Field Trips
Winter & Spring 2008
Trip Registration: Participation in SAR field trips is one of the benefits of membership. To make registration equitable, we will begin accepting trip reservations January 22, 2008. Beginning on that day, please call the SAR Membership Office at 954-7203 to register or to receive additional information about any of these trips. Group size is limited. Reserve your space early.
Bring Your Own Reuseable Water Bottle on SAR Field Trips! As part of SAR’s commitment to sustainable resource use and a healthy environment, we will no longer supply disposable water bottles during our field trips. Instead we are asking that field trip participants bring their own refillable water bottles. Additional water will be available to participants for the refilling of their bottles on full-day trips. A selection of sodas will also continue to be available on field trips.
View our cancellation policy.
January 17, 2008, 9am to 3pm
Robin Gavin, Victoria Jacobson,
& Valerie Verzuh
Art, Artifacts, and Architecture: Historic Santa Fe Museums
Join us for unique behind-the-scenes tours of three historic Santa Fe buildings that house premiere collections of Spanish Colonial and Native American art. We begin at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, touring the John Gaw Meem-designed home that now serves as the museum. Our next stop is the Stockman Collections Center, a two-story, state-ofthe- art storage, research, and conservation center. Curator Robin Gavin will be our guide as we travel into the heart of Spanish culture to view a sampling of their 3,000-piece collection. The Center serves as one of the foremost facilities in the world for the study of Spanish Colonial art.
A short walk takes us to the Laboratory of Anthropology. Built in 1931 with funds from John D. Rockefeller, its mission was the study of Southwest indigenous cultures. In 1947, the Museum of New Mexico, then run by SAR, merged its collection of Southwestern Indian artifacts with the Laboratory of Anthropology to create the most inclusive collection of New Mexican and Southwestern anthropological artifacts in the country.
More than 10 million objects from archaeological sites and Native American communities of the Southwest are housed in the Lab. Archaeology curator Valerie Verzuh will lead us into the extensive collections and share stories of some of the most extraordinary artifacts.
Lunch will be served for us at the Museum Hill Café with its beautiful views of Santa Fe.
After lunch, we will visit the National Park Service Region III Headquarters Building on 8 acres along Old Santa Fe Trail. Designed by NPS architect Cecil J. Doty, and constructed by 200 members of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the late 1930s, this large adobe building is a masterpiece of Spanish-Pueblo Revival architecture. It is adorned with hand-built furnishings and light fixtures, and houses a collection of Pueblo Indian pottery, Navajo rugs, and oil paintings, etchings, drawings, and lithographs by members of the Santa Fe and Taos art colonies. NPS Historical Architect Victoria Jacobson will guide us through this marvelous building and its historic collections.
Cost: $27 per person, includes lunch and staffing. We will carpool from SAR. Group size will be limited to 15 participants.
March 8, 2008, 8am to 4pm
Don Usner & Lisa and Irvin Trujillo
Chimayó Red: Inside A Northern New Mexico Village
The village of Chimayό is renowned for its flavorful red chile, beautiful weavings, delicious apples, sculpted red-rock landscape and verdant valleys, and the healing earth of the Santuario. Less well-known is Plaza del Cerro, once the heart and soul of this Spanish Colonial village. Here a tight network of closely related families tilled gardens, raised children, collected their mail, purchased supplies, and exchanged news.
Join us for an inside look at the history and traditions of Chimayό with photographer and writer Don Usner, who grew up spending summers at his grandmother’s home near the old plaza. The author of two books about Chimayό, Don will relate his stories at the Santuario de Chimayό, then take us to the Plaza del Cerro and into Chimayό’s History Museum. There, we will savor the unique flavor of “Chimayό Red,” a distinctive and increasingly rare chile of the valley, and we’ll learn about the economicpolitical fight over the village’s right to this trademark and much-imitated food crop.
Lunch will be served at Rancho de Chimayό, the Jaramillo’s family-run restaurant built as their family home in the early 1800s.
After lunch, we’ll travel up the road to Centenila Traditional Arts, the weaving studio of Lisa and Irvin Trujillo, who have won national and state awards for their finely woven textiles. A seventh-generation weaver of the Trujillo and Ortega families of Chimayό, Irvin received the Master’s Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Santa Fe Spanish Market in 2005 and a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts, in 2007.
Irvin and Lisa utilize traditional techniques of loom design, natural dyeing, spinning, warping, weaving, and finishing while adding a distinctly contemporary and strikingly original expression. A visit to their studio is a sensual experience of smell, texture, and visual beauty that evokes Chimayό’s multi-generational tradition of weaving.
Cost: $85 per person, includes van transportation from SAR, lunch, entrance fees, and guide honorarium.
April 26, 2008, 9am to 4pm
Eric Blinman
Spectacular Rock Art and the San Cristóbal Pueblo
The ancient sites of the Galisteo Basin bear witness to the power of climate change that initiated homesteading in the 12th century and allowed large villages to flourish between the 15th and 17th centuries. As many as 10,000 people may have lived in the Basin in eight Puebloan communities. Pueblo San Cristóbal was the largest and most impressive of these villages, with multi-story room blocks of over 2,000 rooms. San Cristóbal was one of only four pueblos that survived into the Spanish period, with its mission church and convento built in the 1620s. Rock art associated with the site is some of the richest in both the Galisteo Basin and New Mexico, reflecting the complexity and beauty of Pueblo social and religious symbolism. Thousands of “faces,” serpents, cloud terraces, and shields are carved into the sandstone boulders, and sheltered areas have protected painted figures.
Dr. Eric Blinman, Director of the Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico, will be our guide on this unique opportunity to explore the pueblo ruin and its impressive rock art, which is located on private property and is generally not accessible to the public.
Activity Level: Very strenuous, with hiking over uneven ground, and scrambling along rocky ridges to view petroglyphs and paintings. There are no developed trails, and all hiking/climbing is over rough terrain and involves elevation changes.
Cost: $75 per person, includes van transportation from SAR, picnic lunch, and guide honorarium.
Photo Credit: Arrow Swallower at San Cristóbal. San Cristóbal photo courtesy Christina Singleton Mednick from her book San Cristóbal: Voices and Visions of the Galisteo Basin
May 17, 2008, 8am to 5pm
Martha Yates & Mike Bremer
Tsi-p’in-owinge’ Pueblo
One of the “jewels of the southwest,” Tsi-p’in-owinge’ Pueblo is located on a small mesa in the Rio Chama valley. This multi-story 1,500-room pueblo was home to more than 1,000 Tewa-speaking people between AD 1275 and 1450. Tsi-p’in-owinge’, which in Tewa means “Village at Flaking Stone Mountain,” is named for the extensive chert stone deposits found along the nearby Cerro Pedernal. Arrowheads and other tools made of Pedernal chert were widely traded in ancient times, perhaps more for the stone’s beautiful white, yellow, and rose colors than for its functional qualities.
Tsi-p’in-owinge’ Pueblo has a large central plaza with several small kivas and a great kiva, all of which are carved directly into the bedrock. This amazing pueblo, perched on steep cliffs high above the nearest water source, was constructed of stone blocks quarried from the volcanic tuff of the surrounding mesa and mortared with clay mud.
Our trip will be led by two outstanding guides: Martha Yates, retired US Forest Service Archaeologist, who worked on the stabilization and interpretation of Tsi-p’in-owinge’, and current US Forest Service District Archaeologist Mike Bremer.
Activity Level: Very strenuous. Tsi-p’in-owinge’ is accessible only by foot. The 3 mile round-trip trail is steep. At the beginning of the hike, the trail descends 400 feet along a narrow ridge to access the mesa on which the pueblo sits, and ascends this same distance again on the way back to the trailhead.
Cost: $115 per person, includes transportation from SAR, sack lunch, and guide honorarium.
Access to Tsi-p’in-owinge’ Pueblo is restricted by a special use permit. Group size is limited to 15 participants.
Photo Credit: Cerro Pedernal from Tsi-p’in-owinge’ Pueblo courtesy Martha Yates
June 14, 2008, 8am to 5:30pm
Christine McHorse, Anthony Durand, Michael Adler, Sunday Eiselt & Don Brown
Micaceous Pottery Traditions and Pot Creek Pueblo
Join SAR and travel along the High Road from Santa Fe to Taos, learning about micaceous pottery, visiting with potters Christine McHorse (Diné/ Taos) and Anthony Durand (Picuris), and ending the day at Pot Creek Pueblo, a 13th-century pueblo whose descendants still live in the area today.
Sparkling flecks of mica occur naturally in clay deposits in the northern mountains of New Mexico. Traditional potters from the Rio Grande Pueblos, particularly Picuris and Taos, often used clays with high mica content—“micaceous”—to produce their pottery. Micaceous pottery was a valued trade item, because it was superior for cooking, both durable and strong.
Our introduction to micaceous pottery will begin with Christine Nofchisey McHorse, who was a participant in SAR’s Micaceous Pottery Convocation in 1994 and SAR’s Dobkin Native Artist Fellow in 2006. A graduate of IAIA, Christine has won numerous awards for her pottery, including Best of Class at the 1994 Santa Fe Indian Market and the Challenge Award in 1996 for cutting-edge artwork.
After Christine’s introduction, we will travel the High Road from Nambé to Peñasco, stopping at the San José de Gracia church in Las Trampas, an excellent example of early Spanish architecture. The church was built in 1760 and dedicated to the 12 apostles. Our lunch at the eclectic Sugar Nymphs Bistro will feature locally grown foods and homemade desserts. After lunch, we will visit with Picuris Pueblo potter Anthony Durand, who is carrying on the tradition of his grandmother, Cora Durand. He was also a member of SAR’s Micaceous Pottery Convocation in 1994.
At the end of the High Road is Pot Creek Pueblo, one of the largest prehistoric adobe pueblos north of Santa Fe and ancestral home to Taos and Picuris Pueblos. Dr. Michael Adler, Executive Director SMU-in-Taos and past SAR Short Seminar participant, will host our visit to this pueblo ruin along with Dr. Sunday Eiselt, Director of the Archaeological Field School at Fort Burgwin, an expert in archaeological ceramics. Dr. Donald N. Brown, emeritus professor of anthropology at Oklahoma State University, will provide the traveling commentary and help us tie together all aspects of our High Road trip.
Activity Level: Easy to moderate, with some walking over uneven ground.
Cost: $120 per person, includes van transportation from SAR, bistro lunch, and artist and guide honorariums.
Photo Credit: Micaceous sculpture by Christine McHorse
SAR Field Trip Cancellation Policy
SAR’s field trips are operated at a very reasonable cost to our members. To keep our field trips operating smoothly and fairly, SAR is implementing the following cancellation policy as of June 1, 2007:
- 100% refund one month prior to the field trip.
- 75% refund less than one month, if your spot can be filled from a wait list; 25% will be retained as an administrative fee.
- No refund if cancellation occurs less than two weeks prior to the start of the field trip.
- In the case of illness or injury, and the participant can not attend the field trip, refund is 100% if notification is more than one month in advance; and 75% refund if less than one month, retaining 25% as an administrative fee.
SAR reserves the right to cancel a field trip if registration is too low to make it economically viable or for other reasons, including weather, safety, forest fires, unavailability of trip leader, etc. In such cases SAR will refund registrants’ fees in full. SAR also reserves the right to make changes to an advertised itinerary as circumstances require.
