FROM THE EDITOR

COURTESY BILL CURRY

WHEN Chris Baker asked me if I’d like to edit Land Water People Time, I was both honored and intimidated, but delighted with the opportunity to showcase the unique cultural heritage of Northern New Mexico.

I came to my position as editor of Tempo at the Taos News shortly before the pandemic changed our industry along with the greater world. When we went into lockdown just three months after I was hired to replace the esteemed journalist Rick Romancito, I thanked my lucky stars for my community and the immense collective creativity and rich cultural resources it would allow me to draw from as an editor and writer for the Taos News.

Lockdowns came and went and, all along, artists continued to create, farmers continued to plant their crops and architects continued to create buildings to live and work in. And then the seasons changed with climate change—winds like we had never seen swept spring into summer with a vengeance, wildfires burning out of control threatened to decimate centuries-old communities just beyond our fragile borders. We stood ready, as we prayed for our neighboring communities.

Forty years of living and raising a family here has taught me how interconnected we all are, how sustainability begins at home, with the food on our tables and the gratitude in our hearts, even as the world around us rocks on its axis. Now especially, we must preserve this fragile ecosystem, with all of its flora and fauna, its tangled history and Mestizo culture, which is unique to this region, first conquered by the Spaniards traveling ancient Meso American trade routes, long before the French trappers, German merchants and American colonists arrived and added to the melting pot that is Northern New Mexico.

This issue of LWPT is a joyful celebration of these intertwined stories and bloodlines, of the artists and farmers and architects and, mostly, the original people of this land, who were here long before the rest of us and continue to call it home.

We are very privileged to share the extraordinary photographs taken by E.I. Couse a century ago. They reveal a different story from the old one born of war and conflict. In this story, the artists and the Red Willow people share a mutual respect and curiosity that would result in Taos becoming an internationally-known art colony, lasting into the present time, its legacy assured by Davison Koenig, director of the Lunder Foundation. When Virginia Couse discovered her grandfather’s negatives behind a loose adobe brick in the house he built, she knew she’d struck gold. Read Rick Romancito’s story on this amazing find to learn more.

Women feature in this issue, too, because women have always featured in these parts, beginning with Taoseña Josepha Jaramillo, who was Kit Carson’s third wife. Virginia Clark digs a little deeper into Josepha’s history. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum kindly provided stunning images to illustrate my story on the artist, who became practically synonymous with the very region we showcase.

And, of course, there are the men who had the courage to stand up for the people and place; longtime community advocate and former executive director of the NRGNHA board, the late Tom Romero, is honored by fellow Board member David Fernandez, who at the same time, honors the Rio Grande National Heritage Area itself, in Spanish and English.

Dena Miller went on a tour of the Santa Fe County Courthouse, designed by the Pueblo Revival architect John Gaw Meem, with board member and Santa Fe County Commissioner, Anna Hansen, and Tamra Testerman and photographer Bill Curry paid a visit to Reunity Farms to bring it all right back home, to the food we grow and serve at our tables.

Daniel Gibson provided us with short bios of the current Board Members of the NRGNHA, who have partnered with us to make this publication possible.

And finally, I would like to thank Anna Hansen and Margaret Campos for their feedback along the way, and Creative Director Karin Eberhardt for her stellar design work.

I hope you all enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.