Clever Magazine, Issue #10, "Moving to Taos" (www.clevermag.com)

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Moving to Taos, Land of Cosmic Culture
and Construction Woes

by D. William Hoffmann, AIA, Architect

"Every calculation based on experience elsewhere,
fails in New Mexico"
Lew A. Wallace, Governor of Territorial
New Mexico (1878-1881)

When Varney's family-owned hardware store in our little town, the one that sold screws and nuts individually for a penny apiece, closed its doors and was replaced by Wilkes Bashford, selling neckties at upwards of a hundred dollars each, my wife and I realized we were not in step with the changes coming to our beautiful little community of Mill Valley. The natural beauty of the town, the rural character of the environment, and the relatively short commute to San Francisco had bee discovered by the young, up-and-coming lawyers, doctors and investment counselors. The yuppie invasion was changing the face and character of the town, now and for all time.

The author lost his neckties and three-piece suits somewhere between California and Taos

The Fords, VWs, and aging Volvos were being replaced by polished BMWs. Face-to-face conversation and light-hearted gossip at the local coffee shops was giving way to serious cell phone chatter.

Of course, at age 55, Georgia and I still had ten years to consider the problem of when and where to retire. Like the new young professionals, I was enjoying frenetic and all-consuming employment as an architect, and Georgia was working full time at a resort management firm. Weekends were spent gardening, and remodeling our home, which 50 years ago had been a summer cabin in the middle of the woods, and now was a "fixer-upper" in a neighborhood of half million dollar homes.

We thought it would be a clever idea to spend our vacations in various spots, near and far, that had been recommended by friends or in the press, searching for new communities with retirement potential. Georgia had never lived outside of California, nor had she seen much of the country, so combining a little travel with seeing and learning seemed a sensible and interesting way to explore possible retirement locations. Our list of places to see included Sonoma County in California, the Seattle area, Santa Fe, Vermont, North Carolina, and Colorado. With ten years to go before retirement, we had ample time to see them all. What we had not prepared for was the fabled Taos seduction.

On the long drive back to Albuquerque from a vacation in southern Colorado, we stopped in Taos for several hours to break up the trip. The first thing Georgia noticed as we walked around town was that this small rural farming community, with a nearby ski valley, had five bookstores and, an art gallery on virtually every corner. While Georgia was counting bookstores, I was falling under the spell of the crystal clear Georgia O'Keeffe sky stretching from horizon to horizon, and the majestic Sangre de Cristo mountains embracing the little town like a mother protecting her child.

Looking through the phone book over lunch, we counted 92 art galleries, 95 restaurants, and one film festival society, in addition to the five bookstores. Clearly, for a couple like ourselves, looking for small-town living, with sunshine, clean air, not much traffic, but still lots of culture, Taos was perfect. The same magic that brought famous painters like Georgia O'Keeffe and writers like D.H.Lawrence to Taos, had cast its spell on us. The seduction was complete.

Three months later we were back in Taos, looking at real estate. We had told our agent we wanted a charming old adobe "fixer-upper". Over the next three days we looked at maybe twenty old adobe homes -- in town, out of town, up in the foothills, and down by the river. Old adobes, we discovered, have a few traits in common. In addition to unlimited charm, they often have five-foot high doorways, seven-foot ceilings, small windows, and suspicious plumbing and electrical systems. For a guy who is 6'-2" tall, a 5'-0" doorway is a deal-killer.

We asked our agent why the doorways were so narrow and short. She said originally they were built that way so attacking Indians would have to duck and fold in their arms as they came through the door, leaving themselves momentarily vulnerable to the defenders within. On the fourth day we looked for raw land, having decided that to satisfy our need for high ceilings, lots of light and space, and passable doorways, we would have to design and build our own adobe. Shortly thereafter we found a beautiful in-town lot surrounded by elm, cottonwood and willow trees, and with an active acequia (irrigation ditch) running across the lower edge. We made an immediate offer that was eventually accepted, after some unsightly wrangling over water rights.

Having made the decision to eventually move to Taos, suddenly the thought of actually waiting ten years for retirement felt frustrating and seemed senseless. Could we move now, we wondered? Could we sell our Mill Valley home for enough money to retire early, or barring that, could we find gainful employment in a small rural town? We did not know, but we were not going to wait to find out. At 55 we had the good health, energy, sense of adventure, and curiosity about the unknown to make such a leap. At 65, we might not. Within six months we had sold our home, quit our jobs, and moved to Taos to breathe the clean air, enjoy the sunshine, and interview contractors.

Construction Woes and Woes be Gone

Home Sweet Home!
Our Taos home: On the north side of the house, the stepping offset adobe forms, which reflect the local historic tradition of building by accumulation, are clearly visible. The Indian Kiva ladder, in place permanently, gives quick and easy access to the roof for watching sunsets, cleaning skylights, and checking canales.

Building a home in Taos is a bit like building in a foreign country. The tale of the English couple in Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence comes to mind. One of the wonderful things about Taos is that nearly everyone, be they Anglo, Hispanic or Indian, places higher priority on personal activities and interests than on business responsibility. Shopkeepers open their shops only after the kids have been delivered to school, the cat has been taken for its acupuncture session, and a hot meal prepared for the ailing friend next door. Construction workers routinely disappear from the construction site at the start of fishing or elk hunting season, or when dry powder conditions promise good skiing at the ski valley. It makes no difference that a concrete pour has been scheduled for that day or the next. And if the high school basketball team is playing in the finals in Albuquerque, half the town will be missing for the duration.

As an architect, I was also dismayed to discover that most construction workers do not know how to read blueprints, nor do they think doing so is particularly important. Generally, they build things the way they feel it should be done, or as convenience dictates, or the way it was done in their grandfather's house. A considerable amount of good-natured cajoling is needed to get things built the way you had planned. Stomping your feet, threatening, and yelling accomplishes little, other than to increase your own frustration and blood pressure. Fortunately, building a home out of adobe (i.e., sun dried bricks of mud and straw) is not an exacting science. In fact, rooms that are not square, and walls that are not straight add to the charm of an adobe building. I frequently heard the construction worker's refrain, "Oh well, it gives it character." Exact dimensions are not so important. In fact, the original adobes were designed by marking the room layout in the dirt with a stick, then building the walls over the marks.

Georgia and I decided early on that we wanted to work on the construction site along with the general contractor's regular crew. His pleasant but skeptical acceptance of this arrangement confirmed in our minds that we had selected the right contractor, although we hate to think what he said to his wife that evening over dinner. Contributing our manual labor to the construction of the house proved to be a salutary experience. The fresh air and exercise were invigorating. The learning opportunity was invaluable, especially for a California architect with no previous experience in adobe, and the potential frustration of sitting and waiting in a rental apartment wondering why construction took so much time, was relieved by being on the job site every day and seeing first hand the care and attention to detail that it takes to build a custom home.

Georgia handles the ill-tempered concrete mixer with tender loving care.

At first, Bob, the field foreman, was unsure what to do with us. As unskilled laborers, we qualified for only the worst jobs, smoothing adobe walls, sanding beams, and hauling trash. For the first couple of days, Bob was reluctant to assign these nasty chores to the new homeowners, but he soon overcame his initial hesitation, and began treating us with the same gruff indulgence that he extended to the other workers.

Among themselves, the Hispanic crew members had bet that the "gringo lady" would not last beyond the first week, working in the mud, what with the approaching cold and snow of winter. But Georgia has always been a tireless worker, with seemingly unlimited energy (puts me to shame). Eight months later, as construction came to an end, she was still on the job site. She had gotten to know the workers well, becoming both a mother and a child to them. A mother in the sense that she listened with real interest to their individual stories of personal triumphs and domestic woes, and a child in the sense that they took great care to protect her from the types of accidents they knew could occur on a construction site.

Adjusting to Cosmic Culture

Four years now since moving to Taos, and three years since moving into our home, we still enjoy the town, and we are learning more each day about our new environment and the three cultures that surround us. Each of the cultures, we discovered, has distinct interests and concerns. The Pueblo Indians, who have lived in Taos for over 1000 years, are most deeply concerned with the question of how to maintain their traditional culture while gaining economic viability in this increasingly modern world. A heart-wrenching decision that each bright young Indian teenager must make is the choice between pursuing higher education, especially in science or engineering, and probably leaving the reservation forever, or embracing the traditional language and culture of his parents and grandparents. The Tiwa language is a spoken language, with no written component. If the young people don't learn and use the language, it is lost forever, along with the history of the tribe which is passed on from generation to generation through stories told in Tiwa

As seen from the west, the house is embraced by a meadow of wild grasses and a row of Chinese elm trees in the foreground. Newly planted aspen trees outside the bedroom window are irrigated by rain water from the canales. The courtyard walls serve to reduce the apparent height of the house, and to provide privacy from the street.

The Hispanics arrived in Taos some 400 year ago, while searching for the fabled City of Gold. Instead, they found a five-story pueblo building constructed of mud and straw, but nonetheless they decided to stay and settle down. As a community, their primary concern is in maintaining their tightly-knit family structures, their strong religious beliefs, and the rural agrarian character of the town, which is being eroded by the endless stream of newcomers.

The newcomers, mostly Anglos, began arriving in 1898 when two painters, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips, on their way from Denver to Mexico, suffered a broken wagon wheel in Taos, and, seduced by the beauty of the land, decided to stay. They put out a call to their Eastern friends, also painters, who started arriving in large numbers. As a consequence, Taos became the first art colony in the still wild west. Today, most Anglos seem to have come for the art, literature and poetry, or for the recreational opportunities offered by the ski valley and the hundreds of miles of beautiful hiking trails in Carson National Forest.

One aspect of Taos culture we had not detected or expected, is the great interest among Anglos in mysticism, alternative medicine, and non-western religion. A plethora of mystics, psychics, color aurists, clairvoyants, acupuncturists, chiropractors, Swedish massage therapists, herbalists, psychotherapists and holistic healers, grace the back roads and byways of Taos. Instruction in Zen meditation, yoga, T'ai Chi, or Tae-Bo boxing is readily available. Town meetings organized to discuss crop circles, cattle mutilations, extraterrestrial visitors, or Y2K survival draw larger crowds than any Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. On Saturdays, Subway Sandwiches offers a free psychic reading with each regular order of sandwich and chips, and on New Years Eve, the Taos Inn offers free consultation with a select group of mystics, astrologers and palm readers to help guide wayward Taosenos into the new year. The forthcoming millennium change-over will no doubt create a chaotic explosion of cosmic energy like nothing seen since the Star of Bethlehem enlightened the Holy Land.

Thoughts on Discovering New Pathways Through Life

As the moving van pulled away from our Mill Valley home with all our earthly possessions, Georgia and I wondered if we were going to enjoy the new life we had selected for ourselves as much as we enjoyed living in the Bay Area. But it was not a question we worried about a great deal. If a serious obstacle to moving had presented itself, we might not have made the move, but none did.

What we discovered is that the venture of discarding old routines, facing new challenges, and adapting to an unfamiliar environment added a great deal of vitality and zest to life. We felt younger, stronger and invigorated. For each old friend we left behind, we found new ones in Taos, and in fact, the old friends were not really lost. They are just seen less often (and in some cases more often!). We did worry somewhat about the reaction of Georgia's kids to their mom leaving California. The kids do not seem to have minded, however, their mom moving to a place where skiing, snow boarding, river rafting and hiking are just minutes away.

The one unpleasant shock we experienced was the cost of living. We had hoped and expected the cost of living in this rural New Mexico town would be significantly lower than in California, but nothing in Taos (except taxes) is less expensive. Food, housing and the cost of construction are at least as expensive as they were in the Bay Area. The dream of living off the profit from the sale of our home vanished quickly with the construction of our new home in Taos. Perhaps Mexico, rather than New Mexico, might have been a better choice for extending the value of our savings.I

In Taos, Georgia and I have both established businesses of our own, something we probably would have done in any case, but which became a necessity when we discovered our savings were not going to last very long. Georgia began making hand-painted canvas pillows and dolls, and handcrafted flowers and napkin rings from tin. Working with her hands and making use of her creative talents is something she had always wanted to do, but never quite had the time to pursue. Within a year, she has become the top-selling craftsman at the "country furnishings" store where she shows her work. Her products are also selling well at gift stores in New Orleans, Tucson, and Texas; and recently she began selling her crafts via the internet at taosfolk.com. Georgia's true passion, however, is gardening. I have occasionally heard her grumble a bit when a new order comes in, taking her out of the garden and back to the garage where she pounds the tin.

The living room, bedroom, and kitchen doors swing open to the main courtyard and remain open throughout most of the summer. An absence of screens and the extension of interior sandstone flooring into the courtyard create an almost seamless interface between indoor and outdoor spaces. The canvas awning on aspen poles provides translucent shade with no deep shadows. The awning can be retracted if windstorms threaten, and is taken down and stored during the winter.

I have continued practicing architecture, designing custom homes mostly for out-of-state couples moving to Taos. The work comes most often from people who drive by our beautiful home, stop, and inquire about the architect. The fascinating thing about designing homes in New Mexico is that the locally popular technology is completely new and unfamiliar to me. To date I have been asked to design homes of adobe, straw bale, pumice-crete, and steel. None of these types of construction were a part of my San Francisco experience. Of these, adobe is my favorite. Its earthy, sculptural, energy-conserving characteristics are perfect for this environment. I have also found that in New Mexico, the interest in energy-conscious, sustainable architecture exceeds that of even progressive, liberal California.

God and good health permitting, Georgia and I will continue working, learning, gardening, and enjoying the glorious New Mexico sunshine until they plant our ashes in the beautiful Sangre de Cristo mountains. If you feel your life is bordering on boredom, or needs a shot of adventure, come join us in New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment".