We began our day driving up from Santa Fe to Taos, New
Mexico to visit the Taos Pueblo, the oldest continuously inhabited place in the
USA. The Taos, or Red Willow people, have lived on this land at the foot of the
Sangre Cristo Mountains for over 1,000 years. The structures are made of adobe,
a combination of earth, straw and water – which is sun-hardened.
Our guide was a college student who explained that the Taos
people are one of the few native peoples who never lost their land and were not
forced to relocate to a reservation, despite attempts by the Spanish and United
States’ governments to subjugate them. The people at the Taos Pueblo receive
their drinking water directly from the mountain stream that runs next to their
village. People live on the Taos Pueblo – a UNESCO World Heritage site - by
choice, and do so without running water or electricity. There are many more
Pueblo people living close to the Taos Pueblo in modern homes with the comforts
we all take for granted.
From the Taos Pueblo, we made our way out of New Mexcio,
across the Texas panhandle and into Oklahoma. Despite the nine-hour ride, we
were stoked to see my nephew Patrick, a first-year student at the University of
Oklahoma. We met at a great restaurant called the Blackbird Gastropub and then
had dessert at Hurts Donuts, a campus fave. Happy to be with family, especially
when still far from home, we made the 25-minute drive back to our hotel in
Oklahoma City.
Today we head to Seneth, a small town in southeast Missouri,
to see our exchange student Christopher’s mother’s host family from when she
was an exchange student to the USA in the mid-1980’s. Adventures await!
