I finally took a vacation, my first since covid began two years ago! It was just what I needed to clear my mind and refresh my spirit. Traveling with Sherri and Jason Miller is action-packed with vigorous hiking and also slow-strolling through botanical gardens, art museums and galleries. Did I mention food? Yes, they are foodies as well, especially when it comes to sampling mole and red and green chilies.
There is so much to share, but my focus for this blog will be centered on the wisdom of the ancient cliff dwellers (800 AD – 1200 AD) and their incredible ability to cultivate crops, create amazing pottery, jewelry and baskets despite the white, western story which says there was no culture among these peoples. The truth of it all is that they carefully managed the limited water in their environment. Water is the life-giving element that we too often take for granted today. In fact, our tour guide showed us that these dwellings were more about access to water that seeps through the rock layers than it was about protection. The pueblo peoples were not at war.
a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These sites provided hours of hiking and discovery.
1000 BC – AD 1700.
Another highlight of the trip was to visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiquiu, NM. Long a fan of her art, I knew little of her extensive one acre organic garden. She employed Suazo as a gardener, and today his grandchildren still care for the home and garden just as Ms. O’Keeffe would have wanted. He understood the success of her garden depended on ancient water rights from the Rio Chama through an irrigation system know as acequias, or adobe canals. From 8am until 10am, only on Mondays, did she have water! Community water rights are a necessary ingredient for survival, even today.
When you meet a garden of both meaning and beauty, you know it. When you meet a landscape that speaks to the layered evolution and history of this planet, your entire sympathetic nervous system lets you know – whether you could articulate it or not. You know when you enter a gardener’s garden. And you know when it’s a garden or landscape of spirit.
To walk into the Abuqiui, NM home and garden of innovative and groundbreaking twentieth century American artist Georgia O’Keefffe is to walk into such a space – interconnected to an iconic and sacred landscape that stretches as far as the eye can see. It is both open and enclosed, it is rich and spare, it is colorful and monochromatic, it is productive and contemplative.
Georgia O’Keeffe is famously quoted: “Take time to look.” This trip was an important reminder of this practice in everyday living, and so a refrigerator magnet came home with me.
I learned new plants and I recognized old friends. This area of northern New Mexico had not received rain in three months before our arrival. In fact, the wildfires almost aborted this trip for us. However, we brought the rain with us and the plants put on their show for us!
This is an important forage plant for wild animals and nectar-insects. Provides cover and nesting material. Hopis dug the roots in fall and boiled them in water for coughs. Spring twigs were made into tea for indigestion.
People have used Barbary fig throughout history in traditional medicine systems as a natural treatment for wounds, liver disease, glaucoma, and digestive issues. It is also used to create natural dye and vegan leather products.
The native tribes of Pueblo and Navajo used the tree extensively in their spiritual practices.
Its roots were sometimes used to make Kachina dolls and other objects of worship used in traditional religious ceremonies. It was also used as a source of medicine. The community doctors would use the bark and leaves of the trees to make concoctions that were used to treat aches, pains and skin irritations.
Others used the tree to make yellow dyes. The dye comes from the tree’s buds, which have chemicals that, once dried, produce the yellow pigment.
The fibers from this plant were used by Native Americans to make ropes, nets and other items.
The flower buds can be dried, boiled or roasted and eaten much like okra. The spines were removed and the canes used as walking sticks.
Most yuccas have dry hard fruits, but the fruits of banana yucca are fleshy and succulent. They look roughly like short fat green bananas, thus the name. These fruits were a traditional food of the Apache and Navajo. They were prepared by roasting or baking, stripping out the seeds, pounding the remaining flesh into a pulp, forming the pulp into flat cakes, and sun-drying them for later use. The resulting product is said to be nutritious, sweet, and delicious. The fruits were often picked before maturity and ripened off the plant to keep wildlife from eating them before they could be harvested.
Besides food, yuccas have many other traditional uses. The leaf blades can be woven into baskets, used to make brushes, or with the fleshy leaf tissue removed the remaining stiff fibers can be made into a combination needle and thread. The roots are prized as a natural soap.
This trip was akin to going through a door, a beautiful door, uncertain of all the joys to be found but surely a celebration of new experiences with good friends, one I will always cherish.