Ashes From Burnt Roses: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, Part 2 (Photo Essay)

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, Part 2 (Photo Essay)

As it so happened, the very week I started reading Death Comes for the Archbishop, I had a business trip into central New Mexico. Was that a coincidence or providential? Whichever, I decided to take plenty of pictures, something I don’t usually have time to do on business trips. I flew into Albuquerque and then traveled south about an hour to an hour and a half. While the novel is mostly set in the Sante Fe area, which is an hour north of Albuquerque, Fr. Latour does travel south in the opening scenes. I am told north of Albuquerque is even more mountainous than central New Mexico, but I picture the landscape to be very much as you see in these pictures.

Let’s start with some of the pictures I took from my plane seat, which luckily was a window seat. I would say these pictures were taken a quarter of an hour from arriving at Albuquerque. This photo shows the “horny backbones of mountains” (p. 64).

Also from the plane you can see the series of “fissures in the earth” (p. 7) that cut across the landscape.

The rest of the pictures are taken on the ground. All about are “monotonous red sand-hills” (p. 17) and “petrified sand dunes” (p. 89).

From what I saw, they seemed more orange than red. Of course there is the desert plain, a “country of dry ashes (p.88).

Above the desert, above the mountains is a “hard empty blue sky, very monotonous to the eyes” (p. 95).

The desert was naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees (p. 17-18).

Amazingly I came across that plant with “big white blossoms like Easter lilies” (p. 98).

This plant was not very common, so it was a special blessing to come across one. There were many mesas, but here is one as described as “two great mesas…almost square in shape” (p. 96).