Connections

This was the landscape that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe’s unique paintings of vast desert scapes, geological formations, and the iconic skulls and bones she often painted. On the horizon appeared a bluish peak, which I recognized as Cerro Pedernal, which O’Keeffe purportedly portrayed nearly thirty times, often from her house in Ghost Ranch. She called it her “altar.”

A low bridge over the Chama River provided the only access to Elizabeth and her husband’s remote wilderness retreat, deep in Galina Canyon. By the time I reached their casita, seven miles down a rocky, rutted road, my senses were overflowing. Sparkling sunshine bounced off the canyon walls, framed against brilliant blue skies. The sweet, pungent smell of juniper, piñon, and sagebrush filled the air. Only the crunch of gravel and the occasional bird song broke the silence. I was surprisingly nervous as I called out to announce my arrival.

Elizabeth appeared on the porch: a tall, statuesque 83-year-old with a long gray braid and sun-bleached features. After a slightly gruff “hello,” she told me to sit and a bowl of her famous organic heirloom beans was plopped down before me. Her penetrating gaze, intense as the New Mexican sun, bore right through me.

We exchanged very few words, and I retreated to my camping tent overlooking the canyon walls. As evening approached, silence returned but for the steady cricket songs and the faint scratching of my pen across the page. Eventually, absolute blackness overtook the light and trillions upon trillions of stars appeared, winking, blinking, and falling throughout the night.

I could devote an entire post to my experience at the ranch, but suffice it to say that despite the awkward introduction, the following day Elizabeth and I made up for a lifetime of conversation, swapping stories and getting to know each other as we bounced around through the arroyos in her pick-up truck. She told me about visiting Aunt Dorothy in the spring of 1941 when her family fled San Diego, fearing further attacks by the Japanese. She recalled riding up Canyon Road on a burro and hunting Easter eggs in the pine trees near Dorothy’s art studio on Atalaya Hill. That experience was the highlight of her childhood.

She returned to Santa Fe as an adult and bought a home on Canyon Road next to the Stewart sisters’ property, El Zaguan, and began collecting Dorothy’s wildly colorful paintings, which hung on the plaster walls of her guest casita.