In the Land of Spirits

On a cold, sunny Sunday, Cal and I make our way up the Chama Valley to Ghost Ranch. It was my second visit in six months. Unlike June, on this day the landscape is frozen, quiet, still. The impossibly blue, impossibly wide sky swallows up the few of us that walk the land. Georgia O’Keefe is everywhere you turn. In all directions, there are familiar images she has captured on canvas: red rock towers, twisted junipers, animal bones. She inhabited this land, and it her. It’s a little jarring. You can’t tell which images you know from art, and which you know from life.

People think Georgia O’Keefe owned Ghost Ranch. Not true. O’Keefe was a visitor here; then a renter, and finally the owner of a few acres on a remote part of the property, where she built a ranch house. She spent most summers and falls here, but she also spent time in upstate New York with her photographer husband, Alfred Stieglitz. In 22 years of marriage, he never visited this land that lit up her artistic life. I find that interesting. When he died, she moved to New Mexico full time. When age caught up with her, she settled into near seclusion in Abiquiu, a village a few miles down the road. O’Keefe was reportedly a prickly person--or at least very direct. Late in her 98-year life, she said “I find people very difficult.” I can see how the fire of that kind of genius might leave a person little space for social graces.

Standing on the portale of the ranch, I look across Piedra Lumbre Basin. Piedra lumbre means “fire stone” in Spanish, for the red rocks that glow fiery crimson when the sun sets. Across the Basin the Jemez Mountains rise. They are capped by another iconic O’Keefe image, Cerro Pedernal, the distinctive mesa you see in many paintings of New Mexico. O’Keefe liked to say she made a bargain with God: if she painted Pedernal enough times, she got to have it. I guess it worked. O’Keefe painted Pedernal 28 times. Her ashes are scattered on that mesa.

Spirits roam this land. You can feel it. Anasazi, Navajo, and Apache tribes dwelt here; the Tewa, who migrated from Mesa Verde and other points to the north when living in the cliffs got too difficult. These people worshipped the earth, literally—its land, water, mountains, air. They believed in its seasons; its cycles; its endurance. There is no Pueblo word for goodbye. What they say instead: “until we meet again”.

You can hear the echo of their footsteps on the mesas; the whisper of prayers down the canyons. For what did they pray? Maybe gratitude for the beauty and abundance. Later, perhaps prayers of supplication; deliver us from droughts or exhausted soil or Spanish invaders.

Ghosts reside here in multitudes, according to the legends. In the 1800s, two brothers named Archuleta acquired the deed to “homestead” this land. By homesteading, they meant cattle rustling, then murdering the people who came to re-claim their animals. Soon, beheaded skeletons littered the creek bed. The Archuletas cultivated rumors of evil spirits, including a giant, murdering serpent that lived in the creek. They called their land “Rancho de los Brujos”—ranch of the witches. It kept people away for a long time.

Eventually, after a night of hard drinking, the older Archuleta killed the younger in a dispute over gold----natch, this being the Wild West. Emboldened that there was only one Archuleta left, the local populace stormed the ranch and hung the remaining brother and his henchmen from the tallest cottonwood tree. Ever after, restless spirits—the Archuletas, their henchmen, and their many unfortunate victims--are believed to roam this land.

In its next incarnation, Ghost Ranch was a high-end dude ranch. Private, specially tricked out trains brought America’s wealthiest people here to “play cowboy for a week” (the words of our guide). The trains stopped in Santa Fe to buy jeans, cowboy hats and cowboy boots. The cost to play cowboy? $80 a week--a princely sum at the height of the Depression. Thinking “Ranch of the Witches” was a little dark, the new owners reverted to the softer “Ghost Ranch.” Much better for business.

Today, Ghost Ranch is owned by the Presbyterian Church, to whom it was donated by its last owner. The church doesn’t run it, and the place is not overtly religious. It is spiritual, however, attracting artists, hikers, naturalists, shamans, and paleontologists (there’s a rich array of dinosaur bones here). All kinds of seekers, really.

On this cold, bright January day, I walk the Ghost Ranch labyrinth. It lies at the base of a red rock tower, alongside the creek where the serpent was said to roam. When I am finished walking, I spend time at the Native American medicine wheel, which lies next to the labyrinth. This intricate pattern of stones is designed to celebrate and honor the nearby water. With our thoughts and intentions, we use the wheel to increase energy and consciousness, and acknowledge the cycle of life. These two things, side-by-side, feel like another example of how cultures co-exist, rather than compete, in New Mexico. A symbol of ancient Greece, next to a New World altar to healing and health. They both belong. They harmonize.

I look up at the red towers, listening for psychic echoes of the serpent; of any of the beings that have gone before. Nothing. Just murmuring water and whispering wind. I do feel the energy that pours from the rocks and wends its way into the sky. I scan the expanse of blue, looking for a quicksilver sprite cartwheeling through the pillowy clouds. This is the kind of place where Carson would play. My eyes don’t see him. My ears don’t hear him. But I know he’s there. Over the past six years, I have come to understand that my failure to see or hear is more about my own limitations than what is, in fact, real.