New Mexico Road Trip, day 4, The House

The house that we stayed in belongs to some artsy folks,  the metal sculptures shown are just one of the delights to be viewed here.  Maka house-sits at this place from time to time, and so it is now that we find the place to ourselves.   The woman who makes her home here with her family does many things including beekeeping and Hoshindo.  Hoshindo is the therapeutic use of bee venom on acupuncture points for healing. Madrid (pronounced Mad-rid) was once a coal mining town.  It lay defunct and abandoned for many years and then in the 1970's was revived by artists and hippies who squatted here.  Today it is a thriving artist's colony and tourist stop.   It's quaint and little, just what I wanted. :) The home we are blessed to be staying in was once part of the mine operation and housed a gigantic pulley used for transporting coal or slag (shrug) I don't know. 

 It's quite nifty having been converted and added onto to become the interesting house it is today.   You see the outside of the house in the background of the sculpture photos above.  Here is a snip of the interior.  The steep ladder you see goes up to a storage loft. The door to a bedroom. The master bedroom was added on, probably constructed of adobe or cob. The interior has all the sculptural beauty that I associate with cob.   My first morning I was awakened by what must have been a coyote very close to the house.  It was a very high pitched cry/bark.  I wondered if this were a daily experience, like the rooster that crows on a farm.  But it only happened once.  

Lady Guadalupe is something of a regional saint, so my first assumption was that the lovely painting from Brazil that hung on the wall was Her.  Then it became clear that Guadalupe was always shown with a cherub and crescent moon at her feet.  So I researched a bit, and the iconography I was able to find suggests that this is Mother Mary.   

Maka's friend Gail whom we had enjoyed the Ojo Caliente with came out to visit and we all went down into Madrid to check out the boutiques, galleries, and The Holler.  The Holler is a local restaurant with good chef prepared food. I had a nice big fat burrito with sauteed mushrooms, black beans and cheese then smothered in green chilies.  It seems to be a bit of a hang out for the locals as well.  I forgot to bring a camera so will pop down there on another day to get better acquainted with the town and take some pictures to share.