Guadalupe & the Rio Puerco Valley

Juan Diego was climbing Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City when suddenly the air filled with exquisite music, and the hill, normally barren during December, bloomed like a flower garden.
“Where am I?,” he asked. “Could this be the place that our ancestors spoke of—the Flower World Paradise in the land of heaven?”
In 1531, according to the ancient story, the Lady of Guadalupe appeared to the Nahua peasant and spoke to him in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. She said she was Mary and told him to build a church for her on the hill.
Since he was poor and had no authority, he hurried into Mexico City and brought the Lady’s request before the archbishop.
The archbishop did not believe the ragged, indigenous peasant, but as Juan Diego trudged back across the hill, the Lady appeared again, insisting he return to the archbishop.
“Tell her we’ll build a church if she’ll provide a miracle,” the archbishop promised the next day, positive no miracle would occur.
Back on Tepeyac Hill, Juan Diego relayed the archbishop’s demand to the Lady who assured him, “Tomorrow, you’ll have your miracle.”
However, during the night, Juan Diego’s beloved uncle became violently ill, so the next morning Juan set off in search of a priest to give him the last rites.
Hoping not to be delayed, he avoided Tepeyac Hill, but the Lady appeared to him anyway and said, “Your uncle is healed. Return to Tepeyac Hill and gather the flowers there.”
Juan Diego obeyed, and on that sacred hill found hundreds of Castilian roses blooming. The Lady filled his cloak full of flowers, and when he returned to the archbishop, he opened his cloak, the roses fell out, and miraculously, an image of the Lady was imprinted on the fabric.
That cloak is still on display behind glass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac Hill.
I couldn’t help thinking about that story as Ted, Kenidee, and I drove through the tiny village of Guadalupe near Cabezon Peak in the Rio Puerco Valley, north of Albuquerque.
It is mostly a ghost town with collapsing adobe structures cordoned off by wire and no trespassing signs, but people still lived in small homes tucked in among them, still ranched the area which had been farmed since the 1700’s, using the Rio Puerco, the Muddy River, for water.
When we spotted a tiny, fenced-off cemetery a short distance from the road, Ted parked the Jeep, and we walked to it, dodging cacti and tumbleweeds.
“What if someone had relatives here?” Ted asked as we stood behind the fence. No doubt someone did, but nobody had visited in a long time. No Castilian roses bloomed here.
Instead of flowers, ocotillo cacti snaked in front of the tilted gravestones, some of which looked desecrated with their crosses broken and laying on the ground.
We didn’t linger long, but drove down the road until we reached the trailhead for a Chocoan outlier ruin, the Guadalupe Pueblo, perched above us on a hill.
The information sign stated there were 75 of these outlying sites, stretching over 30,000 square miles across the San Juan Basin, identified by the unique masonry developed in Chaco Canyon.
We climbed the steep trail to the ruin, amazed by the volcanic wall zigzagging up the hill not far from us. The BLM and National Park Service had protected the two kivas with tin roofs, and we could almost feel the presence of the origination ceremonies that took place there over a thousand years ago. Almost.
The view of the surrounding landscape was stunning with volcanic cores shimmering in the distance, and no one could approach the dwelling within miles without being spotted.
No line-of-sight communication was possible to distant Chaco, and no ancient roads connected it to a great mother civilization, so this pueblo was probably self-sustaining, though how people survived in such a desert climate is a mystery.
After returning to the Jeep, we drove the dirt road to Cabezon, the City of Dust, a ghost town in the shadow of Cabezon Peak, settled in 1826 and a stage stop on the stagecoach route west of Santa Fe.
In 1971, Cabezon served as the set for the western, The Hired Hand, starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, but access into the town was blocked by a gate with a big no trespassing sign. Even from the road, we could see a well-preserved adobe church in the middle of the abandoned stores and houses.
It was a good thing the village had the church, restored in 1978 by Father John Sauter, to mitigate some of the violence there, including outlaws and an authentic wild West shootout.
Disappointed we couldn’t access Cabezon, we headed to Chaco Canyon, hiked the three-mile round-trip to the Wijiji ruin, and then drove to Bloomfield to spend the night.
The next day, we headed home, and after miles and miles on isolated back roads and well-traveled highways,
Ted parked our faithful little Jeep—showing no indication of a problem—in the garage.
On Sunday, when he went out to start it, the right front tire was flatter than a pancake. Our mini-miracle, though not comparable to the magnitude of Juan Diego’s, was still evidence that Someone loved and watched over even humble Blandingites.