Simple Things -- Nasario remembers the Rio Puerco

¿Crees que las piedras nos recuerdan?

About five years ago, soon after we moved to New Mexico permanently, we happened to meet Nasario Garcia, PhD, at a book fair not far from our home. After retiring from a long-time academic career, he had returned to New Mexico, his place of birth, and became a noted oral historian.

His focus was and is recuerdos of the viejitos of the Rio Puerco Valley where he spent his formative youth.

Do the ruins remember us?

I've written several times about the ruins that are found throughout New Mexico, some of them dating back to prehistory (ruins left by the vaunted Anasazi, for example), but most are much more recent. The ruins of the Rio Puerco Valley are a case in point.

Nasario's family were among the pioneer homesteaders in the area, and he lived there from the age of six months until his family was forced to leave (along with nearly all the rest of the Hispano settlers) in the late '40s due to drought and increasing physical and financial hardship.

Nasario remembers a simple, hard, and happy life along the Rio Puerco, filled with activity, adventure, and rituals, rituals which in some cases could be traced back to Gypsy Grenada in Spain. Was that where his people came from? When he visited Grenada, he couldn't get over the similarities in song and spirit with what he knew as a child growing up in the Rio Puerco in far, far distant New Mexico.

When we met Nasario and his wife Jan at the book fair, they were promoting his most recent volume of recuerdos -- I forget which one it was now -- and as new permanent residents of New Mexico, we were fascinated. These stories are important, and Nasario was afraid they would be lost if they weren't collected and preserved. So that's what he set out to do.

Almost casually, he mentioned that a play was being developed from some of his stories, and he invited us to attend a staged reading of the script to be presented in Dixon a couple of weeks hence. At the time, we didn't even know where Dixon was (there was a Dixon in California we were familiar with, but not the one in New Mexico). Nevertheless, we thought it sounded interesting -- after all, new play development was one of our primary interests and activities in California for many years -- and marked our calendar for the date.

On the date, we found Dixon (off the road up to Taos) and were quite taken with the nascent play based on stories Nasario had collected from the vecinos y viejitos of the Rio Puerco. It showed much potential, and we became supporters of the project -- financially, artistically -- through its completion and sold-out presentation at venues in Santa Fe and Albuquerque a year or so later.

"When the Stars Trembled in Rio Puerco" was quite the triumph, I think to the surprise of Nasario as well as the playwright and director Shebana Cohelo. Of course they were happy about it, too!

Shebana was more comfortable in film and television production, but she thought a play would be the appropriate form for presenting the stories of the old ones, and we tended to agree. Discussing it with her, though, I mentioned almost in passing that what I longed to see was Nasario's own story of his life in the Rio Puerco, though perhaps not in this particular vehicle.

Her eyes seemed to light up. And a year or so later, we got notice that "Nasario Remembers" was going into production. It would be a filmed project for presentation on New Mexico PBS -- if they were so inclined. If not, maybe it would wind up as a DVD.

Long story short: the NM PBS premiere of "Nasario Remembers" is slated for October 12 at 7:00p,

We saw a preview in Albuquerque on Wednesday, and I have to say, it's wonderful.

Simple things indeed.

Missing the Old Guy At Chimayó; Then Up to Dixon for the Recuerdos of Another Old Guy

El Santuario de Chimayó from Wikimedia Commons

Old.

I'll say.

We don't often travel very far from home base here in the Estancia Valley, partly because we only have one vehicle, and it's old, and if it breaks down out in the middle of nowhere, we're screwed. Well, someone will help of course, but still.

[A note on that "someone will help" line. When we got back to our little neck of the woods late last night, we noticed sheriff with its lights flashing and a police car were at the park in town, and as we got closer, we noticed an ambulance with its back door open and someone being treated inside. Just barely visible in the dark -- and it is dark out here in the country -- nearby was the silhouette of a helicopter, the kind that chopper patients to the hospitals Albuquerque throughout the day and night.  Emergency services at the ready. When I had a flat tire outside of Socorro one time the people who helped were AMAZING, and when I offered some money for their assistance, they absolutely refused. They said they were just doing what had to be done and didn't expect to profit from it. "Angels," my wife calls them.]

Sometimes we go off on adventures far from home, out to the Bosque del Apache, or to Los Alamos, or wherever, and yesterday we went off on a junket to Chimayó, and then way up the road to Dixon, which truthfully we didn't even remember existed based on the one time we'd been up to Taos decades ago.

We haven't been to Chimayó in at least fifteen years, probably closer to twenty, but because it is sort of on the way, and we really did want to see The Old Guy (Father Roca) at least once more before he passes on to his reward, we thought it wise to visit the Santuario on the way to Dixon where we planned to attend a staged reading of a new play based on the works of another Old Guy we've come to know and enjoy, Nasario Garcia.

Father Roca greeted us at the door to the Santuario when we visited that time before, and he was so warm and welcoming and helpful and open that he made it seem like we had (finally) arrived at the place we were meant to be. There weren't a lot of people at the pilgrimage site that day, so he walked us around and showed us some of the features of the little chapel and the graveyard in front, encouraged us to take a little vial of holy water with us and visit the sanctuary of the Holy Dirt. Take some if we wanted. If we had any questions, he would be available. We were welcome to look around, to pray, or simply to observe. God's home was our home. The only restriction was that we were not to take any pictures inside the chapel. "Take all the pictures you want outside!"