  We made it. Last night we topped the long windy highway through Embudo canyon just as the sun was singing the finale of a haleluia chorus in the sky. It was more beautiful than anything I've ever seen in my life. Snow was falling from whispy clouds that gathered around Taos Mountain, and Wheeler Peak behind it. As the sun hit the clouds, they looked on fire with little sparks falling toward the mountains. For many of the native cultures that live around this area, the Gods live on the mountain peaks, and last night as I watched the sky dance in life around me, I was certain they were right.
John and I could feel a pull as we got closer. Fourteen hours never felt so long. Don't get me wrong, we LOVE driving in the car. Sometimes we joke to people who scoff at traveling with kids that we would take the carseats in the house at the end of the trips because we miss their magic. Our kids have a perfect "carseat" relationship. As long as they're out of arm's reach (for too rough play, hitting, or pulling), they share wonderfully, entertain eachother endlessly. We've also noticed that raising chidren here is so much easier. They're so content to play. And without the noises of the city to fill their ears, within an hour of our arrival, they're always so much quieter, too. We're staying in the Dobson House, a veritable Historic Landmark among the local sustainable crowd, as it was the first Earthship Mike Reynolds built in Taos. It has that peaceful serentiy that the Harris House did (the Hut down in the rock querry did not). I guess because it was so early in the designs, which have evolved since, there is no catchwater and I miss that.
It made a nice safe place for the kids to play while I sat inside and wrote away on the laptop. I'm writing from inside the Toas Bagle shop, the one with the amazingly painted walls. Quotes and mythical images decorate the walls. I want to paint my living room this way. Above the counter, in huge words, hangs the center of it all: One cannot step twice into the same river. Indeed. 
