THE ART OF ENJOYING TAOS

THE ART OF ENJOYING TAOS Story and photography by Margaret & Eric Anderson
	Taos, New Mexico hangs 6950 feet high at the top of our 47th state, a state sometimes startled by thoughtless tourists who routinely trump its department of tourism with questions like Where are you exactly in Mexico? Do you accept American currency? Do the people speak English? What does it cost to send a letter from New Mexico? And so on. New Mexico Magazine has used its back page for decades to post continually new questions that are surely an observation of the quality of an American education. The magazine has no trouble filling the entire page each month.


So, if you want to learn about our nation's most colorful state either go back to school or, better, fly to Albuquerque, take a moment to gaze at the 1914 Ingram/Foster biplane on display at the airport, grab a car and go visit. Taos like Sedona, Arizona a hippie town in the 1960s, has become legit. Peter Mackaness, an award-winning local guide and self-confessed former hippie, remembers the reception they got from the local pueblo Indians when his group came to Taos. "We've been expecting you," said Tell-Us-Good-Morning, one of the Pueblo tribal elders. "Really?" Mackaness asked, "For how long?" "Oh, for about 400 years," the Pueblo Indian replied.
	Where you stay in Taos depends on how you got there by car or public transportation. Parking in the town center can be difficult whereas on the outskirts of Taos, before you reach the town itself, lies the Sagebrush Inn with its 160 rooms, three hot tubs, two pools, two restaurants and complimentary breakfast. It's the closest hotel to the Taos Country Club, an 18-hole course rated third in the state.

But maybe, like most visitors, you've come to Taos because you can already savor its red peppers and know it's still the Soul of the Southwest. Says Susan Vernon, owner of an 8-room B & B called the Casa de las Chimenas, "We're a land of light and color and it's all due to our high altitude and dry air. That's why we get so many artists and photographers. They say they have never seen such glorious color: skies so blue and sunsets so brilliant."
	The colors are not all due to nature in Taos. Here's the Hotel La Fonda with its crimson doors and its innkeeper, Steve Slick, standing there welcoming his guests to the hotel's history. It's the oldest hotel in town. This is where Kit Carson met the young girl, Josefa, who would become his wife. Here, too, the owner in 1908 was fatally shot by a drunk he's evicted from the bar earlier. Here also reside the nine oil paintings by D. H. Lawrence that remain out of an original collection of 13. Lawrence, living in London, England and somewhat in disgrace because of his then considered erotic novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, had his beloved paintings seized by Scotland Yard as they went on display in a London gallery in 1929. The paintings were finally bought by Saki Karavas, a friend and art collector and at that time the La Fonda hotel owner; he hung them in his office.


Just round the corner from the Plaza lies the Taos Inn which has its own history too. La Fonda's owner was merely shot; the former Taos Inn owner was beheaded!