Nubian Texas

It is big in Texas but there is no place named Nubian. On my way to the annual ARARA (American Rock Art Research Association) conference in Del Rio I toured the west in a yellow beetle. I visited the Alamo in San Antonio with brother Jay and family and I attended a Nubian vault-building workshop with Adobe Alliance in the Big Bend country of West Texas. This was vault building with the most basic materials. You can create an earthen roof without the use of any type of form. No nails, no wood, no metal parts at all. Of course the walls were already finished when I arrived making the job of creating a vaulted ceiling in a week easier.

The vault, a series of mud-brick catenary arches, literally goes up in mid air. We spent time chipping away at the adobe bricks and placing them upright. Always looking up created this fill in the sky feeling. Each day we created more roof, more shade, more miracles. The bricks stuck together upside down. What a trick!!

The patch of blue became smaller by day. After lifting and placing and chipping for hours at a time it was clear something was just not sitting well. By the last day we were forced to knock it all down. There was a budge on the outside and that created a wave. The look was lovely,but the structure wasn't. Some in the group simply hated the whole idea and to say the least there was not a smile on Simone's face at all when she realized her detached attachment technique for this stage of the project ( She already has masterminded a house and a dome guestroom) was not working. I found pleasure in the destruction. I was attached to the learning process as opposed to the product and the act of taking it apart was as systematic as putting it up was. Attempts were made to save each 50 cent block of adobe, and well, I had fun.

If you'd like some big Texas sky and a earthy project, this would be the place to go. Simone Swan studied with Hassan Fathy who is no longer alive but some say she is the authority on adobe dome and vault construction in the USA. For more info about efforts in the past to shelter the masses you should read this Hassan Fathy’s “Architecture for the Poor”.

Gracias, Si ! (Mexico)

Just a word about being in baja california. This is a place serious about coffee time. It goes beyond the actual drink into a realm meaning time to have coffee, la hora de café. You shouldn’t miss it if you are invited and invited we were. It is what you do in the sierras.

If you are on a horse, in a truck or on foot, and if you pass a ranch you had better check to see if anyone is home because they might want to have coffee with you. It means come in, sit in the shade, or stand around the open fire stove. It means dump a load of sugar in the hot cup and eat the tortillas and queso fresco hidden under a brightly embodied panuela. It means talk, chat, laugh a little and listen in the background to the radio airwaves broadcasting little bits of news across the repitadoras from one arroyo to the next. It means how are you and it can happen any time of day.

I had a hard time refusing the coffee call. Real hard to say no and not totally polite to refuse but when that coffee comes around with the New Year’s day buenulo, you’d be smart to say “gracias, si”.

The other great coffee tradition is café de chiva, or cowboy coffee. We had ours prepared on the side of cliffs or on rocky porteros by the one and only Chente, the masterful trailblazer, mulero, sportsman, singing cowboy with hands the size of a grizzly. He can bang out coffee faster than starbucks. It’s the purest, thickest mountain mud I’ve ever had. In the end you do spend time spitting out the loose grounds, but who would have guessed the seriousness fashioned to this man of the mountains when it comes to coffee time.


“Café?…Gracias, si!”

A look at San Borjitas Rock Art

To see the real thing, in true color, you should visit the site near Mulege, called San Borjitas, off of Highway one. Short of that just click on the image to see it larger.