A House Made of Mud

Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms

If you've been reading this blog for any time, you probably think our family is nuts. We're either moving from one place to another or talking about moving. It's true, we have always been gypsies, but we are coming to the end of all our moving about. It's time to buy a retirement home where we can shelve our collection of maps and atlases and which we can use as a permanent base from which to travel.

You've probably also noticed that over the past year or so we've explored a number of places to see if they would fit our needs: Pecos, Estancia, and Cochiti Lake, for example. We even found houses that were for sale that might have worked for us, but as we waited for our Clovis house to sell, we saw those places move off the market, one by one. Finally, our own house sold just last week, and we reviewed our possibilities. No one place pleased all the members of the family until we went back to an early choice: Las Cruces, where we have made an offer on an "historical" adobe home that has been accepted. We are hoping that the rest of the real estate doings go smoothly.

My next job, in addition to packing up here, is to find out all I can about adobe architecture, this very New Mexican style. Of course, I will share what I find out with you on this blog.

For starters, here is a quote from a book on adobe houses: "No one who does not live in an adobe house can imagine the bond that exists between house and resident. Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms. This is not just fantasy: adobe walls envelop you with a cool respite on a sweltering day and cozy warmth on a frigid one. The material itself provides these qualities, but the "look" of an adobe house... is also part of the welcome." (Reeve: The Small Adobe House).

Pretty good for una casa hecha de lodo (a house made of mud).

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Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index