Cañones

In the summer of 2011 we visited friends at their summer rental in Taos.  I had a few stops in mind to help my thinking about Stones from the Creek, especially the village of San Miguel del Vado, which has figured prominently in these postings.  But I had also been thinking about the village of Cañones, near Abiquiu.  As the crow flies, the trip from Taos to Cañones is about fifty miles, but by road it is more like eighty.  And since the morning included a trip to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert there was a lot of driving: that monastery is at the end of an unpaved road thirteen miles along the Rio Chama canyon.

I had been reading about Cañones in a monograph by Paul Kutsche and John Van Ness.  Its very remoteness had kept it going.  Up until a few decades ago the road in was unpaved and frequently impassable and the people had waged a long struggle regarding the school bus their children had to ride on that road.  I also read a really good piece by Paul Kutsche and Dennis Gallegos on the role of the lay Catholic brotherhood in keeping the community together and viable.

I have heard people say that the mountain villages of New Mexico are not very welcoming.  I don't really know what they are talking about.  Stopping for a cold soda and a snack I have several times found the shopkeepers very friendly.  Other times I haven't.  That's pretty much my experience everywhere.  I know that people in the hospitality business are expected to be… well, hospitable.  But a bodega -- whether in the Bronx or in Truchas -- is not really the hospitality business.

All of which is to say that I had no expectation that I could arrive in Cañones, New Mexico and have a bunch of people anxious to share their life stories with me.  Except that there is a monastery there, the Orthodox Christian Monastery of the Holy Archangel Michael.  So we had a reason to go.  The Brother showed us around and we were invited to the evening prayer.

I was interested to see among their icons and image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is most definitely not a saint of the Eastern Church.  The Brothers explained that it was a way of being welcoming to their neighbors.  And, sure enough, a neighbor arrived.  She lived up the road in the village and taught elementary school nearby.  She explained, though, that even though she is married to a villager, and has lived there for some time, she is not really one of them.  She was a Northern New Mexico hispano, but she wasn't born in Cañones.  She found the worship at the monastery restoring and welcoming.  I wondered whether her outsider status made it easier for her to join these outsiders.

The village is there because of the water of Cañones Creek.  It is drawn through a variety of acequías to the land of the local farmers.  Whatever sheepherding goes on requires permits from the National Park Service.  In my dreams the valley is just one garden after another.  Of course the reality is that it is still dry New Mexico.  But the trees along the ditches make all the difference in the world.

We were invited to stay the night, but we returned to our friends in Taos.   A few months later we sent the Brothers a DVD of a documentary movie on the Jesus Prayer, which showed visits to Orthodox monasteries in Sinai, in Russia, and elsewhere.  They said they enjoyed it.  I would really like to return, but I don't think they welcome visitors' dogs.