Taos: The Thin Spot
Photography by Todd Scott
where the veil is thin
and the energy of all who have been present
speaks to those willing to listen
Taos Pueblo - 100,000 acres of protected sacred land surrounds the oldest continually inhabited community in the U.S. and the enduring energy source of Taos
The long open stretch of road is not dead time on the journey, but a meditation.
A physical space and stillness becoming spiritual.
Spaciousness is a release from the patterning of a society
that needs everything to be expedient.
A place to realize that being still and having space
allows us to come back to our reality, versus the demands external.
Ansel and Georgia
It is palpable here—the grounding energy of the land, the connection to centuries of creatives; a culture of freedom seekers. This Vata energy brings your awareness back to your own sacred vision. The Pueblo people believe the earth is “imbued with the breath, thoughts and feelings of all who have walked on it,” a transfer point of energy where there is no time barrier.
Georgia O’Keeffe © Todd Webb 1961
“I have a strong feeling that this land is offering me a tremendous opportunity. There is a glorious good time to be had, but there is also a wonderful mood for work, and a great vitality and beauty.”
“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
Abiquiu is the Western corner of a triangular space reaching to Taos and Santa Fe with lines passing through Ojo Caliente’s ancient natural hot springs, Hernandez, pictured in Ansel Adam’s “Moonrise” and Chimayo, the home of legendary weavers.
This native land and the chapel there was long coveted by O’Keeffe, who after 15 years finally persuaded the convent to transfer occupancy to her in 1945. Her studio opened to the river valley below, and to Pedrenal behind, the mesa she introduced to the world through her paintings. She would travel by foot to Plaza Blanca, “The White Place” and by Model A Ford to “The Black Place,” the subjects of many of her works.
Although well known, Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams were not the first artists to feel a calling to Northern New Mexico for inspiration. Even they were beneficiaries of invitations to the area by other artists to collaborate.
Abiquiu - Rio Chama
“Maybe it was a wish exhaled on someone else’s walk.”
Original dwellings resembling apartment style architecture constructed between 1000 and 1450 A.D, Taos Pueblo.
“One wandered up the lanes between adobes that through the centuries had settled into forms like living flesh, in the exquisite fragrance of piñon smoke, with the peaks glowing high above.”
San Geronimo Church, Taos Pueblo
“You can feel it, the atmosphere of it, around the pueblos...come riding through at dusk on some windy evening, when the black skirts of the silent women blow around the white wide boots, and you will feel the old, old roots of human consciousness still reaching down to depths we know nothing of: and of which, only too often, we are jealous.”
Family Land - This land was purchased over 20 years ago by Todd's Aunt to be used as space for meditation and natural ceremony.
The Nourishing Earth
The draw to Taos for creative inspiration extends to its farm and food culture. The Saturday Farmer’s Market is a dance about the Plaza and a space to experience more of the nourishment that Taos has to offer. A few of our favorite spots include Wild Leaven Bakery, The Love Apple, Manzanita Market, Chokola for the New Mexican sipping chocolate and the World Cup where the political banter is as spicy as its red chili mocha picante.
The Love Apple
Lawrence and Huxley
North of Taos in San Cristobal nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains is Taos Goji Farm. The Vom Dorp family, originally from Sweden, has cultivated the garden and maintained the cabins for over 40 years. In the early 20th century the land was the retreat of British writers D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. The micro valley continues to cultivate more than Goji berries and vegetables. Family-made sculptures, a library of vintage mindfulness books and WOOFERS (organic farm apprentices) are ever present among the sagebrush to conspire with you to find whatever you seek in the space.
Aldous Huxley’s Cabin, Taos Goji Farm
“For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator, is the root meaning of religion.”