By: Summer Wood

Summer Wood — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:59:07 +0000

Hey Nancy,
That post is at http://www.allochthonous.com/2009/03/16/the-names-of-places-part-two/
and refers to a talk Estevan Arellano gave at the Taos Land Trust about landscape features and our eroding vocabulary. I’m glad to know la canada is alive and well in your part of the state! I agree, how beautiful it is that the past remains alive in the present here, both in language and in custom. Thanks for writing.

By: Nancy Harrison

Nancy Harrison — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:11:28 +0000

I read an entry of yours about place, which I can’t find now,that referred to the loss of the word “la canada”–(I don’t have a tilde on my computer!)– but as you know, in New Mexico, something may seem lost but it isn’t. It is simply existing quietly, unostentatiously. I live on the other side of the mountains from you, in Ocate, and just down the road from us, about eight miles, is Canada Bonita, very much in existence on the ground and in the language. That is much of what is so spectacular in the life here, comforting and invigorating at the same time. Past, present, all of it, co-existing. Of course, we on this side of the mountain perhaps lean a little more toward the past. The cattle moving down the road to the other pasture are still common here.

Comments on: writing the where of it

By: Summer Wood

By: Nancy Harrison