VISITING THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST
by
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (www.ceciliabrainard.com)
published by The Freeman and PhilStar.com, December 30, 2012
IN THE FALL, the weather turns and
even in California, the summer-sizzle ends and cooler temperature sets in. My husband
and I like to take a driving vacation during this time. Driving gives one the
opportunity to see the subtle changes of the land as one goes north or east, or
up the mountains or across wide plains of deserts. One is able to see and feel
the land better.
At
this time of the year, places are not as crowded because children are back in
school, and the changing of the season is lovely to see in forests and fields
away from the city.
This year we visited Utah, Colorado,
New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona, states that are part of the American Southwest,
an area famous for its diversity and stunning scenery.
In Utah, we saw the famous National
parks with thousands of acres of land, kept pristine and safe from the crowds
and pollution of cities. Zion, Bryce, and Arches -- each of these National
Parks boasts natural rock formations that had been created over time by
glaciers and rivers and earth movement, showing fantastic shapes and
coloration. In Zion Canyon, you generally look up at cliffs and peaks and
mountains, with names such as The Three Patriarchs, Checkerboard Mesa, and The
Great White Throne. In Bryce you look down at what look like sand castles,
except that the formations are made of rocks the size of mountains. And Arches got its name from the numerous of sandstone
formations shaped like arches. Despite the chill, it was a wonderful
opportunity to take walks along rivers and in meadows and to see wild animals
in their natural habitat.
In Colorado, we spent a few days in Durango,
a small city with a population of only around 17,000 people. The city has a lovely
historic district and an old-fashioned steam engine train (Durango-Silverton
Narrow Gauge train) that we took to the silver mining town of Silverton. Durango
is the kind of place I like, small but with “attitude.” It has Fort Lewis
College and many buildings from the 1800s during the time of the Westward
expansion. The movie Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid was filmed just north of Durango at Baker’s Bridge. The
city has built a most charming walkway along both sides of the Animas River
that cuts through the city. The leaves were turning when we were there, and the
cottonwood trees were blazing gold along the riverbanks. They say that cottonwood
grows where there is water and cottonwood sightings were therefore welcome in
the olden days of settlers traveling far.
In Colorado we visited the Mesa
Verde National Park which has hundreds of ancient Indian cliff dwellings. Ancestral
Pueblo Indians who had lived for 600 years moved their pueblos to the caves and
alcoves beneath the overhanging cliffs.
They thrived in this area from the late 1190s to the 1300s. A
twenty-three year drought forced the ancestral people to move to other places
with water, leaving behind their cliff dwellings, some of them surprisingly
intact.
From Colorado, we moved on to New
Mexico which I enjoyed. New Mexico still retains a lot of the Spanish Colonial
influence, and is therefore familiar to me.
I’m referring to the Catholicism that is strong in this place, and to
the folkloric Spanish-Mexican artifacts around. There are, for instance, quite
a number of retablos around, some of them looking very much like the antique
retablos of the Philippines.
I didn’t know this until I was there
but there is a connection between New Mexico and the Philippines. From the
sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, New Mexico was part of the Spanish
empire as the Philippines was, accounting for the familiar Spanish Colonial
culture lingering in both places.
Further, because of the Spanish
influence in New Mexico and because many New Mexicans spoke Spanish, New
Mexicans were sent to the Philippines during World War II. One thousand eight
hundred New Mexicans went to the Philippines as members of the New Mexico
National Guard 200th coastal artillery. Many of them died during the
Bataan Death March. Less than half survived to return to New Mexico.
I had another reason to want to
visit Santa Fe, a personal one. In 2008, a curator of a museum in New Mexico had
contacted me and he acquired an antique silver rosary, part of my Spanish
Colonial collection of Rosaries. My husband and I made it a point to visit the
New Mexico History Museum, which displays the rosary near the entrance of the
main exhibition. It was good to see this particular silver rosary once again;
it was a prized one, dating to the 1700s, and made of fine silver filigree.
The
churches in the Santa Fe and Taos areas enthralled me with their use of adobe
and folkloric elements. Adobe uses sun-dried clay bricks mixed with grass and
mud as mortar. Adobe architecture was evident in the Chapel of San Miguel in
Santa Fe; this was built approximately 1610-1626 and is reportedly the oldest
church in the United States. The church is decorated with colorful, folkloric
elements giving the church an intimate and charming feeling.
Around thirty minutes drive from
Santa Fe is a small town called Chimayo, famous for its Santuario de Chimayo
that is known as the “Lourdes of America.” It is said that a miraculous
Crucifix was found in the area in 1810. The Crucifix was placed in the nearby
church of Santa Cruz, but the next day, the Crucifix would disappear and be
found in Chimayo. This went on for several times until the priest understood
that the Crucifix wanted to be housed in its own church in Chimayo. The Crucifix
still stands in a small church. What is unique about this church is the small
room off the altar with a pit filled with “holy dirt” that is said to be
miraculous. The nearby hallway is filled with crutches, wheelchairs and other
evidence of divine healings. The Santuario has other prayer areas in its
complex, including a chapel to the Santo Niño. Thousands of pilgrims crowd
Chimayo during Lent.
In Taos, we saw the San Geronimo
Chapel in the centuries-old pueblo, another lovely, small adobe church. And
also in Taos is the San Francisco de Asis Mision Church, called by the artist
Georgia O’Keefe as “one of the most beautiful buildings left in the United
States by the early Spaniards.” Built between 1813 and 1815, it is made of
adobe with twin bell towers and an enclosed courtyard, and was also much
admired by famous photographers Ansel Adams and Paul Strand.
I found the Santuario de Chimayo
and San Francisco de Asis Mission to be very spiritual places, very relaxing
and conducive to prayer.
The church which was not made of
adobe was the large Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, which has
Romanesque features. This cathedral was built in the early 1800s on the site
where an original adobe church had stood. Outside the Cathedral was a statue of
St. Kateri Tekakwitha who was canonized at the same time as our own Cebuano
saint, Pedro Calungsod. We had fun standing in front of the statue of this
Native American saint and listening to a guide talking about the canonization
going on at that moment in Rome; it made me feel connected to the religious
events in Rome.
We also visited the Loretto
Church in Santa Fe, although this church has been deconsecrated and it operates
more as a tourist site for commercial reasons. Still, the spiral staircase
inside this church is a beauty; this was reportedly built by a mysterious
carpenter.
We made other stops during our
driving vacation: Sedona in Arizona, which I found very commercialized now
compared to what it had been a number of years ago; Las Vegas, where we did a
bit of gambling and saw the Beatles Love performance by the Cirque du Soleil.
But the highlight of my trip was Santa Fe and Taos in New Mexico, the sights
and feelings of which will linger with me for the rest of my life.
-end-
~~~
Pictures: From top to bottom: Bryce, Arches, Narrow Gauge Train, Animas River, Mesa Verde (2 pics), antique silver rosary, Cecilia in Taos Pueblo, Chimayo, Lauren in front of San Miguel, San Geronimo, San Francisco, Cathedral of St.Francis Assisi, Loretto.
~~~
tags: travel, Southwest, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Churches, Chimayo
I attended a luncheon for Mr. and Mrs. F. Sionil Jose, attended by: Jobers Bersales, Resil Mojares, Henry Go, Erma Cuizon, Hope Yu, Mayen Tan. Topics included literature, history, personalities, and more -- it was a 3 1/2 hour lunch, followed by a photo shoot. Here are some pictures:
I just got back from a lecture by Filipino author, F. Sionil Jose (Frankie) followed by a theatrical performance based on his short story, Progress. I was happy to see Frankie and his wife Tess. It was the Cebuana writer, Lina Espina Moore who introduced me to them back in the 1987 soon after the release of my first book, Woman With Horns and Other Stories. We launched the book in La Solidaridad, the bookshop run by the Joses. Frankie and Tess have been most kind to me, launching my other titles in their iconic bookshop, La Solidaridad. One of the books was launched the day Mount Pinatubo exploded; I remember the layer of ash on everything when we left the bookstore - but that is a whole long story by itself.
