January 9, 2023
by David Ryan
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Wandering Through Carlsbad Caverns

Over the past several months I have been gathering information on special places that you’ll only find in New Mexico and are compelling enough for you to drive across the country to check them out. I eventually hope to turn this information into a book or at least a series of blog posts.

To begin, there are currently only 24 UNESCO recognized World Heritage Sites in the entire country. Three of them (Taos Pueblo, Chaco Canyon, and Carlsbad Caverns) are in New Mexico. Only California has as many, and one of those (Frank Lloyd Wright architecture) is shared with several other states. (Ironically, New Mexico does not have any Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.)

Since it had been many many years since I visited Carlsbad Caverns, I took a short road trip to correct that oversight last week.

And all I can say is WOW!!!!

For me personally, it was a mystical and almost spiritual experience. I don’t think that I have ever felt as connected to the majestic forces of creation and nature as I was during my descent into and walk through Carlsbad Caverns. When I left the caverns two and half hours after entering, there was a sense of energized peace and gratitude flowing through me, and even several hours later my entire body still felt calmly alive – almost a slight vibration! Or as the 14th-15th-century mystic Julian of Norwich said, “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

If you’ve never been to Carlsbad, or if it has been some time, and if you have the time, means, and inclination, I can’t encourage you enough to check them out.

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November 29, 2022
by David Ryan
4 Comments

Cabezon – Shark Tooth Ridge – and the Rio Puerco Necks

If you have ever driven north on U.S. Highway 550 from Bernalillo, New Mexico towards Colorado, you’ve undoubtedly seen Cabezon. You can’t miss it – it’s a huge volcanic plug. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. It is at the north end of what may be the largest concentration of volcanic necks and plugs in the world! There is nothing in the country quite like the Cabezon area, and it is truly worthy of National Park status!

Cabezon

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August 17, 2022
by David Ryan
8 Comments

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Place

As one of the foremost, if not the foremost American artist of the 20th Century, Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings hang in most of the top art museums around the country. Rather than fading away, her reputation seems to be growing stronger over time. One of her paintings, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, sold at auction for $43 million in 2016! And most of her famous paintings were done while staying or living in New Mexico.

O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917. By the end of the 1920s, she was staying in New Mexico for part of the year on a regular basis – first in Taos and then by the mid-1930s in the Ghost Ranch/Abiquiu area. She would eventually buy houses at both Ghost Ranch and in Abiquiu and started living year-round in New Mexico in 1949. She continued to live in New Mexico until her death at the age of 98 in 1986. She once wrote to a friend, “… the country seems to call me in a way that one has to answer it …”

One of the locations in New Mexico that inspired many of her paintings from the 1940s is a “badland” area a little more than 100 miles to the west of Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu in the middle of Navajo country. She called the area the Black Place. With the roads not being what they are today, her trips to the Black Place were serious expeditions that included several days of camping out with one of her friends at her chosen painting location.

As you can see, the heavily eroded landscape has exposed volcanic ash and river deposits from tens of millions of years ago.

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