A trip out to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch

Monday July 2nd was my first full day in Taos. I stopped by the Visitor Center on Paseo del Pueblo Sur and picked up a map to the D. H. Lawrence, formerly known as Kiowa Ranch. The drive up into the mountains northwest of Taos was beautiful. I turned left onto a dirt road that was well marked as the route to the ranch.

At the end of the road was the ranch manager's house. I parked the Jeep in the shade and looked around at the view. I didn't see anyone so I walked on back, still following the signs, towards the Homesteader's Cabin. This is the cabin that D. H. Lawrence and Frieda lived in for several months during the mid 1920s.

Dorothy Brett's cabin

Before I got to the Homesteader's Cabin I came to Brett's Cabin. The Brett in question was Dorothy Brett, Lady Dorothy Brett. She was a follower of D. H. Lawrence and typed his manuscripts for him.

The window where Dorothy Brett sat and typed Lawrence's manuscripts.
The typewriter is still on the table inside.

She was also an artist and painter. Her cabin was tiny. Half of the cabin was taken up with a single bed, the other half allowed enough room for the door to open with space for a woodburning stove and a tiny table and chair.

Interior of Dorothy Brett's cabin

The more I know about Dorothy Brett the more I like her. I saw several of her paintings in my travels around Taos. She was apparently quite a character. She was deaf and used a hearing trumpet that she called "Toby". A woman with a hearing trumpet is a woman after my own heart! (An aside here, read "The Hearing Trumpet", by Leonora Carrington if you get the chance)

The Homesteader's Cabin, also known as the D. H. Lawrence cabin

The Homesteader's Cabin was locked up, but I peered in the window's. It's much larger than the Brett Cabin - three original rooms with a fourth added on later.

Reproduction of O'Keeffe's Lawrence Tree

My apologies to any D. H. Lawrence fans, but what I came to see was in front of the cabin, a huge pine tree that Georgia O'Keeffe painted and named "The Lawrence Tree". She and Rebecca Strand (if you are looking for her now you'll have to look for Rebecca Salisbury James) had come up to visit with Dorothy Brett while they were in Taos in 1929. O'Keeffe wrote that she would lie under the tree and look up at the sky through its branches.

The tree is an awesome pine standing on a mountainside full of awesome trees. It's immortalization came about because of its location and both Lawrence and O'Keeffe's encounters with it.

Lawrence wrote: "The big pine tree in front of the house, standing still and unconcerned and alive . . . the overshadowing tree whose green top one never looks at . . . One goes out of the door and the tree trunk is there, like a guardian angel. The tree trunk, the long work table and the fence!" Lawrence spent his mornings out writing at the work table under this tree.

The actual tree itself

The smell of the air up high in the mountains and the sound of the wind whispering through the pine's needles took me back to memories of lying on my back under the pine trees in my backyard in East Texas when I was about eight or nine. I loved the sound and scent of them. I was entranced by the way that they could sway with the wind. I could imagine how this tree would look against the night sky, thanks to O'Keeffe's painting. I determined that The Lawrence Tree didn't need to be drawn again, so I decided to sketch the cabin.

I had left my sketchbook and camp stool in the truck so I headed back down the hill.

I love my little stool. It collapses and fits into a tiny bag and weighs next to nothing. Once back in front of the cabin I set it up and went to sit down. Unfortunately, I didn't check to make sure it was assembled properly and the stool did what it was designed to do. It collapsed. Lucky for me it is only about a foot tall at best, so it was a short drop to the dirt.

I immediately looked around to see if anyone had seen this demonstration of grace. I found my own reaction hysterically funny. I'm alone out on the side of a mountain on my butt in the dirt and my first concern is to check and see if anyone witnessed my graceless fall.

At this point I decided to sit where the universe and my stool had placed me. I used my little stool as an arm and bookrest until it could regain my trust.

On my way to the front of the cabin I had passed a place where some sort of repair work was being done. It seemed to require a certain degree of excavation under the fourth room of the Homesteader's Cabin. A man showed up and started to work. He didn't seem at all taken aback at finding a middle-aged woman sitting on her duff in the dirt drawing in a little black book. I had to contain my laughter to keep from appearing any loonier than I already did. I said, "Hi!" and he said, "Hi!" and we both went on about our business.

A woman came and unlocked the cabin for a couple and their seven year old son. None of them appeared to consider finding a woman sitting in the dust drawing the least bit odd. I was grateful for that. She asked if I would like to see the interior of the Homesteader's Cabin. It seemed like the thing to do and the five of us went inside.

It doesn't take long to tour a three room cabin. We sat for a few moments inside as the woman told us all about D. H. Lawrence, Frieda, Dorothy Brett, and The Lawrence Tree.

The D. H. Lawrence Memorial

Inside the D. H. Lawrence Memorial

D. H. Lawrence's wife, Frieda, is buried in front of the Memorial

The couple headed up the hill to the Lawrence Memorial. Since I was finished with my preliminary sketch of the cabin I went and sat in the shade with my hostess. Her name, it turned out, is Mary Barrett and she knows a wealth of information about D. H. Lawrence, the location and the area.

View from the garden gate, D. H. Lawrence Ranch

We sat and talked for quite awhile. The couple came back down and stopped for a moment to say their goodbyes.

I stayed on and talked with Mary. She reminded me of a good woman friend of mine named Joyce. I thoroughly enjoyed her company and I hope that she enjoyed mine.

All in all it was an enjoyable and productive day. As I drove back down the dusty dirt road to the main highway I couldn't help but smile at the fact that the Jeep was beginning to look like it belonged in these parts.

I drove back down to Taos as the clouds caught and gathered over the tops of the mountains.