Lay of the Land
Pete was a retired builder, interested in picking up a little work close to home, so contracting with him to build a deck on the river and a few other things before I moved in was a win – win. The river deck was mine, but I crossed a narrow swath of Pete and Linda’s land to get there, which was not a problem. From the time I arrived on the property, sunrises and sunsets from that deck made sublime daily viewing. Undulating ripples on the river surface flowed in harmony with my thought stream, beneath heavenly sky. Beavers would splash and work the stream, while I sank into meditation over a thermos of coffee, or glass of wine. This ordered thoughts, settled nerves, and stretched my consciousness over trenches of ego concerns.
Although I had looked at a couple of houses in Santa Fe, I was more interested in being out of town, or in a smaller town, and in clear star-filled nights and elusive spirits of field and mountain. For all its exquisite beauty and charm, Santa Fe was not the magnet, even though I’ve loved it since my first visit back in ‘79. I sought something more elemental; the city could be just a place I go from time to time.
The place where I arrived at the end of March 2017 was elemental enough, any way you care to construe that, and could pass anyone’s muster for being a real slice of New Mexico -- and it was beautiful enough to give you a very favorable view of what that meant. It was atypical in its lushness, but totally real, and New Mexico all the way. The orchards, fields of grapes, meadows, and that shady old mulberry by the acequia made it pastoral, while the river, canyon, mesa, and stars painted the background wild.
The house had that same comfy country feel, with thick adobe walls and fine beams and vigas. Far bigger than one needs, but exceedingly comfortable. Except for a bedroom and office on one end, and the master suite on the other, the rest of the house consisted of an open concourse in the middle, from which a huge kitchen, dining room, and living room branched in the shape of a fat cross. A large kiva fireplace warmed the living room.
In my four years there, I hosted several parties that managed to achieve a high-festive lift-off. I made a concerted effort at this, for the sake of connection and good times, and to let people know I was there, in this distinctive place. Irrespective of anything I might do, festive moods flowed so easily in that space that I came to believe that the very house loved people. It was just gracious and hospitable, and people felt at home there and settled into a fine fellowship, almost as if the house itself were toasting good times with them.
In that country, people will travel a distance for an occasion, even such a humble one as mine. In addition to a few locals, others would come from Espanola, Dixon, and even Abiquiu or Penasco for a good time. People from the Petroglyph Society, Vine & Wine Society, local winery, neighbors, and a few of their buddies would come. A couple of times, I hired local musicians, who proved outstanding. Other times I just invited a couple of my jamming buddies to bring guitars and have fun. Wine would flow, and the deck usually found a few stoners and probably me passing a number around.
Pete and Linda lived next door to the north and a little towards the river, in a small bungalow they were busy upgrading. She was a nurse practitioner at the Espanola hospital. Pete kept up the property, both theirs and mine, and frequently came over to play guitar. Most of the time we hit it off like brothers. He had a childlike quality and was a dedicated deadhead and good old boy. He was also a good guitarist who would solo fearlessly, at the drop of a hat.
The only trouble was that he had a learning disability that wouldn’t permit him to memorize songs. So he always had to watch me for the chord changes. You can’t get really good that way, but we played well enough to get a good response at a few open mics in Dixon and at the brewpub in Rinconada. Some other really good players, like Boris McCutcheon, Robert Romero, and other friends of Pete’s, would also occasionally come over and play. The old adobe walls would just soak it up.
Pete had been on or around that property since he was a kid in the early seventies. He was a good building contractor, but also a wild child, even after he and Linda married. He retired early, for reasons I thought were best left unexplored. I think he lost his license over something, but never probed. He and Linda went through a long period of separation but got back together a couple of years before I met them. They split off the big house on the acre that I bought, from the riverfront strip with their bungalow on it and moved down there. Pete had settled down and found his peace in tending the property that meant so much to him. He did my irrigation and all kinds of maintenance for a modest fee. It would have been a struggle for me there without that help from him. He probably would have done it for free, because it was the stuff he had always done and just took for granted.
Pete’s older brother Ray and his wife Becky were neighbors to the south. Ray was twelve years older than Pete, and the two simply detested each other. Given the age difference, they were never close. In fact, my property had been split off from what was originally one large family parcel, in a lawsuit brought by Linda and Pete a few years before.
I should say the suit was brought by Linda, as Pete didn’t really have it in him to do that kind of thing. She became a nemesis to Ray and Becky, who disparaged her Hispanic and native heritage, and had done so to Pete’s face, around the time of their wedding.
Linda seemed to me more like the spirit of the land there, with her taciturn and sometimes spooky mother-earthly ways. She was a deep well, and I could imagine her effecting her will on events around there, subtly, through arcane natural processes.
Though she didn’t say much, she was totally in charge, of the household, and even of Pete. Hers was the only seller signature on my contract to buy the house. Pete had not even been a party to the contract for sale of his family property, as it was in her name only. I later learned that she had insisted that Pete sign all property over to her as a condition of getting back together after the separation. I suspect that she had him on an allowance.
Most of her extended family lived in and around Dixon, and her mother Emma, with whom I shared a birthday and a lot of good vibes, was originally from Picuris Pueblo. On one or two occasions, Linda came over to my house to insist that Pete come home after staying too long playing guitar, and ended up virtually dragging him out the door by the earlobe.
Ray and Becky lived there from May to October and spent the rest of the year in southern California. I had heard about them and their right-wing views before they arrived that first year, and was nervous, none too eager to meet them. When they did finally arrive, however, I found them charming and nice, especially Becky, and we just avoided politics. That worked fine from the first to the last, though I heard from each side quite a bit about the other in that family feud. It didn’t bother me particularly, as both sides accepted that I was friends both ways, and that it could hardly be otherwise. Despite our opposing beliefs and attitudes, Ray and Becky never stopped being helpful and supportive neighbors and greeting me with a smile.
A little over a year before my arrival, Pete went out to do his chores one morning and found Ray down by the river, more dead than alive. He called 911, and a med evac helicopter rushed him to the heart hospital in Albuquerque. He had had a severe heart attack. But even this life-saving assist didn’t quell the enmity. They just detested one another.
Ray had done big construction projects his whole career, like building dams, the Central Arizona Project, and other such endeavors. He loved mechanized equipment and curated a large garage full of farm machinery, both working and obsolescent. He couldn’t let any of it go, and there were some classic pieces in the collection, dating back to the late ‘40s.
Ray found his deepest, truest self on the seat of a tractor. Upon arriving home in La Joya, it took him less than twenty minutes to gas up his favorite tractor and get it out working the bottom field. The drone of engines rarely stopped from April to October. For that reason alone, I found some significant relief after the harvest, when they were off, and quiet restored. I was to learn a little later that quiet along the river was something you could not take for granted.
In contrast to Ray, I found my deepest, truest self on the river deck at sunrise, and that’s just who we were, materialist and idealist, next door neighbors. But it worked well enough with (literally) the common ground that we had, despite the unspoken challenges.
I rarely found Becky less than personable and engaging. From dispositional nervousness she rarely stopped talking, but it was ingratiating rather than obnoxious. After Ray, on whom she doted night and day, the vineyard was Becky’s love. They planted it, and she had nurtured it to mature productivity. She could detect a trace of powdery mildew at thirty paces and would not tolerate it an instant. She spent her days dressed head to toe in sun-protective clothing, clippers in hand, tending the vines.
There was much camaraderie around the vineyard. Mine consisted of five rows of cabernet franc vines that had been planted by Ray and Becky in 1995. The five rows were enough to give me the joy of having a good vineyard, but not enough to cue distress through the vicissitudes of the growing season. Becky, who was fastidious, helped and tried to educate me, but found me lackadaisical.
Even so, my harvests were good. I would pick a little over a ton of grapes in a good year. My vineyard had been split off legally from Ray and Becky’s much larger one in the family feud. I was glad I got the cab franc patch, as I much preferred that to the Riesling and chardonnay that also grew in their vineyard, along with some merlot and syrah. Though I’m gone from there now, I still keep a few bottles in stock and enjoy the taste of what some old-timers around here call the querencia. That, in traditional New Mexican Spanish, refers to tasting your own land in the wine, and denotes love. Mine is robustly tannic and spicy; a touch acidic, but it opens up after you let it breathe.
I sold the grapes, or rather bartered them for cases of wine, to the Black Mesa Winery, a mile up the highway in Velarde. Becky and Ray had previously had a fruitful relationship with them, but that had ended in a bitter disagreement the year before I arrived. They now sold their grapes to Vivac, a bit further up the road in Dixon. I decided to keep it local, and sold mine to Black Mesa, which had always made a good cab franc from the grapes. I enjoyed occasionally hanging around the winery, even crushing grapes with them in the beginning, to see how wine is made, and meeting a number of interesting winos there (i.e.. owners, employees, customers, and friends of the winery).
Harvest time was social season. Becky assembled a crew of old reliable friends, a neighbor or two or three, and any other warm bodies she could find for a week to ten days’ duty picking in the vineyard. The whites matured first, and we always finished their vineyard before picking mine with a smaller group. The rule was that anything that happens in the vineyard stays in the vineyard, although ribald jokes and furtive tokes were about as mischievous as it ever got. The mood was almost always lighthearted, and we would take ample time to enjoy the generous lunch that Becky would spread out on a large picnic table under a shady tree.
Ray and Becky helped me put bird netting over my vines in early summer and then remove it at harvest time. Ray could handle the skid steer with the large roll of netting on it like child’s play. He used the same equipment to bring a large bin for my grapes at picking time. They helped me pick, and when we finished, he would load the bin onto the back of my pickup for the short drive to the winery.
One year I had some friends up from Albuquerque for the harvest, a German couple and a friend from Colombia, whom I had met in a Spanish class at the Instituto Cervantes. They told me that picking wine grapes was a bucket-list item for them, and I was more than happy to have them come up and check it off.
With the picking complete, Ray hoisted the bin onto the truck bed with the skid steer. The company was already in the truck, waiting to ride to the winery and enjoy a tasting while I tended to business. The bin was too large to slide past the wheel wells inside the truck bed, so I secured it with a big bungee over the tailgate. Once it was fastened, we proceeded laughing and joking down the dirt road toward Highway 68.
Traffic on the highway was heavy, so I waited for an opening and when I saw one gunned the truck to merge into it. As soon as I turned the wheel, we heard a loud pop, which was the bungee breaking, and then a thud, which was the bin hitting the highway. An involuntary expletive escaped my vulgar mouth.
The upright bin miraculously missed the oncoming traffic and skidded toward the edge of the highway, right to where the Salazar family had a pop-up fruit stand on folding tables. I pulled over and ran to the stand, where the women sitting behind the table stared incredulously.
Just then two women parked and approached the fruit stand from the opposite direction, with one of them remarking “oh, look at those luscious red grapes; let’s get some.” I told them “I’m sorry ladies, but those are not for sale” and apologized to the women at the stand, who just said “oh, that’s okay, good luck getting the bin back up on the truck!”
I was very embarrassed to have to take the problem to Ray, but saw no alternative. I got back in the truck and drove to his place. I found him out sharpening tools and confessed what had happened. Without the least hesitation he muttered “shit happens, let’s go.” He fired up the skid steer while I climbed back in the truck, and he actually beat me down to the highway, to where the bin was still sitting in front of the fruit stand. It took him less than a minute to load it back onto the bed of the truck.
I thanked him, drove ever so carefully the half mile back to the winery, had Jerry off-load the bin, and went into the tasting room where my guests were just completing their tasting, laughing, having a good time, oblivious to the drama of the bin. I was relieved they were not bothered over the episode. Ray had come through for me big, and we enjoyed a great party that night in celebration of the harvest and good company.
Just across the dirt road lived Danilo Leyva and his wife Catalina. Danilo was a retired Spanish professor at Northern New Mexico Community College in Espanola who had lived in the area all his life, as had Catalina. He appreciated my speaking Spanish with him, and that first year I helped them pick their peach orchard. We became good friends. As he was talking to me, he would illustrate his points with a stick in the dirt, and then stab the ground with it for emphasis. His son, Danilo Jr. was a county official who lived across the highway. He was often around working in the orchard, and was also the mayordomo of the acequia. We also became good friends. Despite the cordiality, however, I always felt some reserve in these relations.
My first full immersion in the broader local culture came when Danilo asked me if I was going to the town meeting the next night. I had seen a notice in the post office of a meeting to discuss the crisis in the volunteer fire department: not enough volunteers to maintain a positive insurance rating. Without correction, insurance rates would spike. I told him yes, I was going.
At the meeting, I turned out to be the only Anglo out of the forty or fifty people in attendance. I exchanged greetings with Danilo, who was the only one there I knew. I seemed invisible to the rest, in plain sight, which was perfect for unobtrusive observation, the best way, I was sure, for me to spend that meeting.
Accusations flew that the fire chief, the ill-reputed scion of a leading local family, had inappropriately fired most everyone who had ever volunteered. The chief sat impassively and hardly bothered to defend himself through the meeting. Despite the heat, it adjourned with nothing decided, only an admonition, from Danilo to the chief, not to fire so darn many people. It seemed strange that I never heard another thing about the fire department after that meeting; I certainly was not in the loop. But my insurance rates never did go up.
I came to appreciate that the quality of being “real New Mexico,” is more than meets the eye. When you move into the midst of a traditional culture, locals are likely to suspect your motives and intentions, and resent the wealth disparity that you unwittingly flaunt. This is as true now as it was in Mabel Dodge Luhan’s day. I wanted to just blend right in, and did my best, but most of these families have been here for a very long time and have innumerable kin in the vicinity. By local standards, you are not from here, and you’re never going to be from here.
That’s so fundamental it’s easy to overlook. The beauty of earth and sky and inspirations it brings can obscure the grittier parts of the surrounding reality, which you find ubiquitous when you really look. Despite all good intentions, inter-ethnic attitudes are pretty well set. Cordial interaction is the surface norm, but deep trust a serious challenge.
This lay of the land represented a drastic change from living near downtown Houston. Sure, I was naïve, as you could hardly help but be, but I never felt that my new surroundings suffered in comparison to the big city. I was in a new phase of life, with chosen surroundings to suit. But the challenges of adaptation would be ongoing.
