January 2024
A Year End Photo Series
I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’VE BEEN BUT I AM BACK. Please enjoy the drama from my home at 7,000 feet in darkest northern New Mexico, where nothing is like anywhere else (and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t). “A Year End Photo Series” turned out to be a tad misleading because I meant to do one of these posts for each month in 2024 but I now see there’s too much material to handle that way and I’m regrouping. These images from a year ago stand on their own in any case so please enjoy. The intro shot above is directly across the muddy road from the mailbox. If it looks like the frontier, it is! - JHF
I didn’t buy my new Canon EOS R6m2 until February, which means all of these are iPhone 15 Pro Max shots. The iPhone takes remarkable low light photographs and this is one, the humble rented adobe (900 sq. ft.) where I’ve lived for over 20 years. My late wife Kathy died in 2021. She always said she had no regrets after moving here from Maryland and was grateful for the experience of living in an old adobe. The structure is about 130 years old. There are no closets or overhead lights. The floor is adobe mud originally spread right out on the ground (no crawl space), covered by a carpet. The walls are up to 16 inches thick (it varies). The flat roof leaks but then it hardly ever rains. The windows are single-pane. It’s utterly quiet inside and never gets hot in summer. I burn a lot of wood.
Believe it or not that’s my 2007 Pontiac Vibe (variant of Toyota Matrix). The windshield wipers are raised so they don’t freeze hard against the windshield and get ripped to pieces if I have to scrape. Fortunately I usually arrange my days so the sun just melts it off. The mountain in the background is Picuris Peak, named for Picuris Pueblo in the valley on the other side. The last segment of the El Camino Real (Royal Road), just a path here really if you can find it, comes down from that high ridge. This was the famous route taken by Spanish traders coming up from Mexico City in the 1500s and later. Guns, religion, gold, silver, food, weavings, hides... Blows me away to think of natives, mountain men, and Spanish soldiers clanking up and down the hills right there long before the Pilgrims landed in New England or John Smith’s people starved at Jamestown because they didn’t know how to fish.
I believe I mentioned single-pane windows. Heavy salvaged plate glass, actually, and much appreciated for their size except for freezing on the inside. The towel is for soaking up melt water and condensation so the window frame doesn’t rot so fast. I’ve kept it painted and patched, too, but really all you can do is dry the towel(s) beside the wood stove every day and persevere. That’s also how I dry the laundry in the winter and it takes a lot of time and work. The thing outside the icy window is a plastic Godzilla figure from who knows where.
Another great example of how the iPhone 15 Pro Max handles night scenes. That’s the south side of Taos in the background. About a foot of snow, I’d say, with more than that in drifts. The kind of weather that makes you glad you brought wood in the day before! (Sometimes I actually do.) But pawing through the drifts to fish out chunks of firewood in the dark is heroic after all and plants you firmly in the rhythms of the seasons. Chopping kindling not so much because the sticks fly off and disappear into the snow. I’ve been told that living this way keeps me young and maybe so. Haha.
This is the effectively abandoned owner-built adobe next door and no, it’s not for rent. Every time I say that someone asks “why not?” and how to reach the owners. Neither question is possible to answer here but the bathroom is medieval, the windows do not open, and hey, just look at those icicles! If the snow is heavy enough, they grow down to the ground because the sun shines most days in New Mexico regardless of the cold. The melting and near instant refreezing after sunset create all kinds of wonders, like a sloping driveway covered with solid ice. Ask me how I know.
This kitchen window view changes constantly as I rearrange the plants and artworks all the time. The southwest-facing window is also a mighty lifesaver for letting so much sunlight in during the winter months (all ten of them). The Horned Obelisk, one of my oldest hand-cast bronzes, dates from ‘96 or so. After taking a small bronze casting class at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, I built my own melting furnace (Mexican style) at home. Then I went back to the Institute to learn the craft of making molds to make wax positives and crank out multiple editions of the bronzes. I think I still have three of the obelisks, having given away the others. The skull on the other hand is a life-sized plastic model from Edmund Scientific just outside of Philadelphia. If you’re old enough, you might remember their ads in certain magazines and even comic books, way back when before the internet. I had to drive about 90 miles from Kent County, MD and back to buy that skull. Such was life in olden times.
I’ve included this shot even though it missed the 2024 cutoff by four days because there’s so much information here, I couldn’t resist . Maybe you can sleuth it out. The place looks much better now because I’ve gotten rid of some junk, brought in a bookcase for the books (duh), and made it all more civilized. You’re looking from the living room through the “saloon” into the kitchen. We always called it a saloon because it has a bar and there’s a wood stove just behind the oval doorway on the left. On the coldest days, I live in there and work from my laptop. There’s a skylight you can’t see as well as a leather sofa out of sight to the right. When people talk about “old Taos” though, this is what they mean. Note the unvented heater.
This is view from halfway down the rocky driveway. Yes, the dying elm trees have to go someday before the left one falls and pops the wall out. In any case, while there are neighbors on the left, I do live on the edge of town. There’s almost nothing but sagebrush, cactus, piñon, and juniper beyond. The fact that I’m still here after more than 20 years means it mostly works and I’m a grateful happy camper.
Appreciate the beauty where you are! - JHF
And we have a Pontiac Vibe and cut through the adobe wall of our home in Corrales. Framed the opening in wood (I am a woodworker) but it has a similar feel. Our life paths are so alike I wonder if they have crossed before.
i loved this… very well done!