What is, is the great teacher. — Father Richard Rohr
Yesterday, I picked up a hitchhiker. She was probably 80 years-old, standing at the main intersection in Taos, New Mexico. She said something to the driver in front of me, but he rolled on. I wasn't sure what she wanted so I rolled my window down.
"I'm safe," she said approaching my car, "I just need a ride north of town."
"Jump in," I said, throwing my bag in the backseat, right as the light changed.
She weighed maybe 100lbs, had a mop of wild, grey hair and a friendly smile. Her name was Susan Esther. Not Susan, and not Ester spelled the Spanish way — Esther spelled the Jewish way, she carefully explained.
Susan Esther has been hitching rides in Taos for much of her 30 years here. She's lucky with it because, she said, she has angels assigned to her transport.
Today, they had me picked out.
Taos is a liminal space.
The word liminal comes from the Latin, meaning threshold. The Celts talked about it a lot, describing "thin places" between worlds, or places of transition between what was and what's next.
If there's a better description of midlife, I don't know what it is. We specialize in liminal space at Girl Catch Fire, which is why I'm in Taos scouting for our first Firelight Adventure, here in April.
If I learned anything from Susan Esther it's this:
Trusting God or your angels as you cross uncertain territory, with your needs laid bare, is a chancy but interesting way to live.
As if to make this exact point, when I pulled over to let her out, Susan Esther asked if she could read me a poem she wrote about Taos.
It was three pages — a deep but unsentimental love letter to a place she called a stern taskmaster in the lessons of life. Santa Fe, she noted, is for beginners. Taos is graduate school.
She had no fear of missing her next ride though, because her angels had already planned for a poetry delay. Sure enough 20 minutes later, when I swung back through that intersection, she was gone.
Be safe Susan Esther. Stay free.
Pay attention.
I spent the night at the home of Mabel Dodge Lujan, now an inn and National Historic Landmark. Hailing from a wealthy family, Mabel was a prominent figure in the arts in New York City in the early 20th century.
But upon her arrival to Taos, in 1918, she wrote, “My world broke in two right then, and I entered into the second half, a new world.”
Exactly.
She remains an icon in Taos, as she and her home — El Gallo — hosted luminaries like Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather and DH Lawrence.
Sitting by her kiva fireplace, I read a book about DH Lawrence's arrival in 1922. In it was a photograph taken from the exact place I was sitting. In front of the same burning fireplace.
Susan Esther would have me pay attention to that.
Liminal spaces are like hallways
Where the door behind you has shut, but the one in front of you isn't open yet. It's where you learn to relinquish control, trusting what lies ahead, even if it's a dark descent — which it often is. As Father Rohr explains it:
Order. Disorder. Reorder.
Birth. Death. Resurrection.
First half. Midlife. Second half.
It's no accident we're hosting our first Firelight Adventure in Taos. I've been saying for years that because midlife feels like death, disorder and collapse, we fight it, instead of leaning into it and trusting God with the resurrection.
Jesus himself said, "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
But we cannot face the process alone. We must go through it together because my heart, my life and my story need yours.
People loved Mabel's salon because it put artists, writers and thinkers together, thereby compounding them and their work. Life-long relationships were formed.
Judy
Judy tends the fire at Mabel's and greets late-arriving guests. She knows the history of the place like the back of her hand.
She told me when Ansel Adams arrived, he was only taking pictures as a hobby. While there, he met a photographer — a friend of Georgia O'Keeffe's — who encouraged him to pursue it more seriously.
That's who I want to be — not Ansel Adams, though that would be cool. I want to be the guy who sees the greatness in Ansel Adams, and calls it out.
Midlife is the exact right time for that. Taos is the exact right place. We have five spaces left, and two other trips with the same theme later this year in France and Ireland.
By the way, if Ansel Adams had kept his art a hobby, this image of the neighboring Taos Pueblo might not exist. Made in 1929, it's now held at MoMA.
Make Friends. Go Places.
I now think of the Taos Valley like a singing bowl. It is encircled almost entirely by the snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains — the Blood of Christ mountains, named by Spanish settlers for the way they glow red at sunset.
But the native people of Taos Pueblo do not call them that.
The mountain range cradles their sacred Blue Lake, which sends its life-giving water down to the Pueblo. In the Tiwa language, the massif is known as Ts'ewa.
This is why travel matters. It shocks us awake, and forces us to reckon with strangeness and the striations of history. When we do this with others, we bear witness as old identities die, and new hitchhiking poets are born.
Click here to reserve your space at Taos.
Have a great week.
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