While February weather discourages outdoor activities, I reminisce about a sojourn with a friend. Our passage is the meandering High Road to Taos, New Mexico. At Las Trampas the Santuario San José de Gracia, a humble Spanish Colonial adobe edifice once known as Santuario Santo Tomás del Rio de las Trampas invites respite...we stop.
The santuario is one of the best preserved examples of Spanish Colonial Mission architecture in New Mexico. Over the main entry door into the nave is a centered relief carving of a cherub and inscription which spans the width of the door. The carved inscription "D MANO D NICOlaS d APOdaCA"(by the hand of Nicolás de Apodaca) is a curious mix of upper and lower case letters.
Nicolás is surely a descendant of Diego González de Apodaca, a soldier who escorted Governor Don Alonso de Pacheco de Herédia from Mexico City to Santa Fe in December 1641. Memorialized by the inscription in the door lintel, I presume Nicolás is the artisan who crafted the entry around 1780.
In mind's eye I wander the walled church grounds, touch the weathered wood at the main entry and run my hands across the coarse texture of protruding straw fortifier in the stucco layered upon its adobe bones. My imagination ignites and I wonder what might have been. This grand old sanctuary holds stories of joyous celebrations and sorrowful dirges, weddings, baptisms and funerals. The 1780s church is on the National Historic Landmark register.
© Ilija Lukić 2020
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| Everlasting Light (Santuario San José de Gracia in Las Trampas, New Mexico USA) |
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