The hotsprings are just 200 miles south of our Santa Fe house, but the trip is rich with treasures that are filling my thoughts this morning. This watcher was standing at the side of the small two lane highway that goes to the Interstate. He didn't object when we stopped the car to take a photo. He just stood observing us as we were observing him.
Very nearby, in the town of Golden, NM stands this adobe church. It is surrounded by a chain link fence and a number of graves, many of them quite festively decorated with plastic flowers and Christmas garlands.
Golden is called a ghost town although there are people living there and there is a general store. This church, another watcher, is the San Francisco Catholic Church. It was restored in 1960 having been neglected by a population who had become discouraged and moved away after the gold mines in this area had proved non-sustaining. It was built in 1830 about five years after gold was discovered in these hills. It stands above the highway on a knoll with a view of the surrounding valley and the mountains beyond. It has seen the people come and go, and watches over the ones who lie in its shadow.
And another sentry, a cottonwood covered in dust and winter, stands at the edge of the dirt road where we walked in the Bosque. It is silent except when its branches are occupied by the ravens who fly through. It has the air of watching, as well.
A cow, a church, a tree... the snow goose flying very high overhead, the round grey rocks that look like mushrooms, the mountains themselves...observing, recording. The Hopi people listened to the wind in the leaves of the Cottonwood tree to hear messages. The roots are used by the Hopi to carve the kachina figures that are sacred. We, the modern humans, chatter and carry on, listen to the news and our heads are rarely quiet. But the cow and the church and the tree are quiet. They just are.
Being present. Being tuned in. Being still. The surroundings here encourage stillness. The junipers listen, I am sure of it. At the Bosque, the sandhill cranes come coasting in to the different shallow ponds just at dusk. You can hear their calls. The snow geese keep up a constant clatter.
Twice as we were watching, something got the snow geese going and several thousand of them flew up into the air above us, circled around and then landed again. As the darkness grew, the birds became quiet, except for the straggler cranes, coming in in small groups, calling for their clans, then landing.
So as they were settling in, we continued on to our little oasis, The Blackstone Hotsprings Inn and had a wonderful two nights soaking in our own little mineral pond.
