End of the Glen

So the Glen has ended and I've reluctantly said goodbye to friends of the last couple of years and this one, sad to pull my plug from the charge that a gathering of 200 artists, writers, musicians, thinkers and sojourners engenders. But I think my batteries are loaded as, tired as I am, I can't find sleep, my mind still whirring and buzzing with the stimulation of the stark and ravishing desert, with soulful conversations and explorations, and with the overabundance of beauty, created and uncreated, that fusion of art and religion and landscape that truly marks New Mexico as enchanted. As much as I'm done in by the wash of lush desert hues which shift by the hour, I'm struck wordless again and again at the eloquence of the humble, rough hewn art I stumble upon around every corner and bend in the road.

Look at the face of this figure I saw in a large, dusty, art yard, carved into a tree trunk by Max, an 85 yr. old local artist. See how he's incorporated the tree's natural lines and eddies to bring forth a face so human, so broken, so honest, I get weak in the knees.

New Mexico is where superlatives fail me, where I spend the week blithering like an idiot, trying and failing to articulate the reasons for all that so moves me here. I should know by now just to shut up.

Scenes from a week well lived:


This is the church that Georgia O'Keefe would have seen from her home across the street in the village of Abiquiu. She moved to this village from Ghost Ranch.




On the way to Christ of the Desert Monastery, after leaving the village of Abiquiu and then the highway, snaking slowly down a 13 mile rutted dirt road. The day was brutally hot and after we parked and hiked down the dusty road and around a bend, we looked up to see this humbly majestic monastery seemingly jutting from rockface, just as the bells began to toll. We entered the chapel and took our seats moments before the monks filed in and began chanting. We'd inadvertantly arrived just in time for their midday worship which was gorgeous beyond words. Huge windows above us exposed the rock formations behind the church and lit the sanctuary. It would be hard to find another 15 mins. more lovely than those.





These from the Santuario de Chimayo. We were not permitted to photograph inside the church this time. This is the gate to the courtyard and a sculpture hanging between restrooms.























The Tee House where I occasionally escaped to absorb the input and calm down.


























































The Hacienda Antigua, my after Glen oasis in Albuquerque. I'd planned a two day solitary stay to rest and regroup after the intensity of the week. After settling in and checking in with my family spread from England to Dallas, I headed to my car to find some dinner and was startled by a handsome man in the parking lot. Fortunately, that man was my husband. Which was the icing on the cake of a very sweet week.