(Not Quite) 50 Shades of Yellow

 (Originally written 10/21/24)

Well sadly the last hummingbird of the season has “left the building.”  It has been at least three weeks since any of the tiny colibri have been seen sucking on the agastache plants outside our bedroom window during our early morning stretching routines.  Or at any other time.  Same for dining at the red plastic feeders.  Alas, ‘til next year.  

                

But wait…  A couple of days after realizing our loss we saw one hovering at a penstemon plant in the garden of another property about ¼ mile away.  Could it be that the bird just didn’t get the “time to go” memo?   Were there grounds for hope?   Or was it just result of one of The City Different’s climatological quirks?

                

Santa Fe’s elevation averages around 7,000 feet.  Out neighborhood is 7,200.  The town is nestled into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains the tops of which top out around 13,000 ft.  

                

The blog.outspire.com website says, “living at high elevation is a bit of a challenge. If you cook, it means that recipes have to be adjusted or cake batter will rise out of the pan then collapse. [Marsha took a “high-altitude cooking class” at the Community College and uses the “Pie in the Sky Successful Baking at High Altitudes” cookbook to avoid such things.]  

                

“There is less atmosphere over our heads – less atmospheric ‘weight’ – so water boils at a lower temperature and rice or pasta needs longer cooking times.  Because the air is less dense, it doesn’t retain heat, which means that we experience bigger temperature swings between sunny and shaded places, or between night and day.  [Our rule of thumb for sun vs. shade is 15-20 degrees F difference.]  Daytime high temperatures are on average 30 degrees F above nighttime lows.”

                

And then there are the Santa Fe micro-climates.

                

Outspire.com continues, “we had snowshoeing guests [in February] who were very dismayed to arrive and find almost no snow in town.  In fact, daytime highs were in the high 50’s, we were all in shirt sleeves – [see above sun vs shade rule] and it seemed impossible to them that we would be able to have a snowshoe outing … They were amazed and delighted by the two-plus feet of snow on their mountain trail.”            

                

After seven years out here we’re come to accept such things.  We are no longer surprised to be caught in a 30-minute monsoonal rain downpour and find a totally dry street when we arrive at our home four miles away.  Other similar examples abound.  Mostly involving precipitation.  But how “micro” are these micro-climates anyway?

                

Well, as blog.outspire.com points out, “two sides of a small gully in the woods may have different plants … because of the slight differences in sun exposure and moisture.”  Is that what explains the color and condition of a quintet of adjacent locust trees on our street’s snow-shelf?  The five showed a tree-by-tree time-lapse of leaf deterioration with the farthest from our abode beginning to drop its yellow leaves and the one closest to us still entirely green – while the three middle ones in turn showed a little yellow foliage, the next somewhat more and the penultimate one still more.  Another result of “slight differences in sun exposure and moisture…”

                

Our main goal on the walk that brought us past the late-to-leave hummingbird was to check the copse of cottonwood trees at one end of our community’s main arroyo  – “a watercourse that conducts an intermittent or ephemeral flow, providing primary drainage for an area of land of 40 acres.” (wikipedia.org)  A portion of our paved walking paths parallel its banks.  

                

Cottonwoods grow where the water is.  Which is how/why when you look at the NM landscape you can tell where the rivers and streams are without being able to see the water.  Our arroyo is a textbook “intermittent or ephemeral” waterway.  (YTD rain is north of 13”.  Woot, woot!)  However over the years enough H₂O has accumulated alongside one portion of the gully to support three of these thirsty poplar trees.  Because of this unseen reservoir and their unfettered access to the daily sun this tree trio is among the last of the vegetation around us to metamorphose into its autumnal yellow hue – basically the only fall color that we get out here.  

               

 

The other abundant deciduous tree out here is the Aspen – most common in New Mexico at elevations of 6,500 to 10,000 feet.  Which for Santa Feans means the annual drive up Hyde Park Road towards the 10,350 foot high Ski Basin to enjoy its various vista points and hiking paths, most notably the eponymous “Aspen Vista Trail.”  Poorly planned road construction this year however has restricted such trips to Sundays.   Nonetheless several thousand leaf-peepers are showing up at each of the allotted secular Sabbath gatherings.  Normally we would be among them, however we have opted to wait ‘til next year.  

 

We did however take part in another Aspen leaf senescence ritual.  From our community we get to watch portions of the Sangre de Cristo mountains change on a daily basis from a Summer-long solid green to an amorphous yellow and green pattern as the Aspens turn amidst the non-deciduous Pines, which steadfastly maintain their healthy hue.  (Sorry, no good pix.  But for those who remember such things it is like watching a multi-day, slow-motion card stunt section at a college football game  – e.g. this BYU tradition.)  

                

And then there’s the chamisa.

                

Also known as rabbitbrush, chamisa is a hardy shrub that grows well in poor conditions such as coarse and alkaline soils, prefers full sun and requires little water.  In other words, New Mexico.  Hiding in plain sight with its dull gray coloration for most of the growing season chamisa proudly proclaims its presence with clusters of fragrant, butterfly-attracting golden flowers in late summer and early fall.  According to the SF Botanical Garden, “this misunderstood plant is one of our area's most important pollinators, and often gets blamed for causing sneezes and sniffles. [Much like ragweed back east.]  But actually, its pollen is so sticky, it doesn't go airborne!  So, the next time someone sneezes and blames our friend the chamisa, kindly inform them that the cause of their nose-tickles is actually everything else that's blooming.”

                

At El Rancho de las Golondrinas chamisa (“one of the oldest known dye plants in the area”) is one of the stars at our annual October Harvest Festival “creating beautiful shades of yellow” at the Dye Shed station.   Its flowers and stems were used by pre-contact Navajo and Zuñi Native Americans as their primary source of yellow dye.  Back in Europe the Spanish weavers’ source for that hue had been weld – a biennial plant native to that continent and Western Asia, but not the desert southwest of Nueva España.  Once again “doing what they could, with what they had, where they were” the early New Mexican colonists switched to chamisa.

                

“The Spanish settlers carded, spun and wove wool to make rugs for the floor, blankets for the bed and horses, and clothing – including sarapes (blankets or shawls worn by men) and rebozos (shawls worn by women). These woven goods and sheep were the most important commodity exported from New Mexico … Wool was either left its natural color or prepared with natural dyes [that were] typically grown on the ranch, but brilliant blues such as indigo and rich reds using cochineal (cochinilla) were imported from Mexico over the Camino Real.”  (El Rancho de las Golondrinas)

                

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish the color palette of Indigenous weavers (Navajo and Pueblo) was mostly brown, white, and indigo – the latter “obtained through trade and purchased in lumps.” (wikipedia.org)  In the mid 1800s black, green, yellow, gray and red were added.  This red was mostly raveled (untangled) yarn from other textiles with some occasional cochineal, “which often made a circuitous trade route through Spain and England on its way to the Navajo.” (wikipedia.org)  For yellow the Natives used chamisa – which they also utilized for tea, medicines, food and baskets.

                

At Harvest Festival most of the dye-talk usually centers around cochineal and indigo – the big guns of the all-natural fabric-coloring world.  But this year there was also much marveling at the profusion of chamisa and its unusually bright yellow color.  Even more than was needed by that sizable statewide community of New Mexico weavers who still do it the natural way.

                

Climates, both micro and macro, change with the seasons.  Especially true in an area with four true seasons – each creating its own ambiance marked by its own memorable features.  Not all of which are repeated next time around.  (During the summer of 2018 for example the open spaces in our community and other similar areas were teeming with wild cow pen daisies – never to be seen around here since at any time in any place.)  

                

 

Within a month the chamisa’s yellow coloring will fade to gray – to reappear again next year, just about the time the hummingbirds depart.  Or so we hope.  If not we the two have paintings by local artists, which book-end this email, to remind us of what we are missing.  As author Janet Fitch tells us “memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.”  

 

    

 

Who says....

On November 7 our local newspaper proclaimed “Winter blitz buries Santa Fe … 10 to 12 inches of snow.”  The first such event since we have moved here wherein the snow did not melt by noon and actual shoveling was required.  All that was missing were a couple of cardinals at our bird feeders to make the perfect New England Christmas card scene – unlikely to happen as the colorful crested birds have yet to find their way north from the lower (and warmer) part of our new home state.  

For us it was reminiscent of the “Shocktober” snowstorm that hit New England on October 29 and 30, 2011.  But smaller.  In both there was a foot of snow.  And the wet white-stuff clung to the large number of leaves still on the trees bringing down branches and causing power outages – 830,00 in CT.  We were without electricity for five days.  Here there were 19,000 including Monica and Bram for a few hours.  Our community’s power lines are underground so we were unaffected.

While headline-grabbing this 12” downburst comes nowhere near our December 30, 2006 experience when 3 ½ times that amount fell in North Central New Mexico – notably for us in Albuquerque where we were scheduled to catch an early-morning flight back home to Connecticut.

We had spent the Christmas holidays with Monica and Bram in Santa Fe, as we did each year after retiring and before relocating here.  We flew in and out of the ABQ Sunport and spent the night of arrival and before departure at a favorite hotel, 20 minutes from the airfield.  With early morning flights it was our habit to arrive before the crack of dawn, check-in, get a breakfast croissant sandwich & coffee, settle in at a public lounge overlooking the runways and watch the sun rise and planes come and go.  Which we did the morning of 12/30/2003.  Except there was no first-light due to the cloudy skies and heavily falling snow.  Worse yet there were no planes exiting or entering.  Nada.  Nonetheless flight announcements continued as if all was according to schedule.  Until boarding time when we were told that our flight was canceled and we should go to the check-in area to find out Plan B.  Which was that they would put us up at an airport hotel and fly us out the next day.

No problem.  No jobs to get back to.  We had credit cards and books to read.  So we retrieved our luggage, got on the shuttle and checked in at our hotel for that night.

Next morning – still snowing.  We boarded the shuttle.  At the airport we were met by an airplane representative who handed everyone a card with a 1-800 number.  Which we called and after one-plus hours spoke to a person who was thrilled to hear that we did not need to be on a plane that day and arranged a return flight for a few days out.

We contacted our favorite hotel and got our original room back.  Called the car rental and got the same PT Cruiser.  (After all no one was coming or going anywhere.)  Picked up our wheels.  Went back to the hotel.  Did some laundry. Called Monica & Bram to set up a brunch date in Santa Fe for New Year’s morning.  And settled into the lodge’s large lounge with our paperbacks.  New Years Eve dinner at an empty Applebee’s, saw the high desert buried in snow, more time with “the kids,” explored snow-covered Albuquerque Old Town, read & relaxed.  Who says being stranded in a snowstorm can’t be fun?

Back to the present – just over two weeks before this snowstorm we played what may have been our final round of golf for this calendar year.  And next night took part in one of our favorite volunteer gigs at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, “Spirits of New Mexico” – the last event of the season.

The decision to “hit the links” was spontaneous – a combination of warm weather, nothing planned and feeling good.  The activity level at the local courses drops off considerably in October so it was easy to get a tee time. 

The group ahead was a foursome.  In spite of being twice as many people and though we were playing unusually fast for us we lost sight of them by the third hole.  We caught up however at the seventh – an infinitely long par 67 (or so it seems) – arriving at the green as they were at the tee box for the next hole, from which they could easily see the action on ours.  So they watched as Marsha (casually or so it appeared) “drained” a 30-foot putt –  then heard what sounded like clapping and looked up to see one of the group applauding her shot.  Then on the ninth hole (our last) Jim hit three shots straight down the fairway (a rare occurrence) bringing him to the edge of the green.  From which he two-putted – five strokes on a par four.  A good ending for both of us.  Who says golf can’t be fun?

The next afternoon around 4:00 PM we reported to El Rancho de las Golondrinas for “hair and makeup” (well makeup anyway) in preparation for our parts in the annual “Spirits of New Mexico… where guests gather around campfires and lantern-lit paths [to] listen to the captivating tales of ghosts who once roamed the land of enchantment.”  We were also there to carbo-load on pizza.  Ostensibly to increase the amount of glycogen stored in our muscles in order to reduce fatigue and improve performance.  In reality it is because it tastes good.

This year there were ten re-enactors portraying specific specters who lived and died in the Land of Enchantment plus several more generic ghosts.  We fell into the latter category.  

Marsha represented a “Dead Weaver” (much like a living one, which she normally is, but in the dark with wraithlike makeup.)   Throughout the year Marsha has often been the only fiber worker “on duty.”  So she has developed several different talks depending on how many people, their ages, perceived level of interest, familiarity with the craft, etc.  When possible she likes to give people the opportunity to experience weaving on the museum’s “demo loom.”  Unfortunately that device as well as the large looms on which the Golondrinas weavers do their work are in small rooms where the apparatuses take up much of the space – that night dimly lit by chandelier candles and small plastic votives.  Plus the spirit of master weaver Juan Bazán who was sent to New Mexico in 1807 to improve the quality of weaving was in one of them telling his story.  As a result Marsha and the other two generic dead weavers talked with their guests outside in the ramada – an open-sided, branch-roofed shelter.   Good on warm sunny days, not so much on a 45° degree evening.

Meanwhile Jim was in the office of the ranch owner heated by a kiva fireplace portraying an un-named ranch-hand and recounting the story of the 1776 Comanche raid at Golondrinas Ranch that resulted in the killing of nine (including that owner’s son and nephew) and the kidnapping of two.  (The Comanche were “raiders and traders” – raiding other tribes and European settlers then trading some of that plunder with different tribes and other European settlers.  At Golondrinas they were after horses and potential slaves.  During their raids they also would kill any men of “fighting age” that they came across.)

The pretty much non-stop parade of guests were inquisitive and enthusiastic, which in turn got the volunteer’s adrenaline pumping.  Who says history (esp. with food and drink) can’t be fun? 

As it always does the snow has melted – to reappear several more times before we return again to our regular Friday golf and Saturday Golondrinas timetable.  

The courses will be open through the winter.  (“December in Santa Fe – ski in the morning and golf in the afternoon.”)  But when the number of layers of clothing exceeds the number of strokes per hole, we pack it in.  So except for occasional trips to the practice range and (with luck) a few “warm weather, nothing planned and feeling good” days we can only hope that our long-term muscle memory will be able to recreate those magic moments of magnificence we experienced during our late October outing.

Las Golondrinas closes November thru May – the dormant period for docents.  Fortunately for our mental exercise there will be volunteer training in March.  Until then there will be other lectures and classes offered at other venues as we Santa Feans move indoors for our entertainment and enlightenment.  And of course the library.  Where instead of actually “improving ourselves” with the works in the New Mexico history section we find ourselves drawn to fiction and those dark and morally complex “Nordic Noir” mysteries.  

Who says the bleak mid-winter can’t be fun too?

Hey, I know you!

 

Five minutes either way and we would have missed him.  Just like the week before when, if we had turned away for a minute from the Netflix series we were viewing, we would missed the character and scene that introduced the story’s maguffin.  And also (perhaps) gave one of us a subconscious tip on what to wear in the coming days .  The show was “The Perfect Couple” based on a novel by Summer Beach Read Queen Elin Hilldebrand and starring Nicole Kidman.  But the main person of interest to us in that particular scene was her “personal jeweler.” 

 

Our real-life incident happened at one of the least shore-like spots in the world – the Santa Fe Botanical Garden – which we had decided to visit on a recent morning to take in some of the seasonal change in the floral landscape.  We were walking along the upper level of its terraced garden-amphitheater when down below we saw what looked like a familiar face from our former home town of Wethersfield, CT.  Like when you are a kid and see your teacher in the grocery store our first reaction was, “Nah.  Couldn’t be.”  But the more we looked…  So we headed slowly down the stairs, still not certain, when he looked up, raised his arms and shouted, “Hey.  I know you!”

                 

N was not actually our “personal jeweler.”  But he definitely was our family’s “go-to guy” for all bespoke things gemological.  As he was and still is for many others in Wethersfield and surrounding towns.  He, his wife and daughter were visiting Santa Fe as part of a week long jaunt in New Mexico – first time for all of them in the southwest except for his purchasing trips to an Arizona “Gem & Mineral Show.”  They had a little time to kill before hitting the High Road to Taos that afternoon for a few days in that longtime artist colony.   So dropped into the Botanical Garden, which was a short walk from where they were staying, for a quick look-see.

                

As luck would have it (or perhaps it was predestined) Marsha was wearing a sliver and denim lapis necklace that N had designed and made for her to match a pair of earrings she had purchased in Marfa, TX.   She also had on her 40th anniversary ruby bracelet (a gift from Jim) and her replacement-upgrade wedding ring, both of which were works of his.  All of which he recognized and remembered.  They were under time constraints so after a little more reminiscing, some vacation “gotta-see” tips from us newly-native northern New Mexicans and an exchange of contact info we said our good-byes – hoping that they return to see more of our new hometown.  As we said earlier, “five minutes either way…”

                

But its not like there isn’t any jewelry in New Mexico.

                

As we learned quickly on our first visit in 1992 when wandered into Santa Fe Plaza and were introduced to the “Portal Program” of Native American artists under the portal of the Palace of the Governors (PotG) – an outgrowth of the weekly markets organized in 1936 by Maria Chabot, Executive Secretary for the New Mexico Association of Indian Affairs.  Open daily, most vendors sell from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and all items (pottery, some textiles, and jewelry made of traditional materials such as turquoise, coral, and silver) are handcrafted by the seller or their household members.  All the artisans are members of federally recognized New Mexican Tribes or Pueblos.   And as we were told in 1992, “they don’t haggle but they do take MasterCard.”  

 

Women selling pottery on Palace of the Governors portal during Indian Market, 1938. 

Palace of the Governors Photo Archives No. 135047

 

 

Sad to confess however that we did not purchase any Indigenous accessories from the portal purveyors on that first trip.  We are not recreational shoppers, Santa Fe was thick with tourists and the busyness of the PotG was a little too overwhelming for us.  There were however other outdoor retailers of turquoise and silver scattered around-and-about the Plaza who had considerably less foot traffic and (at least to our uneducated eyes)  good quality Native jewelry.  (Or so they assured us.) Marsha found a silver and turquoise necklace for her initial piece of New Mexico jewelry.  

                

Happy to say that over the 31 subsequent years of visits and re-lo to Santa Fe we feel that we have more than atoned for our initial avoidance of the Portal Market.  As witnessed by a recent incident at that venue wherein a jeweler at whose work we were looking realized (with some emotion) that the earrings Marsha was wearing had been made by her father.

                

What we didn’t know until now was this...

                

“Jewelry making in the Southwest has a long history, and the Ancestral Pueblo people left behind elegant necklaces of black, white, red, and turquoise beads, as well as pendants and inlaid objects.  Some of the most spectacular items were found in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in the site named Pueblo Bonito.” (ElPalacio.org)  

                

However Indigenous Natives such as the Navajo (Diné) and Puebloans did not use silver in their jewelry until the Spanish introduced them to the idea in the mid 1800s – more than 250 years after the arrival of Spanish settlers in New Mexico.  It began with the Navajos learning the craft of blacksmithing from Hispanic smiths in the villages of northwestern New Mexico, perhaps as early as the 1840s.  During the next 20 years these newly trained “smithies” began applying their tools and skills to the production of silver jewelry – defining the designs and techniques of Navajo silver-work for decades.  The tools of the earliest native silversmiths were primitive with most self-made from discarded scraps of iron and steel.

                

“The [Navajo] silversmithing process started by melting silver coins or other items in a pottery crucible or cupped piece of old iron placed on a charcoal forge made of mud. The smith puddled the molten silver into a simple mold to form an ingot or ‘slug.’ On an anvil consisting of a dense tree stump, hard stone, or piece of iron, he pounded the ingot into a thin silver sheet. Then using chisels or shears, he cut the desired shape from the sheet and hammered it to its final form. The smith then polished the silver with fine sand or ashes before a final buffing with buckskin.

                

“Silver craft spread quickly among the Navajo and Pueblo tribes … As the largest tribe in the region, Navajos dominated jewelry-making although a larger proportion of the Zuni population practiced the craft. Together the two tribes created the Indian jewelry legacy of the first half of the 20th century.” (medicinemangallery.com)  

                

In spite of their common origins Zuni and Navajo jewelry have evolved into easily discernible styles.  “If your jewelry has lots of silver and large unshaped stones, there's a good chance it's a Navajo piece. If it has smaller expertly cut stones, clusters of stones, or stone inlay, then there's a good chance it might be a Zuni piece.” (Palms Trading Company)  

 

 

As can be seen in the Zuni Squash Blossom Necklace that Marsha purchased here in the 1990s.  Santa Fe Plaza is surrounded by an array of stores selling Native American arts and crafts.  One day, we walked that retail labyrinth on a mission to find a Squash Blossom necklace.  We had not done any research so it was kind of learn as you go.  And what we quickly realized was that her taste in squash blossoms was definitely not “lots of silver and large unshaped stones” but rather “smaller expertly cut stones.”  Nor was it sales people who leaned in close, acted as if they were thinking deeply, wrote a number on a small piece of paper, looked you in the eyes and said, “for you” as they slid the note across the counter.  Many of the necklaces being offered were delicate enough. Most of their prices were in the right ballpark.  But that sales technique was not going to make a sale.  Finally we found a necklace that checked all three boxes.  And Marsha brought it home to Wethersfield.  And then back out here where its style fits in better with the prevailing fashions.

                

Marsha enjoys harmonizing jewelry with her clothing – which meshes perfectly with the Santa Fe Style.  And, as shown earlier, “you never know who you are going to meet.”   

                

Another example.  

                

A week after seeing N and family at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden the two of us were having breakfast at a favorite “French country style” restaurant in town and spotted actress Ali McGraw dining two tables away.  It was our second sighting of her in our seven years here.  And disappointingly she did not jump from her seat with arms raised and shout out, “Hey.  I know you!”  (We’ve been told that she has done similar things.  While walking on on the sidewalk in Santa Fe a friend of a friend received a “looking good!” shout-out from Ms McGraw in her slowly-passing car.)   

                

Maybe next time – perhaps at the Botanical Garden – and we, or at least one of us, will be dressed for it.

 

Philip's Law

 

Back in Connecticut Jim was a member of the Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield.  One of its now deceased members – a white-maned Italian gentleman  – was fond of saying that a tree should always be pruned so that “the wind and the birds can pass through it.”  Jim was never quite sure whether what he called “Philip’s Law” was an actual arboreal advice or an aspirational aphorism.  Either way it seemed like good guidance.

Then the other morning a fast moving green-gray-and-white hummingbird, flying like it was on a mission from God, slalomed its way through our desert willow tree en-route to the adjacent orange-colored Agastache plant.  It then flitted from flower to flower sipping rapidly at each one before quickly darting on to the next.  The stems of the Agastache swayed gently, put in motion either by an invisible zephyr-like breeze or the turbulence of the tiny turbo-bird.  It was hard to tell which.

Out here it seems everybody loves hummingbirds.  Which if you know Santa Fe may be a little bit surprising.  If there are only two possible sides to an issue Santa Feans will somehow come up with five or six.  And argue them into the ground on the editorial page of the local paper.  Then refuse to compromise unless everyone gets 100% of what they want.  

But we digress.  So we repeat...

Out here it seems everybody loves hummingbirds.  And why not.  They are cute, fun to watch and demand nothing other than a constant supply of nectar plus a protein punch of small insects.  This has been a good summer for both them and their viewing public.  At our house Marsha provides the little guys with three red plastic feeding stations filled with the sweetest human-made nectar this side of the Mississippi.  Each easily accessible in the flowering crab tree on the placita (patio) of our house.  All replenished several times a week to keep them at their energy-providing peak.  We also have four agastache – three potted and one a volunteer offshoot in the ground next to its progenitor.  All seven of these al fresco dining stations draw equal attention from our near constant dawn-to-dusk inflow of hovering hummers.

 

Back in Connecticut hummingbirds were only a hope for us.  We tried red plastic feeders and several variations of a “pollinator garden” – butterfly bushes, bee balm, coneflowers, etc.  Butterflies came.  Bees came.  Cones came.  (Just seeing if you were paying attention.)  Perhaps one hummingbird came.  Although it just might have been a hummingbird-hawk moth.  Either way that encounter lasted all of two seconds.

First time in New Mexico – totally different story.  We spent several days in Taos at El Pueblo Lodge, a hotel with an outdoor pool surrounded by yellow-leafed cottonwood trees and a comfortably large seating area with lounges and Adirondack chairs.   Plus several hummingbird feeders atop poles all in a row several feet apart.  While we sat, relaxed and read we watched hummingbirds by the dozen aerially queue up in orderly lines for a quick sip at the red containers.  Pretty darn cool!

After each diner had its fill it dutifully returned to the back of the line and slowly edged forward as the feeding operation continued, probably using up most of the energy it had acquired when it led the procession.  Our own community of hummers is considerably smaller in number – two or three at a time – and nowhere near as organized.  But over breakfast coffee or lunch on our placita, equally entertaining.

The hotel is about one mile south of Taos Pueblo – one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States and the only living Native American community designated both a World Heritage Site and a National Historic Landmark.  The hummingbird occupies an important place in the culture and religion of Taos and other New Mexico Pueblos who. e.g., perform hummingbird dances and use hummingbird feathers in rituals to bring rain.  Native legend says the bright colors on a hummingbird's throat came after he fled through the rainbow in search of rain clouds to save the earth from a fire caused by an angry demon.

Taos is also home to a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning noise audible to many but not all people – the “Taos Hum.”   According to livescience.com “a variety of theories have been offered as an explanation, ranging from the mundane to the fantastic, the psychological to the paranormal. Stoned hippies, secret government mind control experiments, underground UFO bases and everything in between have been blamed.”

Not mentioned for some strange reason is the lingering effects of the presence of the Family Trochilidae at the El Pueblo Lodge and Taos Pueblo.  Just sayin!

Hummingbirds are also a big deal in La Cienega, NM in Santa Fe County at El Rancho de las Golondrinas.  Not for their physical presence – but instead, like college athletes, for their NIL – name, image and likeness.  

One of the things we celebrate at the museum is the traditional New Mexican folk art of tinwork.  Among the early Spanish colonists were craftsmen who planned on creating works of art from silver, which they expected to find in Spain’s northernmost colony just as they had around Mexico City.  Not!  But small amounts of tin were available, which they used instead to produce religious items for New Mexican churches.

Then in the 1820s people traveling west on the Santa Fe Trail brought with them large quantities of food and goods (lard, smoked oysters, lamp oil) packed into large tin containers.  These discarded tins were a blessing to resource-starved New Mexicans who could now expand their product-line to include mirrors, candle holders, nichos and children’s toys as well as more elaborate ecclesiastical pieces.  Some of which they shipped back on the Santa Fe Trail to new customers in the eastern United States.  The craft continues today as one of New Mexico’s major folk arts.

Las Golondrinas has its own collection of early pieces – although we unfortunately do not have one like the religious-themed tinwork with the word “LARD” prominently displayed, which we have seen in the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.   Museum guests also have the opportunity to make their own tin medallions using four different templates we provide – a rose, a floral design, a swallow and a humming bird.

In Spanish a swallow is a golondrina – after which the El Rancho de las Golondrinas was named.  A hummingbird is called a colibri.  In classic, school-taught Spanish that is.  The real world is a little more complicated.

Now neither of us speaks Spanish.  Nor surprisingly do most of the volunteers.  New Mexico is 50% Hispanic and Spanish the normal spoken language of one quarter of the state’s residents.   However not knowing textbook Spanish may not be that much of a detriment

“Due to New Mexico's unique political history and over 400 years of relative geographic isolation, New Mexican Spanish is unique within Hispanic America … unlike any form of Spanish in the world.” (wikipedia)  Among the distinctive features of New Mexican Spanish are the continued use of now-obsolete vocabulary from colonial-era Spanish; words from Puebloan languages such as cíbolo for buffalo (Zuni;) Aztec expressions used by colonists; independent inventions; and refashioned English terms, e.g. telefón.  (This should not be confused with Spanglish, which mixes English with Spanish fluidly shifting from one language to the other sometimes within the same sentence.  E.g. ¿Me enviaste el email? (Did you send me the email?) or ¿Quién me robó el mouse? (Who stole my mouse?))

One of our summer interns – a college Spanish major – tried to apply her learning to our guests with what she described as less than successful results.  

So, frequently we volunteer-interpreters simply ask our Spanish guests how they would say a particular thing.  At medallion-making asking “how do you say Hummingbird?” yielded a variety of responses  – among them colibri, tucusitos, picaflores, chupamirtos, and chuparosas.  The last two being the most frequent.  (Chupa means “suck.”  Mirtos means “myrtles,” as in the flowering shrub.  Rosas are “roses.”  Some of you may have heard of the legendary chupacabra – the vampire-like creature that kills animals such as goats (cabras) by sucking their blood.

 

West Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are at the focal point of the hummingbird’s seasonal resettlement in the southwest United Sates.  In previous years however we felt as if we were barely on the outermost periphery of that hub.  This summer we seem like an integral part of it.  We also are being visited by multitudes of finches, sparrows and other such small birds, groups of which perch on the branches of the flowering crab pecking away at the tree’s purplish-red fruits, even while the chuparosas suck away at the bright red feeders.  

Climate change?  Santa Fe is definitely experiencing warmer weather.  But seeing that slaloming hummingbird the other morning got us we are wondering if it also could be something that we ourselves have done.

We planted the flowering crab in 2022 and the Desert Willow last year – replacing a tree and a bush that were thick with branches and leaves.   Mother Nature seems to have followed Philip’s design specs perfectly when constructing both the crab and the willow.  And this summer’s hordes of hummers and other flocks of feathered foodies offer testimony to the efficacy of that “law.”  To paraphrase the advice given to Kevin Costner in the movie “Field of Dreams” – “if you plant them, they will come.”

BTW     The shrubbery that preceded the Desert Willow and flowering crab were not complete anathema to our avian visitors.  The honeysuckle bush frequently provided a place of warmth and shelter for wintering birds who having been startled by the sudden appearance of one of us would startle us in turn.  And the red maple that provided significant summer shade to our placita was the 2020 site of a well-hidden hummingbird nest, which we accidentally spotted while re-arranging the tiny hoverers’ feeding stations.  Nestling into a thick coat of invisibility can sometimes be a good thing.

Dishing Dirt

 

We have mentioned before in this space that trips to El Rancho de las Golondrinas living history museum frequently evoke (often heartfelt) personal memories in our visitors.  

Although the intensity of the emotions were a bit unexpected – this human connection with material objects from the past was not.  Back in Connecticut when we were clearing out Marsha’s mother’s house we donated several old kitchen items – bowls, etc. – to our local historical society thinking they could go into its annual “Attic Treasures” tag sale fundraiser.  Instead they found their way into the cooking area of an historical house the organization owned and opened to the public.  The artifacts were from the 1940s and 50s and thus within the lifetimes of many if not most of those who toured the building.  And generated similar, albeit less fervent, reactions.  (This was New England after all.)

Some housewares on display at las Golondrinas go farther back in time and yet still can cause these types of reactions.  Other memory triggers are the buildings themselves, sheep, burros, locations used in movie scenes and – one that surprised us – dirt floors.  “My [New Mexican] mother grew up in a house with floors just like these.” or “grandma’s house had dirt floors.”  Spoken by guests younger in age than our own son.  

We personally have never lived with earthen flooring.  Nor did our parents, who grew up in the kind of multi-story wood/cut-stone homes common to 20th century Central Connecticut cities.   As to our grandparents, born in the second half of the 19th century in Europe  – well we’re just not sure.  

Tipperary, Ireland

At that time in Poland buildings of all kinds were made of timber – roofs, walls and flooring.  Budapest Hungary was evolving from a medium-sized settlement to one of the largest cities in Europe, erecting apartments of brick and cut-stone up to four flights in height, and single-floor buildings of the same materials.  Italian housing was commonly two levels with an external masonry stairs and wood floors covered with tiles.  While in Ireland a good number of rural houses were single-room mud cabins with clay floors. So it is possible that one of our progenitors may have beat his feet in the Tipperary mud.

And what of the history of dirt floors in the New England in general?  

Fodor’s Travel Guide tells us that Plimouth Plantation and Old Sturbridge Village living history museums show the “amazing contrast between the dirt-floor hovels of 1630 and the burgeoning technology of Sturbridge, in the early 1800s.”  Ergo, those who came over on the Mayflower may have initially trod on earthen flooring – but not eight generations later.   Meanwhile in New Mexico, which was claimed as a Spanish Colony 32 years before the Mayflower touched shore, dirt flooring was still common into the 20th century.  How come?

      

 

 

Well for one thing – sawmills.  “The first colonial sawmill [in America] was erected by the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the 1620s. The first English sawmill was built in Maine in 1623 or 1624 and the first sawmill was erected in Pennsylvania in 1662.” (engr.psu.edu)  But none until the mid 19th century in New Mexico.  Again, why?

Spain viewed New Mexico as an “extractive colony” caring less about building settlements and more about transferring as much wealth as possible from it back to the homeland.  Supplying technology such as sawmills was not part of the business plan.  Especially given the difficulties of transporting such a facility by ox-drawn carts up the 1,600 mile Camino Real – the trade route on which items from Spain traveled through Mexico City to Santa Fe.  And vice-versa.   

Another reason was Spain’s unwillingness to allow its northernmost New World colony to trade with anyone except itself  – especially not the ever-expanding United States.  New Mexico lived under that embargo from 1598 until 1821 when Mexico won its independence from Spain and with it custody of Nuevo México – which it used as its contact point for commerce with the U.S. via the Santa Fe Trail east and the Old Spanish Trail west.

It was not until 1847 that a lumber processing plant arrived in New Mexico – brought by the occupying U.S. Army to be used in the construction of Santa Fe’s Fort Marcy.  It was converted into a grist mill just five years later, repurposed into a home and studio by the artist Randall Davey in 1920 and later donated to the Audubon Society of New Mexico.  

Sun-dried clay bricks mixed with grass for strength, mud-mortared, and covered with additional protective layers of mud continued to be the basis for traditional New Mexican homes.  And hand sawing could satisfy what demand for lumber there was.  Floors were made of clay that was compressed on top of a stone foundation and sealed, usually with animal blood.  (At las Golondrinas we do not “blood” the floors because of the labor involved and the amount of foot traffic.)  The Spanish had brought this adobe architectural style with them to the New World having learned it from the North African Moors who ruled Spain from 711 A.D. to 1492 A.D.  In New Mexico they came upon the remarkably similar Native American Pueblo structures begun as far back as 1150 A.D.

Then, on July 4, 1879 the AT&SF Railroad, and the associated businessmen from the East and their families came to Las Vegas, NM.  And brought with them the eastern architectural style with which they were familiar– notably multi-story stone-cut brick and lumber Victorian homes.  Plus the railroad technology to more easily transport stone-cutting, saw-milling and other technologies to the building site.  

Las Vegas New Mexico

Likewise Santa Fe was becoming “Americanized.”  “First, they introduced what came to be known as Territorial Style, buildings constructed of brick with straight walls and no step-backs [then added] Neoclassical, Greek Revival, Romanesque, Victorian, and Gothic elements to structures … front porches, pitched roofs, brick copings, and double-hung windows.” (lascruces.com)

Trains brought tourists.  And in the early 1900s Santa Fe’s “powers that be” realized the city’s “centuries-old tradition of Pueblo and Spanish architecture … was an asset they could employ to attract tourism and the flourishing economic benefits that accompany it.”  They decreed an official style called Pueblo Revival, which “imitates traditional adobe pueblo architecture, though many newer buildings use brick and concrete instead of sun-dried mud bricks. If adobe is not used, structures are built with rounded corners and thick, canted walls to simulate it.  Walls are covered with stucco and painted in earth tones.”  (lascruces.com)

Santa Fe "Pueblo Revival”

Dirt floors were not required.  And thanks to the new availability of sawed lumber they began to be replaced by wood flooring even outside of the “historic area” to which the Pueblo Revival edict applied.

But not completely.  At las Golondrinas our late 19th century Sierra Homestead area shows a family compound that would have housed a young couple with children and their elderly parents (his and hers.)   Three houses show the progression of building styles from “Grandfather’s House ... with packed earthen floors [and] logs rather than adobe for the walls – essentially a log cabin covered in mud plaster; to “Grandmother’s House” with the same type of walls but a pitched roof and wooden floor of sawed lumber; to “Mora” House a large adobe home with a pitched wooden roof, covered porch and wood flooring.  (las Golondrinas Guide Book)  A point we mention when interpreting this section is that although more modern building materials and techniques were available Grandfather still preferred living and sleeping in his earthen floor abode after eating with the family in their more contemporary accommodations.

Grandfather’s House

This practice continued well into the 20th century.  As vividly recalled by so many of our Golondrinas guests triggered by the museum’s mnemonic memorabilia.