Land Of Lawrence And O’Keefe Lures Visitors New Mexico Captures The Soul With Its Simple And Unassuming Beauty

Different parts of our country speak to different parts of the body. For New York City, it’s the mind. Louisiana - the stomach (and ear). San Francisco - the heart (of course). Chicago - the biceps. New England - the spleen. New Mexico - the soul.

The state possesses a spiritual quality, particularly in the north, where the Jemez and San Juan Mountains mirror the Sangre de Cristo Range across an increasingly populated plain. The dramatic landscape has a lot to do with it, but not everything. Other states, especially in the West, offer views just as stunning.

It is the unique mixture here of landscape, elevation, light, sky, ancient peoples, dusty spaces, Old World Catholicism and New Age mysticism. No cross on a European cathedral stands as poignantly or un-ignorably as the white cross of a humble adobe church set against a cobalt sky. Something as simple as the shadow of a jutting roof beam cutting diagonally across a warm mud wall takes on, in New Mexico, a rich and elemental meaning. Tourists go to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park; pilgrims come to New Mexico.

The back pages of The Sun, an alternative paper in Santa Fe, are lush with ads for Kundalini Yoga, CranoSacral Therapy, Psychic Channeling, Phytochemical Supplements, Shamanic Alchemy, Tensegrity (“a series of movements taught to (Carlos) Castaneda by his legendary teacher”) and Healthy Divorce.

Spiritual enlightenment came easier in the old days. D.H. Lawrence, probably the most famous of all the writers and artists who have been drawn to this land, wrote in the 1920s: “The moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend.”

You fly, like most people, into Albuquerque. It seems like a pleasant enough American city plopped down on an arid plain, and then you pick up the Sunday Journal and find the longest list of support groups you have ever seen. You count 185 - including Conscious Men’s Drumming Group and Gluten & Wheat Intolerance. A box appearing halfway through says: “This is not a complete listing of support groups. Other support groups run in the daily Happenings.” You can’t bear to look.

The Old Town, with its leafy plaza, sits like a preview of coming attractions, while across town the University of New Mexico sprawls under a theatrical backdrop of rugged mountains. The campus contains a lovely president’s house (a rambling two-story in adobe style) and the surrounding neighborhood offers a collection of used book stores that could rival Berkeley’s.

Interstate 25 is the quick way to Santa Fe; you take Route 14 - the Turquoise Trail - up through the old mining towns of Golden (gold and silver), Madrid (coal) and Cerrillos (gold, silver and turquoise). The prospectors are gone, replaced by a slowly growing number of boutique owners and art dealers.

An urban strip appears - like any other except that the motels, gas stations and fast-food huts are in adobe style - and ushers you into the oldest capital city in the United States. The streets are not dusty, as you half-expected; the buildings, even the old ones, look as if they were built yesterday. The only note that seems faithful to the days of Archbishop Lamy is the fact that the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi - which he had built in the late-1800s - still lords over the skyline.

But your initial disappointment wanes in the evening as you sit by a kiva fire in the living room of friends. (Though this is the suburbs, the road in front of the house is dirt, and the requisite bunch of red chiles hangs from the porch.) A birch ladder, leaned against a bookshelf, groans with colorful hand-woven rugs, and you can hardly take a book out without moving a piece of pottery.

The next day the woman of the house takes you on a tour. Kitty has lived in Santa Fe for 23 years and her interest in Indian art goes beyond decoration.

She drives onto the grounds of the Santa Clara Pueblo. The boxy tan houses take their color from the dirt, so that the cars parked beside them stand out like bright, anachronistic playthings.

With warmth and affection, she explains the layout, even pointing to some discarded shards of pottery that, she has learned, it is a great offense to pick up.

“It looks so quiet,” you say. “There are no people around.”

“Oh, but they’re watching,” she replies, smiling. “They know we’re here.”

Then she drives you over to San Ildefonso Pueblo to meet her friend, the famous potter Blue Corn. She has not been well, so the meeting is brief, but her daughter gives you a tour of the living room - tastefully decorated with her mother’s pots and her own miniatures painted with natural pigments. Before coming to look after her mother, she taught in the pueblo school. “We teach the children the language, the customs, respect for elders.”

Kitty takes the long way back, down winding dirt roads. She worries about her good friend’s health - concerned that the Indians on the pueblo are not receiving the best medical care. She passes an abandoned shack, the adobe brick showing through an eroded mud wall.

“That’s what the pueblos looked like when we first came here,” she says. The land is harsh and brown. Magpies flitter past, like chessboard shrapnel. “This place gets into your soul,” she says.

You ask if she doesn’t resent all the newcomers.

“You can’t say, ‘Well, I’m here now, no one else can come.’ A culture stagnates if it doesn’t change. The Indians have learned that.”

The next day you drive north to Taos. Not far out of Santa Fe you stop at the Po’suwae Geh Restaurant on the Pojoaque Pueblo and order a Tesuque Tuna Sandwich - one of “8 Northern Pueblo Sandwiches.” The casino next door - looking like a community center filled with slot machines - rattles with tourists (as opposed to pilgrims).

Pilgrims you find a few miles north in the town of Chimayo. Houses neighboring the famous sanctuary advertise “Holy Chiles”; the building itself sits so snugly at the foot of two round pinon-speckled hills that it looks like a clay model in a historical museum.

The interior is even finer: stone floor, wood beamed-ceiling, enormous reredos (sacred paintings) set against white-washed walls. The paintings are done in a naive style - poker-faced saints and rustic crosses - that perfectly conveys religious wonder and awe. The effect of these busy tableaux fastened to stark white walls is both clamorous and hushed, festive and plaintive, and the overall feeling, as you tower over the pews, is one of an embracing, beguiling intimacy. You think it is the most beautiful church you’ve ever seen in America and it bothers you only a little that it doesn’t look the least bit American.

In a side chapel you find the hole in the floor where pilgrims gather the dirt they believe to have miraculous powers. Next to them, kneeling before a glass-encased crucifix, a young man in a black leather jacket prays intently.

Taos is a smaller version of Santa Fe, with even a little dust thrown in. Another shopping town. Though it pretends to be uncontaminated. “Santa Fe is tres chic,” says the owner of Maison Faurie Antiques, with Gallic disdain. “I call it Santa Fe nouveau.”

Several miles north stands a sign for the D.H. Lawrence memorial. You turn right onto a dirt road that winds for several miles toward the foot of the mountains. Three deer caper in front of your car.

The small, one-room shrine sits at the top of a zigzagged walkway lined on either side by tall pine trees. Just in front, a traditional memorial marks the grave of Lawrence’s wife, Frieda; his own ashes, the story goes, were mixed with the cement of the shrine by Frieda who feared they’d be stolen by Mabel Dodge Luhan, the woman who lured him to New Mexico.

Back near the car, a stocky, milky-eyed man in suspenders emerges from the main house.

“Lawrence only lived here for 11 months,” he tells you. “And not consecutively. He stayed there” - he points to a log cabin practically in his back yard - “with no running water, a dirt floor. That tall tree you see is ‘The Lawrence Tree’ that Georgia O’Keeffe painted. The bench is still there that she sat on looking up at it.”

He mentions that he got the ranch from Frieda, and you ask what she was like. “Nice. Too nice,” he adds gruffly. “People took advantage of her. Lawrence couldn’t have gotten along without her.”

“Why’s that?”

“He had no skills. Other than his so-called writing.” The protest you hear coming from the direction of the shrine turns out to be a woodpecker.

“You don’t like his writing?”

“Nope. For one thing I don’t like his attitude toward women. Lawrence thought a woman had two places - in the kitchen or in the bedroom. That was it.”

You walk up through the dewy grass to take a look at the cabin. A high-backed chair sits vacant on the porch, a few unweathered patches showing a decorative green. Turning, and catching your breath in the process, you see far below you a plain as big as some countries - Taos Plateau and the upper Rio Grande Valley - with mountains in the distance and morning brilliant and proud.

On the drive back south you make a stop at the Nambe Trading Post. The handsome woman inside tells you she never goes to Santa Fe (almost bristles at the name). She came out from Michigan in 1949, to work at Los Alamos, and has never left.

“The interesting thing here is that you’ve got two cultures - Indian and Spanish. And they’re both so,” she breaks into a brief, exuberant laugh, “wonderful.”

“And strong. Everywhere else in the United States people - Italians, Irish, Poles, whoever - became like each other. They had to give up their identities.”

And you wonder: Does she really mean “souls”?

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Lodging Santa Fe: The Inn of the Anasazi, just off the plaza, is an elegant place to stay, with an excellent restaurant (rates start at $235; phone 800-688-8100). Outside of town is Bishop’s Lodge (rates start at $140; phone 800-732-2240). I stayed at the Inn of the Governors (800-234-4534). This is a comfortable motel, done in Southwest style, a few blocks south of the plaza, with rates starting at $119. Next door is a wonderful old hotel, the St. Francis (800-529-5700) with rates starting at $110. Taos: The Taos Inn (800-826-7466) is downtown and historic, with a lively bar, but some of the rooms can be gloomy. (Rates start at $85.) A lovely place, just outside downtown, is the Mabel Dodge Luhan House - the home of the socialite who brought the artists to town, now a bed and breakfast. Rates start at $75. (phone 800-846-2235.)

Food Santa Fe: A great breakfast (huevos rancheros and orange juice with ginger) can be had at Pasqual’s (121 Don Gaspar Ave.) and a memorable, if expensive, dinner at Santacafe (231 Washington Ave). Most entrees fall in the $20-plus range; I ordered a medley of appetizers, including a delicious spring roll with duck. Taos: The Bent Street Deli (120 Bent St.) is good for breakfast or lunch; Lambert’s (309 Paseo del Pueblo) resembles Santacafe a little, though it’s a bit less expensive (and original).

Guidebooks I used “New Mexico Handbook” (Moon Publications, $14.95) and the “Access” guide to “Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque” ($18). The first is strong on history and culture; the second gives an accurate and up-to-date listing of restaurants, hotels, shops and attractions.

More information Contract the New Mexico Department of Tourism, 491 Old Santa Fe Trail, Old Lamy Building, Santa Fe, NM 87503; (800) 545-2040.

Favorite places Like most destinations worthy of the adjective “tourist,” this part of New Mexico contains attractions so powerful that they transport you above the T-shirt-shopping masses. Some highlights: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe - Probably the finest collection in the world, with more than 10,000 pieces creatively displayed. The Peruvian village is spectacular in its vastness, and the Mexican bullring made me laugh out loud. The Loretto Chapel, Santa Fe - The “Miraculous Stairway” - built without nails or any visible support - is as much a thing of beauty as it is an engineering marvel. Santuario de Chimayo - Even for the nonreligious, the passion of the folk art here is breathtaking. After visiting the church, stop at the Rancho de Chimayo for enchiladas and a basket of delicious sopapillas. Taos pueblo - A big tourist attraction, but if you arrive early in the morning before the crowds you can wander around marveling at the stark geometry, the brilliance of blue over adobe walls, and the fact that man has lived here since before the time of Columbus. Los Alamos - The film in the Bradbury Science Museum glosses over the gruesome destruction of the bomb that was devised here, but the exhibits are informative. And just being in town makes you reflect. Bandelier National Monument - Here, in Frijoles Canyon, are hundreds of ruins of ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings. You can climb ladders into the caves and see the world, and hear the wind, as the Anasazi did.