i’ve visited this area a number of times… and I’ve been to the missions and the cathedrals but I’ve never gone to any of the pueblos. Since we are here for a week we decided to head up to Taos for the day and finally check one out. It was definitely not what I expected.

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If you’ve ever visited Mayan ruins or anything the Taos Pueblo is similar - sort of. It was a little like visiting an old run down city (which I guess technically is what it is) but there are still people there so it was sort of sad and beautiful at the same time but definitely interesting. The sky was gorgeous so I got tons of great photographs.

I did not anticipate that there would be many people there but the thing that threw me is that there were true native americans actually selling goods in the pueblos. It’s really kind of a marketplace but there’s no electricity so that proved for interesting shopping in these small homes.

Once I wrapped my head around the idea that there was shopping, the next thing that sort of struck me in the wrong was this incredibly commercial bright orange and black “YES WE’RE OPEN” sign. The somehow just didn’t seem to quite fit with this historical place.

One of the things about the tourist shops in this area of the country is that you will see LOTS of Indian jewerly, pottery, dolls, drums…all kinds of things but if you flip over 90% of what you are looking at it was made in Taiwan or some other non-authentic fabrication warehouse. Here on the reservation, you know what you are looking at is the real thing but I’ll be honest with you, I can’t paint this as a shopping on fifth avenue experience. This is unusual - walking on dirt roads, much of it is run down, there are children running, many stray dogs about and as I said, no electricity.

BUT what you will find are people actually making the products that they are selling. You can listen to them make music or jewelry.  ”Red Sunrise” (pictured above) has been painting pottery MOSTLY FREEHAND since he was a little boy. It’s beautiful and I know anyone who is an artist can appreciate the patience and eye for graphic detail that goes into each and every piece. And then there are these little animals (also pictured above) created by his sister. They are made of clay and horse hair. The horse hair gives them the unusual designs that you see here. Really pretty.

Beautiful country and absolutely a place you should visit. It’s spiritual (which goes with the territory up here).