Falling in Love with Abiquiu

​By Gabriel Puckett
Casa de la Cruz
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​“Look at that mountain!”, we said as we came over the hill from the north. “What is this place?”
We had never seen anything like it. The desert landscape so varied and diverse - hills, valleys, and canyons were ebbing and flowing like cresting waves. Light shifting in the setting sun, the colors seemed magnified by the canyon walls and desert rocks.

One mountain stood out and held our singular attention as an anchor in the landscape. It looked like a classic mesa but was unique in its stature and form. It seemed to hold an authority in the landscape. We would later discover that this mountain was Pedernal, the crown jewel of Abiquiu. This was Georgia O’Keefe’s mountain - the one that God told her, “If you paint it enough, you can have it.”

The magic of the landscape stirred something deep inside us, and we began to dream out loud. “What if we owned property out here? What if we had a healing retreat center?”

My wife Leah and I were on a road trip from Denver. It was the middle of Covid, and we lived in the heart of the city. This high desert landscape was a massive reprieve from the experience of pandemic city life. This was a vacation/scouting mission. We were looking for a landing place for the dreams that God had put in our hearts.

Our spirits were being stirred with excitement at the potential. Needless to say, we were smitten. This northern New Mexico gem had captured our attention. We’ve always been dreamers, but this place made us feel like our dreams weren’t big enough. The expanse of the sky and the terrain were beckoning us to look further and challenging us to dream bigger.

We had first learned about Abiquiu because Leah’s brother had a dream a few years back about a monastery in the desert. He later discovered it was a real place. The Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert has since become one of our favorite places to visit.

From that first road trip that sparked so much excitement to now, so much has happened. We purchased our Abiquiu dream home, and it feels like a little slice of heaven. Sitting on the porch and watching lightning storms roll in over the Sangre de Cristos in the distance, seeing the baby quail scurry in a row across the dirt road in early spring with their hurried tiny steps, sitting by the kiva fireplace as we watch the snow come down outside in winter, it almost doesn’t seem real. Something lost in our modern world is found here.

The Celtic saints had a description for places like this. They called them “thin places”, referring to the veil between heaven and earth feeling thin. I believe that the whole earth is a burning bush ablaze with the glory of God. There are some places, though, where that flame is just more obvious. Abiquiu is one of those places.

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