Going Back to Acoma

At the age of fourteen I made my first long journey with a group of students & teachers, mostly from the DC area, to a camp in San Cristobal, New Mexico. 

I want to share with you my experience of returning in May to the mesa known as Acoma, also called the city in the sky. With this camp we went to Acoma, made an overnight camp at the base of the mesa, climbed up a steep path of ladders & steps, & walked around. I remember clearly parts of this trip, partly because I took photos. I'm sure we weren't allowed to take photos on the pueblo houses on the top.

This is me on a Fiesta day, maybe in Taos.

My only landscape photo from that trip to Acoma. I did pick up a pottery shard there that I still have. It has the maker's fingerprints in it.  I wonder who that person was that I still feel connection to. Their pots are made with the coil method.

In my new Stetson had that I bought myself for my 14th birthday. I am also with my first camera, a Pony Kodak.

 This was at the base of the mesa, near where we camped.
We had an intense rainstorm. Lucy Murphy got unlucky. Fabi Romero, who helped her up is now living again in San Cristobal.

So now 63 years later. I have no idea of the changes I will see.
The highway signs, for starters, none of this in 1954!

Below the view of the mesa from afar. You can see the big church on the right side... well, if you know where to look!!

The rocks around remind me a lot of the feeling of Stonehenge.

At the base of the mesa are the remains of the corals for sheep & cattle.

We did not climb the mesa, we were driven up a very steep road from the visitors' center. My first view once I was up there...

There is no running water or electricity at Acoma. Wood & water is precious. 

Some of the structures on the mesa are in obvious disrepair.  The building materials really struck me: rocks, adobe bricks & adobe paster.  I hadn't realized that before Spanish contact adobe bricks weren't used.

This structure below is inhabited, at least some of the time. Most Acoman people live off the mesa, but come up for feast days.

I'm pretty sure they had a cistern system up there to support the population.

Below is the church build for the Spanish Mission there. It goes back to the 1500's I think. Will Cather writes about this community in Death Comes for the Archbishop.

The large church below: the wood was carried from 30 miles away to build it.

 

This is the ladder at the top of the path up & down the Mesa.

The different colors of adobe and the soft shapes of the forms were irresistable!

This woman told me that her daughter wanted me to photograph her shoes, so I obliged. The mother was a very accomplished potter. I'm sorry I didn't purchase one from her!

 

This man's hat told us he was a veteran, so he & George had an intense quick conversation about that. He was selling his art work. there. I asked some of the elders if they had lived up there in 1954. I really got the shivers talking with them about my earlier visit there.

Below, a view from the mesa, down a typical canyon.

 We saw only two sleeping dogs....

The steps up to the kiva where Acoman religious gatherings are held.  Many of the doors had rocks to keep them from slamming or breaking off in high winds.

 

                              The raven, also, has ancestors who were there in 1954.

That's it for now except... Fabi & I now!