Quick meal and I'll take a walk around the plaza. Some Aztec dancers have finished dancing. The drums fall silent. They chat with the audience while packing up their instruments. A little boy is making big balls with silver paper which he brings to his parents, who are having a picnic nearby.I take the Morada Lane to go and "do" the Labyrinth. Apparently, if one follows in silence the spiraling road towards the center, one reaches a state similar to meditation: shifting continuously from the right brain to the left brain while approaching and then turning and moving away from the center. No meditation for me, too busy looking around probably. On the rock at the center I see a necklace, some coins, tickets, and papers bearing messages of peace, of love or poems, stuck under carefully chosen rocks it seems, often folded into 4 to protect them from the snow.
While passing beside Mabel Luhan Lodge I realize that one can probably reach Indian lands that continue on for a long way. I go. Traverse a ditch.Yes, in the distance I see the cross painted by Georgia 0'Keefe.The wind rises, covering the blue sky with white clouds that thicken, growing more and more distant.I feel a storm coming. The mountains appear and disappear. A strange sighing swells over the land.
I look all around, convinced that animals are spinning in front of me. Nothing. Sudddenly the wind drops, the storm has passed, now far from here.I return to the town in peace.Two little girls run along past the façade of the church. Time to get out my camera.
32- Aztec dances, Maze, Sighing on the Grasslands
in Taos