Los Pinos Guest Ranch

Tags

Guest Ranch, Log cabins, New Mexico, Pecos, Vacation

Where the Road ends and the Trail begins…

***************

Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

— Corita Kent

***************

After a year of experiencing everything digitally, most of us can’t wait to return to the real world. Face to face with people: Count me in! This past weekend provided an occasion for time in nature and time with folks. My friend Christine was having a birthday, and her partner Dick wanted to take her someplace special. Los Pinos Guest Ranch in Cowles, New Mexico turned out to be the perfect destination. As Christine’s friend and a longtime fan of Los Pinos Guest Ranch, I was invited along.

Located in northern New Mexico’s high country, Alice and Bill McSweeney’s guest ranch dates back to 1912. Surrounded by towering pines, lovely meadows and mountains, the place is magical. It’s a state-certified historical site. There’s the hundred-year-old main lodge and five cabins for guests. All built of logs. The cabins have wonderful names such as Poco Tiempo, Manana, and La Jolla. Each has a sitting porch and a wood-burning stove. Christine and Dick chose Poco Tempo. La Jolla would be my home away from home. Though simple and rustic, the cabins are luxuriously comfortable.

We relaxed on sofas in the expansive screened-in porch. More guests arrived: a trio of women from Albuquerque. As the day waned, the temperature dropped. We retrieved sweaters and jackets. Jerry, a neighbor, came to the lodge to tell us about the “musical box,” a relic from the 1890s. Precursor to the record player, this musical box was brought to New Mexico years ago by the McSweeney family. Jerry, now a Pecos high country resident, was formerly a structural engineer working for Sandia Laboratory. With amazing patience and expertise, he spent a year coaxing this relic into operating. To an audience of six ranch guests, he explained the musical box’s history: originally created in Europe (Switzerland and Germany), it was the rage when it caught on in America. Jerry ended his talk and began the short concert.After installing a large metal disc, he turned the crank and– voila! — the Blue Danube waltz was playing. The sound was beautiful, a melody that conjured up the ambience of an earlier, simpler time.

Alice served an elegant candle-lit dinner, and we retired to our cabins. The next morning, after a sumptuous breakfast elegantly served by Alice, Christine and I took an hour’s hike on the Panchuela Trail.  We “rusticated” on the porch with Dick and other ranch guests, then left for the second hike of the day, this time with the three of us. After a short drive to La Panchuela campground, we found the last available parking spot and began the upper trail toward the Panchuela caves. 

Los Pinos Ranch’s plan includes sack lunches for the day. Whether guests go hiking, birding, fishing or just want to sit outdoors and read, they will never go hungry. Because it was growing warm, so we saved the caves for another day. Instead, we sat by the creek for a picnic.

That evening after another luscious dinner, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Christine and cheered as she blew out the candles. We would leave the next morning to drive back to Santa Fe, knowing that we would return to Los Pinos Guest Ranch. If there’s a getaway in your future and you like being in nature, I recommend Los Pinos. (Learn more at http://www.lospinosranch.com)

Advertisement

Calling all Writers: Santa Fe, New Mexico

Tags

Benefit, Children's Author, Native American, New Mexico, Poetry, Santa Fe, Writers Community

POET LUCI TAPAHONSO HEADLINES ANNUAL DINNER

Two New Mexico Writers Awarded Grants

Luci Tapahonso will speak at the 2019 Writers’ Dinner

Thursday, March 28 at 5:30 pm La Fonda on the Plaza, Santa Fe

Acclaimed poet Luci Tapahonso delivers the keynote address at the 3rd Annual New Mexico Writers Dinner on March 28, in Santa Fe, where two New Mexico writers will be introduced as the first recipients of grants created to nurture aspiring writers.

Tapahonso, of Santa Fe, served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation, 2013-2015. She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry. In 2018, she was selected for a one-week Artist Residency at Hedgebrook Writers Retreat, Whidbey Island, Washington, and received a Native Arts and Culture Foundation $20,000 Fellowship. Tapahonso recently served as a judge for Poetry Out Loud, New Mexico’s high school poetry competition, and was selected as “2016 Best of the City-Our City and State’s Prolific Authors,” by Albuquerque The Magazine.

A native of Shiprock, New Mexico, Tapahonso has shared her poetry at various institutions worldwide, including Harvard University, Gallup (NM) Central High School, Kenyon College (Ohio), the Tbilisi International Literature Festival in the Republic of Georgia, and “Creativity Week” at the University of New Zealand at Auckland and Wellington. She wrote the script for the exhibition, Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art at the American Heritage Gallery at Walt Disney World’s Epcot.

Tapahonso earned an MA in English from the University of New Mexico, and played a key role in establishing the Indigenous Studies Graduate Studies Program at the University of Kansas. She is Professor Emerita of English Languages and Literature at the University of New Mexico.

This year’s dinner will introduce two New Mexico writers, poet Sylvia Rains Dennis, El Prado, and children’s book author Laurie Goodluck, Albuquerque—the first to be awarded grants by the New Mexico Writers organization, launched in 2017. (See notes below.)

Proceeds from the annual dinner fund the grants for aspiring New Mexico writers. Grants may be used to support their work, including tuition for writing programs, mentorship, travel, and research.

The annual New Mexico Writers dinner brings together a diversity of writers, poets, playwrights, and journalists from around the state, along with literary arts supporters, including librarians, booksellers, editors, and publishers. It is an occasion to celebrate the writing craft and literary arts that contribute to the richness of New Mexico arts, and to raise money to aid aspiring writers in reaching their goals.

This year’s grant recipients:

Laurel Goodluck of Albuquerque, who is publishing her first children’s picture book. She is “…determined to continue to improve (her) skill as a writer and loos forward to being able to produce art where all children can see themselves in books.

Sylvia Rains Dennis of El Prado, a poet, native ecologist, and educator who will use her grant to restore links to natural surroundings as well as to her extended New Mexico community. Her credo: “The rivers, mountains, meadows, shrub-steppe, and sustainable farmlands are inseparable to who we are.”

Note: a silent auction precedes the writers’ dinner. Over 20 prominent writers, poets, and agents will offer “coffee and conversation” sessions to the highest bidders. All money earned from the auction goes toward the 2020 New Mexico Writers grants program.

 

To purchase tickets or for more details, visit nmwriters.org.

************************************************

Join Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption, hiking, writing and life in the Southwest. Her novel Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, a sequel to All the Wrong Places, is a scheduled for publication in 2021.

 

Adopting a New Year

Tags

adoptee, Albany, Friendship, Holidays, New Mexico, Niverville, Remembering, Renewal, Santa Fe, The New Year, Travel, Upstate New York

I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that…

I’m in love with a new part of America! (New to me, that is.) My friend Deborah Aydt Marinelli, a soul sister with whom I spent years of my much younger life,invited me to spend Christmas holiday with her in Niverville, New York. Because my sons and grandchildren wouldn’t be coming to visit until the end of December, I decided “Why not?” It would be only the second time I hadn’t spent Christmas in Santa Fe. The first time was when I travelled to India to research a novel. (That’s Clara and The Hand of Ganesha, to be completed in 2019).
Deborah is one of my most brilliant and accomplished friends. She’s a PhD in literature, a professor, world traveler, author of over a dozen books, mostly young adult novels. After losing her beloved husband Larry in the spring of 2018, she came to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to revisit old, formerly familiar places. We spent time together. Our mutual Santa Fe years, in the 70s and 80s, had created in us a deep bond, one that survived the 30 years that had passed since we’d last seen each other face to face. She knew my children when they were in elementary school; I considered her son and daughter as part of my own family.

Kinderhook Lake from Deborah’s window

When I accepted her gracious invitation to visit for Christmas, I fully expected to help her with estate and business matters. Having been through the process of losing a husband, I would be the supportivel amanuensis. Instead of that scenario, however, she treated me to a tour of the area around her hometown of Niverville, New York.
We enjoyed a magical performance of The Nutcracker in Albany. Other days found us at a matinee of the new Mary Poppins movie, and a beautiful program of Lessons and Carols at a Dutch Reform Church. I went with her to a Friends meeting in Chatham, we relished lunches at little general stores and country inns, feasted on shepherd’s pie at the Beckman Arms Inn in Rhinebeck, New Yorkthrough. The Beekman Arms has hosted many luminaries throughout the centuries, including President George Washington. Deborah invited nine of her friends on the 25th and we enjoyed a magnificent turkey dinner with lavish trimmings.

The Egg Performance Space in Albany, NY

After Christmas day, we traveled by car, bus and the subway to meet a friend for lunch in New York City. After lunch, we walked all over Greenwich Village and the West End, including along the iconic Highline. We passed by the former brownstone apartment of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, popped into galleries, found post-Christmas 80% off sales at small boutiques. Two sweaters for the price of one? Who could resist?
We drove through the countryside to attend events.The rolling land around Niverville and Albany is lovely. Forests, farmland, fields of sheep and llamas: a refreshing change from the high desert environment of northern New Mexico. We passed by the home of Robert Frost, Bard College, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the Village of Red Hook. Many villages, boroughs, and hamlets exist cheek and jowl in this corner of our country. Except for the often overcast skies of Winter (I’ve resided in the sunny Southwest too long), I could live there quite happily.

The Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, NY

Nine days flew by. The visit, all too soon, came to an end. The best part had been reuniting with Deborah. I invited her to the sunny Southwest for Christmas 2019, and we vowed to keep in closer touch throughout the year. I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that. Discovering upstate New Year, an old friendship made new again, walking around The Big Apple: all of this comprised a grand finale to 2018.
May YOUR 2019 be full of health, happiness, prosperity and productivity. May we bridge the gaps with those who do not share our beliefs. As Gandhi put it, may we be the change we wish to bring. HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all!

********************************************************************

What was the best part of your holiday? Feedback invited! Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption colored glasses.

Adopting Moon Mountain

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Adventure, Climbling, Encouragement, Friendship, Moon Mountain, New Mexico, Santa Fe, Sun Mountain, Wandering

In every walk with nature one receives far more than (s)he seeks. -John Muir

Do you have a favorite walk or hike? Mine is climbing up and down Sun Mountain (“Monte Sol” to use the Spanish name). A short hike but a great workout, a little under a mile, an 800-foot gain in elevation. It starts out mildly, spiraling upward on a piñon-studded slope, then becomes rocky and steep. The curves segue into sharp zig-zags, better known as switchbacks. After half an hour or so, one reaches the summit for a rewarding, panoramic view of Santa Fe below, the Sandia, Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance. Closer in, one views Atalaya Mountain, Picacho Peak and even closer up, Moon Mountain.

Mountains ~Moon to the left, Sun to the right

I’ve hiked Sun Mountain hundreds of times, too many to count, but I had never tackled its sister peak, Moon Mountain. Even though Moon is only 100 feet taller than Sun, it’s a far more challenging hike. Not much in the way of an actual trail, rough, scraggly, slippery terrain and more boulders to scale. Two weeks ago, I decided to take it on. My neighbor Joalie (https://tinyurl.com/mcsll7x) and I set out on a fine Saturday morning, prepared for exploration, adventure, and challenge.
That day, we were to experience all three!
8 a.m. Starting from Santa Fe Trail, where there’s an official trailhead, we hiked up the user-friendly route. Lots of people out today. Sometimes solo, but often with a dog or a child in tow. The view from the top is magnificent. Not only the three mountain vistas described in my first paragraph, but also Santa Fe’s south side stretched out below. We didn’t linger. Rather, we started down the south side of Monte Sol, never finding a path but instead zig-zagging across underbrush and rocks, aiming toward the valley between Sun and Moon.
We’re the only hikers around. At last we reach a sort of neutral zone, a scrubby area between the two peaks, and that’s were the adventure begins. We climb up through a piñon forest hoping to find a Moon Mountain trail that Joalie has heard about. Does it even exist? Slow, steady slogging; hard work: this makes Sun Mountain seem easy.
Unexpectedly, Joalie spots a trail snaking across the incline just ahead. Though there is no sign, we realize that it can only be a trail leading to the top of Moon. Great! We are happy to be following a route rather than haphazardly guessing where to go next. All is well until the trail seems to end in a huge outcropping of boulders. Joalie starts right up but I am incredulous. Isn’t there a way around? Maybe we could find another route? No, it’s up or nothing.
Telescoping my trekking poles into foot-long packable size and putting them in my knapsack, I move myself up one big rock after another. Joalie, the younger and nimbler of us, is up above, having switched to the spider mode. No sooner have we climbed one batch of rocks than another looms above. Will they never end?
I feel over-terrained, unable to continue. “Really?” I say aloud, not expecting an answer. Joalie, from above, calls out “Just take your time. Only 100 feet more to go.” The reason she knows that is because Moon Mountain is exactly 100 feet taller than Sun and before we started the boulder climb, we looked across the valley to the top of Sun. OK, I tell myself, I can’t go back down, I can’t stay here clinging to a rock, the only choice is to keep going up.

View from the top of Moon

A saying comes to mind: “Hard by the mile, a cinch by the inch.” Does that apply to today’s hike? It’s not what I’d call a cinch. Rock by rock…at last, we reach the top. The panoramic view is exhilarating. We walk around a bit at the top of Moon, then enjoy an al fresco lunch. Joalie shares her homemade nori rolls, I offer cheese and homegrown pears. The day is getting on, so we decide to head back down a “back way.” Rather than climbing down the boulders, which would be more precipitous than either of us want to undertake, we will go down Moon to an arroyo which we think will lead us back to Santa Fe Trail. Instead, we meander for another hour. At last we end up at St. John’s College and walk along the road to our Sun Mountain Trailhead, where, five hours ago, the adventure began.

It’s been a beautiful outing, and I’m reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous saying “Not all who wander are lost.”

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Your feedback is invited!

ADOPTING FICTION~Characters in Search of a Plot

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Characters, Deadline, Fiction, India, Interviewing, New Mexico, novel, writing

January is a great month for new beginnings.

As an author and adoptee, I find myself forever involved in a personal makeover. Maybe it’s the extreme sort of freedom granted by having more than one family tree – the parents to which one is born and the adoptive parents who raised one. Whatever the case, I find myself often embarking on new ventures. This became crystal clear during the creation of my memoir The Goodbye Baby~Adoptee Diaries. During the 50s,60s and 70s, I sought to be the kind of daughter my parents wished they had, never meeting my own impossible standards. Harvesting my journals for that book was a route to being at peace with having been adopted. It freed me to write other books.

Searching for characters took me to Mahabalipuram, India

Always a new avenue… However, the constant thread has been and will always be writing.  After the debut of my guidebook Santa Fe On Foot-Exploring the City Different, I suffered from post-publication letdown  This reaction is not uncommon. With writers I know, the joy of completing a book brings with it a dreary vacuum, an emptiness. The only solution is to begin another book.
Good news: I have a novel coming out this April, All the Wrong Places. It’s being issued by Pocol Press, an independent publisher located in Clifton, Virginia. Here’s the plot…
Adoptee Clara moves from the east coast to Red Mesa, New Mexico, and begins a teaching year at the American Indian Academy. Shortly after the start of a new semester, headmaster Joseph Speckled Rock is found dead on Clara’s classroom floor. Both teacher and students are shocked.
    Clara deals with her students’ grief and her own frustration by daily running in the rough hills surrounding the academy. Carnell Dorame, a talented student and Clara’s favorite, uses the Internet to trace the identity of her birthmother. The school’s computer teacher Henry DiMarco invites Clara out for a date and they end up becoming lovers. Henry, however, is not what he seems. His real business is smuggling pottery, an enterprise that is tied in with the death of Speckled Rock.
    When Clara begins to suspect Henry’s dual nature, he decides that she is in the way and breaks up with her. She runs to a remote arroyo and underground cave studying petroglyphs that might lead to her birthmother’s identity. But it seems she is not alone…
Will adoptee Clara Jordan be able learn about her family tree? I can tell you this much: Clara does learn about her birthmother, but it is not a good reunion. She’s left with more questions than answers.

In Hindu tradition, Ganesha is a god of wisdom and success

I’m now at work on a second novel in the Clara Jordan series, The Hand of Ganesha. My heroine Clara moves to Santa Fe, New Mexico, still questing. There she befriends Arundhati Benet, another adoptee. The two discuss traveling to India to trace Dottie’s ancestry. Their friend Sanjay Roy invites them to go with him to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he has relatives. The two women end up being separated from Sanjay. They find themselves at a Kumba Mela festival and either find a clue as to Dottie’s real origins – or not. I’m “interviewing” Clara and Dottie. Daily “free writing” has yielded character revelation and background.r than imposing a plot, I listen to what they have to say about what happens.

Does the interview method work? Time will tell. I’ve given myself until Valentine’s Day to decide on a plot. After that I’ll begin the “real writing.” I’ll be armed with a plot, but that will be subject to change. The characters will have the final word.

********************************************************************

Join author Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption, writing, hiking and living in the Southwest. Stay tuned for news on All the Wrong Places, and check out http://www.santafeonfoot.com. Your comments are invited!

Being Adopted Meant Being Rescued

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, blended families, diary, discover, empower, family, my story, national adoption month, New Mexico, orphans, parents, separation, struggles, wounded

Note to readers: My website was born a year ago this month, and this post was my first. I’m recovering from dental surgery—a bit under the weather— so rather than a Blog-less Monday, I decided to re-publish. Please forgive the redundancy!

A popular definition:

“Adoption offers a solution for children who, for whatever reason, cannot grow up with their biological parents. Adoption can be the answer for infertile parents.”

I was adopted at age five.

For me, being adopted was being rescued from a bad situation.

Me (Elaine) with my birth mother, Velma.

Born to an ill-matched couple during the final years of WWII, you might say I was a “Goodbye Baby.” My birth mother, abandoned by her sailor husband, was not capable of mothering two young children. She did what adult children have done in every era when there is no place else to go: she went back to live with her parents. From staying with her husband’s family in Massachusetts, she fled to her home state of Iowa. Her idea was to earn her teaching credentials and somehow make her own way in the world.

There was no day care back then. As much as my birth mother could not abide Giovanni Cecchini’s family, neither could she stand living with her austere German family. She enrolled in college and my brother and I were shuffled about, staying first with abusive “cousins” and then in foster care. When my future adoptive parents came along, my life changed for the better. Instead of being a burden, I was now a chosen daughter. I was born again!

The dreary past, however, stayed within me. In the years after WWII, there was much to get beyond. My adoptive parents mistakenly believed that if they didn’t talk about the abuse I’d suffered and the instability of my birth mother.

I would stop wondering about the past. The opposite happened. In lieu of facts, I invented. Why was I adopted and not one of the “real” children”? How could I find answers?

Enter my diaries: Personal journals, four decades of small books filled with written accounts of every day of my life from 1950-1980. I started reading about the past to learn how being adopted had become such an emotional burden, how it had become a dark shadow tainting my formative years. The journey took me to unexpected enlightenment.

Now my attitude toward adoption is far broader and more inclusive. I’m able to adopt a new attitude, to adopt the deer that come to my back yard every day to feed on apples fallen from my prolific backyard tree. Above all, I have literally “adopted” Elaine. I came to the same conclusion as Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

Adopted or not, isn’t life’s journey about becoming oneself?

What Does Adoption Month Mean To Me?

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, celebrity adoption, diary, discover, empower, family, healing, national adoption awareness month, national adoption month, New Mexico, reading, separation, wounded, writing

Let me count the ways… 

Ever since the publication of The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption— I am honoring the importance of November as National Adoption Month. This recognition feels positive, and the publication of my memoir is a way of bringing the month alive.

Elaine and her favorite baby.

My November focus on adoption has brought a seismic shift in attitude. Rather than something to hide, adoption is now a status to acknowledge, embrace, explore and celebrate. After years of playing down my growing up as an adoptee, I am now highlighting it. In the process, I have become aware of how many variations exist around the word “adoption.”

First of all, the adoption of a child is usually considered a positive action, bringing a young child from instability to security. From foster care (or no care at all) to a home with Mom and Dad, two Mommies or two Daddies or a single parent. It might be an aunt and uncle, grandparents or even neighbors who take in the orphaned or unwanted. But the point is that the child has a better chance in life with a parent or parents who choose to take on parenting.

I’m not saying that all adoptions are totally successful. Sometimes the child’s invisible injuries, feelings of abandonment, unanswered questions or feelings of inadequacy never heal. Still, there is hope.  I recently attended an adoption discussion group that included members from every part of the triad: birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents.  It seemed that participants were disappointed about failed communication, painful misunderstandings or less than wonderful reunions.

The Author with her favorite youngster

On the other hand, the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters in the meeting were supportive and understandingtoward one another. Stories were shared and support was abundant. The group members “adopted” each other and provided comfort.

Perhaps adoption is only as positive as the adoptee makes it. Personally, I’ve expanded my idea of adoption. When I awaken in the morning, I choose to adopt an “attitude of gratitude.” Most days, I walk for an hour or hike in the mountains, taking in the lovely northern New Mexico scenery. I find myself energized and inspired, having “adopted” nature around me.

When deer wander into the back yard to enjoy apples that have fallen from my beneficent tree, I symbolically “adopt” them. The two magnificent bucks I’ve named “Jake” and “Fred” were recently jousting, heads down, right outside my living room window. I never get over my surprise at these visitors from the forest. Could it be that they have “adopted” me rather than the other way around?

Jake, the deer who came to dinner.

What I have learned this November is that life is far richer than I thought possible. The adoption that happened to me at the beginning set my life in motion. For the first two thirds of that life, I suffered feelings of abandonment. As I’ve mentioned in previous essays, I finally decided to “adopt” myself. I shook off chains of the past and started to live in the present. It may sound overly dramatically, but it’s true.

A question for adoptees, adoptive parents and birth parents interested in a whole month dedicated to adoption: What are YOU learning from this focus? What are YOUR possibilities?

Reading and Memoir Writing Workshop

Tags

adoption, memoir workshop, New Mexico, reading, Santa Fe, writing

Anyone who was adopted or who has adopted a child will find comfort and inspiration in Elaine Pinkerton‘s memoir The Goodbye Baby: A Diary About Adoption.

Drawing on her own experience as an adopted child, Pinkerton traces a journey through the thorny issues of adoption and the search for healing.

The presentation will include a free, hands-on memoir writing workshop with the goal of turning personal journals or family letters into a book. Suggested materials include a notebook or laptop, a few letters or diaries, and ideas about your intended audience, family history or life themes.

Elaine Pinkerton is a long-time resident of Santa Fe. In addition to writing for magazines and newspapers, she is the author of several popular non-fiction and fiction books. She is a world traveler, educator focused on working with young children.

Here is the link for more details:

Location: 

202 Galisteo Street Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-6415

I hope to see you there 🙂