King of the Road - October 2010
Custom Made
Celebrate and create local tradition in Mora
Story and Photography by Lesley S. King
“Do you have any family traditions?”
asks weaver Louise Burton as we chat
in Tapetes de Lana, a gallery in the center of Mora, a town of about 5,000 people on N.M. 518, 30 miles north of Las Vegas.
I run my fingers over handwoven rugs and through silky yarns, then turn to her. “No, I can’t think of a single one.” My family used to herd cattle down to the low country in fall. We used to squeeze an ostrich-sized turkey into the oven on Thanksgiving, and hunt Easter eggs in the spring. But those customs are now just memories.
I feel these losses deeply as Burton tells me of rich traditions her family still carries on here: In summer, they convene on their land in the mountains to camp and swim in the ojito (spring), and in winter they make tamales and empanadas (using beef head and tongue, of course!). Certainly I must preserve some customs from my family, but right now all I can think of is a penchant for impatience, a keen appreciation for beer and wine (thank you, Ireland), and an enduring heritage of insomnia.
With that in mind, I set out to explore this lush valley to find tradition, celebrate it, and even borrow it—if only for the day.
One rich aspect of tradition is here in this shop. On wooden dowels hang Río Grande–style rugs in a range of colors, from azure to butternut. As well, scarves hang on displays, pottery decks shelves, and paintings adorn walls. The gallery is the creation of Carla Gomez, who, as a young girl in Santa Fe, learned to weave from her grandfather. “I had a deep desire to live on the earth and be a weaver,” she says. So she came to Mora, and in 1998 started Tapetes de Lana (weavings of wool), a nonprofit organization that teaches residents of rural areas to weave, to help them become self-sustaining. Since then, Gomez has established next door a modern, commercial spinning mill, to keep this fiber tradition alive. Before I leave, I touch and hold the rich textures of the weavings smelling their woolly scent.
IF YOU GO What to Do and Where to Shop Grandma Joan’s Choke Cherry Jelly Tapetes de Lana Victory Ranch Alpacas Where to Dine Where to Stay and Dine |
Down the street, another enterprise has helped preserve the valley’s centuries-old traditions of farming and ranching. At the 1,100-acre Victory Ranch, Carol and Darsey Weisner raise alpacas. I start my exploration in their gallery, where I try on hats, shawls, and sweaters made from supple alpaca wool. Then I head outside to a meadow to feed some of the 200 sweet-natured animals, which hum while nibbling food from my palm. Carol explains that when they started the ranch 20 years ago, they set out to use traditional practices. Today they grow all their own hay, which they fertilize with their own composted waste. “We knew that was how it was done here, and that was where our heart was, too,” says Carol.
Farther up the valley, I step onto the porch of a century-old adobe, the home of Matias (Matt) and Joan Maestas, makers of Grandma Joan’s Choke Cherry Jelly. Matias’s family first settled in Mora in the mid-1800s. When his mother, who used to make jelly from what they call capulín, died, he thought the jelly had gone too. But he and Joan re-created the recipe. Now, as it bubbles in a five-gallon pot, they invite me to stir—the 10-hour simmering imparts a deep cherry flavor. The Maestases buy and pick wild chokecherries locally, then sell the jelly on their porch and at regional events. They also teach people how to make it. “It’s a way of preserving history and the Mora culture,” says Matias. When I say good-bye, I happily take along a few jars.
Five miles up the road, in Cleveland (New Mexico, not Ohio), I take in the Cleveland Roller Mill Museum, a three-story structure with aged adobe walls and, on one side, an overshot waterwheel. Here I meet Dan Cassidy, who has helped preserve the milling tradition in the valley. His great-grandfather, another Dan Cassidy, came from Ireland in 1821, one of the region’s early merchants and stockmen.
This mill was passed down through the family and finally came into the hands of the current Dan Cassidy, who restored it in the 1980s. During his time with his family’s mill, Cassidy has come to know how important the Mora Valley’s nearly 200 mills were to life in the region. “Mills, along with mercantile stores, were the heart, places that functioned far beyond their practical capacity, providing a center for business and social gatherings,” he says. Like most in the area, this molino (mill) first ground wheat, and later generated electricity to light homes and businesses. These days, visitors can glimpse the mill’s exterior in winter, and tour the inside in summer.
I hit the road again, this time heading for the center of Mora to take a look at another graceful mill, the St. Vrain (1864), on N.M. 434, just north of its intersection with N.M. 518. This three-story stone mill once supplied flour to Fort Union (now Fort Union National Monument), about 30 miles east of here. Today the St. Vrain is abandoned, and though listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s slowly being reclaimed by nature: Its stones are cracked, its roof rusted, its waterwheel is settling into the ground. It’s going the way of most traditions in the contemporary world. How fortunate, I realize, that so many people in Mora are preserving their family legacies and sharing them with the rest of us.
Through the course of the day, I’ve remembered one tradition that lives on in my own family, and it may be the most important of all: We laugh.
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