Building at the Crossroads of Mordor and Narnia Part 1
The origin story
Note: This is the first of a three-part series on the continuing journey of building a wilderness retreat center and artist’s hermitage in the wilds of northern New Mexico after a wildfire destroyed 90 percent of our forest in May 2022. If you are new to this journey, welcome! You might want to read When What You Love Destroys What You Love and Make Lemonade from the Ashes first.
The mullein, the mullein!
Growing from the ashes are fuzzy-leafed, six-foot high stalks, yellow-flowered aliens.
Magenta-stemmed wild spinach.
Soft maroon and gold mystery plants that dry up and blow away like tumbleweeds.
A profusion of purple, yellow, and white daisies.
The shock of bright pink and mauvish-red cosmos and neon orange California poppies, planted in seedballs* in May and now cheerfully defying the lack of rain and sandy soil.
*Seedballs are tiny universes: seeds with a pinch of compost wrapped in clay. These clay balls help protect the seeds from birds and critters and give them a boost of nutrients from the compost when the rains come and dissolve the hard exterior. In spring our community made thousands of seedballs with wildflower, grasses, and desert seed mix which we scattered around the land.
The restoration of the land will continue for years. Seedballs and seeds sown every season. Making swales to hold water and reduce erosion. Felling trees to hold soil. Using rocks to create circles where we can protect and experiment with different plantings. Planting trees and figuring out how to water them.
I have to keep reminding myself this is a long-term healing project, and that all of it cannot be done at once.
My rhythm with the land is this: when I’m in New Mexico I spend most weekends up on the land. Then there are two major work parties a year, in May/June and September/October. Friends come from all over the country to volunteer their time and expertise. Some cook for the group and keep the community kitchen clean. Some are professional builders who plan and direct volunteers. Some have skills, some are just willing to learn and try anything. All bring their heart and joy to the process of building spaces for humans.
Like so many of us, I’ve dreamt for years of having land and a retreat center. Five years ago or so my friends Mark, Jim, and I sat down and named what we wanted. A place in the wild, on the edge of a national forest or reserve. Remote, but within two hours of a major airport. Water running through it. At the end of the road. Beautiful and nourishing. We did a ceremony and created a beautiful physical prayer of our intent and desire. We asked for support and guidance from the ancestors, from spirit guides, from the land.
After talking about where to start our search, we agreed on New Mexico. We all loved the area, though none of us at the time lived there.
Six months later, we found the land. Or rather, the land found us.
I’d been receiving listings each week from a realtor who specialized in million dollar homes in Santa Fe, but agreed to send us any land that came up within two hours of Albuquerque.
I knew it was the land we had been seeking the moment I saw the listing.
Two parcels: 20 acres and a 160 acres being sold together or separately. Creek running through it. End of the road. Against the Santa Fe National Forest. Asking price for both properties: $225,000.
On May 1, 2018 my friends Franklin, Marilyn, and I walked the land for the first time with a realtor. Here are the first two pictures I took:
I was in love.
Up to this point I had never owned a house or land; I always thought I would be a nomad. The thought of buying land didn’t even seem real, or possible. And yet… here it was.
Jim and I had made an agreement to buy the land together. At the end of May he drove from Texas to New Mexico to visit the land. He was not too thrilled about the land, and didn’t understand why I loved it so much.
We later figure out that he actually mistakenly camped in the neighbor’s boring pasture.
Mid-June, Jim visited again and we rode his motorcycle down the gravel, then dirt to road to 123 Roxie Road. We hiked the entire property. And we agreed: YES, let’s do this.
We offered $200,000.
The land had been owned by a single man who came up once or twice a year to hike. He built one structure: a makeshift fireplace out of rocks. When he died he willed the land to five different women in three different states. (Oooh, I wish I had that story! The women all had fabulous names; I remember one of them was Rose Bramble. They were all in their late 70s or early 80s.)
Two weeks after we visited the land for the first time, someone put an offer on the 20 acres, but it fell through when they realized they couldn’t get their horse trailer up the road. Whew.
At the end of July 2018 Jim and I each put in $25,000 as a downpayment, he signed the paperwork for a loan, and we took over stewardship of 180 acres of alpine desert forest, one very low producing well, and one very run down adobe building at the end of a very sketchy dirt road.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/123-Roxie-Rd-Las-Vegas-NM-87701/2093423877_zpid/
First obstacle: clearing off the decades of debris left by past residents.
And then: navigating Jim falling in love, moving his life to another state, and deciding he needed to pull out of our agreement.
And then: one global pandemic.
And then: one massive wildfire.
Through it all, our community has beautifully, heartfully, wonderfully persevered.
In the next installment I’ll share about how we tore down one adobe building to build another one, literally making the adobe bricks by hand…
The before:
The after:
The now:
There is so much joy alongside the ashes.
I loved reading the origin story (though really, it was the title that drew me in first). And I really appreciate, in so much of your writing, that you share the challenges and the struggles and the next steps. It's much more inspirational to me :)
I would love to volunteer in the kitchen and feeding people. Do you need help in this area