From Naturallydannyseo · · 2m
The Tao of Taos
High desert light, thousand-year-old adobe, and off-grid houses built from tires: why Taos keeps calling people back.
In brief
High desert light, thousand-year-old adobe, and off-grid houses built from tires: why Taos keeps calling people back. Taos rewards people who slow down and pay attention, which is exactly why artists, builders, and travelers keep answering its call. Originally reported by Naturallydannyseo.
Air, light, color
Taos sits near 7,000 feet in dry air that sharpens everything. Sage green, ocher-red adobe, and hard blue sky shift hue all day as the sun moves across mountain and desert.
Why people keep coming
It is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Albuquerque. Hiking, horseback riding, and skiing, layered over Native American, Spanish Colonial, and Wild West history.
A thousand years of home
The Tiwa Indian Pueblo is the heart of Taos. Families have lived there since long before Columbus, and sovereignty won through conquest, revolt, and negotiation protects over 100,000 acres of sacred land.
Adobe was the first green building
Bricks of earth, straw, and water, plastered with mud that glitters where mica catches the light. The 150 residents live without running water or electricity, cool in summer and warm in winter.
“They are the original form of eco-friendly construction.”
Walk the rim at sunrise
The West Rim South Trail runs high above the Rio Grande, sage thick in the air, the gorge dropping hundreds of feet. Rabbits keep pace, and bighorn sheep turn up if you are lucky.
Houses made of tires
Earthship Biotecture, dreamed up by Mike Reynolds in the 1970s, harvests rain and snow for water and runs on sun and wind. Walls are packed tires, broken glass, and cans. Copies now exist worldwide.
A broken wagon wheel
Two East Coast artists got stranded in Taos and stayed, founding the Taos Society of Artists. In the 1920s, Mabel Dodge Luhan brought D.H. Lawrence, Ansel Adams, and Georgia O'Keeffe.
What O'Keeffe saw
She arrived in 1929 and painted San Francisco de Asis Church, built in 1816 in blended Spanish Colonial and Native styles. Go late morning, when the light cuts graphic shadows.
“The color up there, the blue-green of the sage, and the mountains, and the white flowers, is different from anything I'd ever seen.”
Put down the phone
Roughly 15 percent of the population are artists, and it shows at The Love Apple, Common Thread, and Smoke Signals, the only Native-owned shop on the Plaza. O'Keeffe stayed until she died.
“The country seems to call one in a way that one has to answer it.”
The takeaway
Taos rewards people who slow down and pay attention, which is exactly why artists, builders, and travelers keep answering its call.
