Eastern guys all seemed to be hustlers. Some hustled pure schlock and their sales technique was that of the souk, loud and aggressive. Others were more refined and so were their goods, but the speed with which prices were cut by half reminds you that you are being hustled. Besides these guys, the stores and the galleries seem to be mostly staffed by young women who do not look you in the eye or, even acknowledge your presence in the store. They don’t appear to be art history majors. They look like the same girls who work at The Gap. One salesperson, not so young any more, reminds you that if you come back tomorrow, she’ll be downstairs, so please tell the person that waits on you that you were talking with her today about that kachina. OK? She reminds you of this two or three times before you leave.
You go past these people and these stores and others that sell things like books and knives and artifacts from Tibet and Bolivia. You go past the restaurants that serve crepes and cream of broccoli soup. It used to be that you ate frito pie at the Five-and-Dime or chile rellenos at The Plaza or if you were feeling really flush you went to the Pink Adobe and had something with shrimp. Now they sell anything and everything to adorn your body, put on a shelf or into your mouth. It’s like a lot of other places, but it’s got history and the buildings look real different from home. Oh, and did I tell you that it is the third largest art market in the country?
After you’ve had your fill of this, you get to the other side of the plaza and go a couple of blocks and walk past some government buildings and you find your rental car just off Old Santa Fe Trail and you drive on that street, which somewhere has turned into Old Pecos Trail, and you take it a few more miles until you get to I-25. You go on I-25 North. If you make a mistake and take I-25 South you have to go a few miles until there is an exit and you can turn back again. A lot of people seem to make this mistake. So, you take I-25 North and, about fifteen minutes later, you get off at the Pecos-Glorieta exit and you head towards Pecos. You enter San Miguel County from Santa Fe County. You might as well be crossing from The Hamptons into Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, only this place is for real.
After a mile or two is a thoroughly homemade memorial to the Battle of Glorieta Pass entitled The Gettysburg of the West. Though the Confederates had been successful on the field during the three days of shooting, a small detachment of Federal soldiers (I think they were some of the miners from Colorado who had volunteered) had captured the men guarding the rebel wagon train, ran off their horses and mules and burned all the wagons. Forlorn, the Confederate commander, knew he couldn’t sustain his attack any longer without provisions, ammunition or water and ordered a retreat. Only about a quarter of the men who left Texas returned, their comrades having been picked off by Union troops and Apaches. It must have been a hard, hard few weeks that retreat.
There is an official display about Glorieta Pass at the Pecos Historical Park that also features the ruins of a Spanish mission and the pueblo that once stood at this spot, where the Great Plains meet the Rockies. It’s all quite understated and beautiful. Standing near one of the kivas, you can look east and see the plains, look west and see the mountains. It’s like standing high up on the rocks at Big Sur or at Sunset Beach in North Carolina. There is a definitiveness to it all. This is where something ends. This is where something else begins.
But, you would have had to turn right at the town of Pecos in order to get to the Park. This time you are going to go straight at the four-way stop and cross over the Pecos River bridge. After a while you take a right and then you continue on the dry, dirt and gravel road. After a bit you are in a deep canyon and you take a sharp left that takes you deeper into the canyon and then you are there, the town of Lower Colonias.
To call Lower Colonias a town might be to create an inaccurate image in your mind. There is a small church and a dozen or so small frame or adobe houses. The place is dry. Real dry even though it is deep in the canyon that was gouged out by Cow Creek. The day I went there the water in Cow Creek was just a memory. There’s been a drought in this part of New Mexico for the past five years. You can usually walk through a bit of snow on Memorial Day weekend if you make it up to Spirit Lake or Stewart Lake. This year you could only make out a thin line of snow right on the very top of the ridgeline of Pecos Baldy. From the lower elevations, Santa Fe Baldy looked to be even more dry and barren, a solemn face of granite glaring down at the river.
I felt like I was intruding when I entered Lower Colonias, like I’d stumbled into someone’s backyard. The map made it seem like there was a road that would take me to Upper Colonias, but I was too embarrassed to try to pick through which of the dirt driveways was actually a state-maintained road. A couple of guys were leaning into the engine compartment of a twenty-plus year-old Chevy. One of them looked up to see who was throwing the dust up, saw it was only a tourist who was probably lost and brought his attention back to the car.
This little place has bigger problems than lost tourists. In a recent issue of Water World, a publication geared to water and wastewater professionals, a story recounted the plight of the residents who have not had access to the community well since December. The fifty year-old system’s pipes had been leaking badly and, their proximity to the various septic tanks and outhouses, posed a health danger. One of the residents, a Mr. Quintana, presented his community’s request to state lawmakers who greeted him with great skepticism. Ultimately, a $20,000 grant was made to study the situation, but no dollars for fixing the leaking pipes. So, Mr. Quintana will swap some firewood to a guy with a backhoe and fix the pipes himself. In the meantime, he and his girlfriend have had to move Pecos.
So, maybe forty-five minutes from the people with the fake cowboy hats and the bored Gap girls were these people. People who cut firewood and swap it for help so they can have clean drinking water. I hated the first place and feared the second. I wish I had stopped and talked to the guys working on the car. Maybe, one of them was Mr. Quintana. I think I would have appreciated hearing what he had to say.
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