With a continuation of the high road to Taos these past 5 days, there’s been plenty of climbing. When I reach a “hill” I just want to dig in with my walking poles and get it over with. The problem in these parts is I might be at 7500 to 8000 ft. when that hill starts. The oxygen available at those altitudes is kinda thin for a flat lander like me. I like to get them over with, so I continue to climb aggressively. The downhill sections cause brief anxiety for a distance walker in the mountains … you just hate giving back hard fought ground. There’s been lots of gains and losses. You need to keep a healthy perspective. I haven’t mentioned how beautiful it’s been. The peaks are snow covered and the skies so blue. When I reached the top of the pass into Taos a rain front moved in. Clouds married with the peaks and moved in and out of forested mountains like they knew each other. I was too mesmerized by the beauty to take a photograph … Well maybe one.

8400 feet on high road!

Locals in Truchas N.m. Invite us to breakfast as we walk past their home

Along high road to Taos

High road to Taos near Chimayo

El Santuario de Chimayo

We fell upon Chimayo from the high road between Santa Fe and Taos. It appears as a small patch of green surrounded by steep red hills. There isn’t much there. Just a few artisan’s shops, and a home or two. The small church located in the center of the hamlet has a feel of being the hamlet. I was quite surprised when I reached the church to find a statue of a peregrino. On the same day last year I was in the middle of my pilgrimage to Santiago Spain.. Now in the middle of the southwest, on a march to bring awareness to climate change, I am linked again to that sojourn. Chimayo is a pilgrimage site also with the patron Saint James, or Santiago. Each year in the spring many travel by foot to this tiny wood & Adobe church to seek needs of the heart. It’s a site believed holy to the Native American for many centuries prior to a Christian arrival. Apparently the church is built upon the site of a spring holy to them. It now is dry. A hole in the floor provides access to the dirt where the spring was. Pilgrims take a little bit of this dirt to heal their ill’s. With all places holy there is something notable about the physical location. As we walk across the southwest it’s apparent that some places have significance to our spirit. Something created by the physical environment carries you to God. When you see and feel this it is more than probable someone else has before you. We humans have paid homage to these gifts of the land for a very long time. That’s why a church sits in this valley, and that’s why the spring before it held special meaning. I am only passing through with my footsteps and feeling what others before me might have.

The road out of Chimayo was littered with syringes. A heroin problem exists in the area. For a place of pilgrimage, and healing to struggle with brokenness reminds me of how fragile the spirit is and how important the footsteps are.

One step at a time … Up the mountain I go.

St. James at Chimayo

Chimayo

Entering Chimayo

Camping Behins Chimayo

Santa Fe is behind us and we’re making tracks toward Taos, but Santa Fe needs more than a mention. They gave us a wonderful rally at the Farmers market Saturday. Many speakers brought attention to local affects of climate change and concerns for a sustainable energy program in New Mexico. I was particularly impressed with the words of Craig Barnes, a talk show host here in New Mexico. He has graciously allowed marchers to share these with readers of their blog sites.

The Land Does Not Lie
Craig Barnes
Santa Fe, NM
May 17, 2014

The grass on the hill where I live was mowed down by sheep 150 years ago and the soil is gone and the grass has no black richness in which to grow today. Not all my wishing can make good soil be there today. The land does not pretend to grow grass. It grows grass or does not. The land does not pretend to erode. It erodes. The land does not claim that next year will be abundant and everything will be fine. The land is neutral. The land does not pretend to be beautiful. It is what it is. The land does not lie.

In New York City, after the great Sandy Hook hurricane, city officials, are today trying to raise funds to build a wall to block out the sea, standing at the waters edge like King Canute II commanding the waves to stop. In Miami Beach, Florida, they don’t have to wait for more hurricanes, the water already rises at high tides and regularly floods the streets. The state’s governor and one of its US senators are like stone statues standing while the water rises above their ankles, heading ever upward, while these two statues proclaim that climate change is a hoax. But the sea does not pretend. The sea is neutral. The sea does not lie and it is rising to their knees.

In New Mexico, we have seen forest fires rage along a 60 mile ridgeline; we see once again our piñons stressed by drought loving beetles, and we have a governor and an environmental department that fosters the development of more coal, and more oil and gas, funded during this season’s political campaign by producers from Texas who do not stand in awe of our fires or in despair because of our dying trees. But, unlike our governor, our trees do not respond to oil money from Texas and they die just the same, and the dead ghosts of piñon trees are scattered from here to the Colorado border, and they do not lie.

These years we have a political culture in which the national politicians on both sides each claim that the other side is lying, and we have a national  media that fosters accusations of lying, and we have a public bewildered by elaborately dressed up and fancified claims that the future resides with the development of the tar sands, or fracking, or international trade agreements. Political ads and oil and gas commercials will do what they can to turn fiction into truth, and exploitation into patriotism.

But fear not. The truth is here in the land we walk, and the air we breathe, and in our bated breaths while we look to the sky for rain. While the richest among us may hide their eyes or seek solace in growth, capitalism, and materialism, the land, the sea, and the forests do not lie and cannot be persuaded by Fox News to lie, and the requirements for a living breathing planet cannot be faked, and the search for beauty cannot be replaced by growth funds, derivatives, or mountains of gold. Those who march today, and assemble today, will win in the end because the land and the sea and the forests spread their messages every day, reinforce their messages season after season, march on inexorably with truths that cannot be hidden. The waters will continue to rise against the sea walls of New York City, and will rise above the knees to the shoulders and necks of the politicians in Florida, and will eventually cover the very mouths of those  who deny that they are even getting wet. Then they will be silent.

Time is on the side of the air land, sea, and water; mother Gaia does not
lie, she is our partner and we are hers. Thank you, marchers, for coming to New Mexico; thank you for standing up for all of us; march on!

Matthew Sanchez , a drummer from the Santa Anna tribe entertained us at full moon campfire. his family also fed us … Generosity without bounds

18th century church in Cochiti Pueblo just below La Bajada pass

View atop La Bajada … Below is Santa Fe River and our previous campsite at David Harrington’s farm

Fellow marchers Ed Fallon and Shira Wohlberg ham it up on the road to Taos

Sunday at Saint Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe

Sunday at Saint Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe

Preparing for Santa Fe Rally

Ed Fallon and Kim Foley take a break along old pre 1937 Route 66

Santa Fe River 15 miles downstream from the city of Santa Fe