Tour Diary Blog Two
Episode Five
Golden trees – Snow – Taos Pueblo – The Symposium and Santa Fe
Come Rain, shine, snow and Journeys end
It was so strange to have started the mammoth undertaking of the 6 months book tour in the snow in NYC and to end up with a snow-storm in Taos New Mexico to bow us out.
On our way through the Rockies we encountered the most exquisite golden trees, a very welcome respite for us two English people after the miles and miles of flat and unchanging landscape of the prairies. I just loved all the grasses and the lands history as so well narrated by both Candace and Tom and I loved the different hues in the grasses, but I am a ocean girl at heart and even better if it abuts the mountains.
So the Rockies looming in the distant were wonderful to behold. We travelled through them and then over them, passing Angel Fire on the way, which was where the Symposium was originally going to be held, but it had to be changed to Taos down the road a-ways.. and then we went past the Rio Grande river. All these wonderful names from films and books but here was the real thing. It was all beautiful and picturesque. We came through the mountain path to a dam and could see for miles and miles. We had stopped for a short break on route because the sides of the mountains had become so very interesting and compelled us to take a little while out from driving, just sheer rock surfaces absolutely perpendicular and we could hear a little stream. The beautiful yellow trees cast a reflection on the stream and turned it pure gold. Candace and I were totally entranced by this vision of gold water. Where we had chosen to stop, we could see on the banks opposite, a little shrine of some sort and a plaque obviously commemorating some person no longer with us, who too had delighted in the rock face, the water and the wonderful trees. Long journeys are made up of these interludes of the breaks and what is encountered on them.
It is these little episodes and what we encounter on them, which make up our wonderful memories of the U.S. of A.
We all walked around in silence and just breathed in the cathedral-like atmosphere. I felt as if I could envision the young man who had once sat under the tree, (which was commemorated), growing into an old man… just quietly fishing and communing with nature in this magical space with the backdrop of sheer rock and the canopy of wonderful yellow-foliaged trees.
I was looking forward to getting to Taos as we had been told that New Mexico is particularly beautiful. As already said, Tom found us a wonderful place to stay called Hacienda Sol and its grounds were full of the biggest yellow trees yet. I felt myself so lucky to have been around in this tiny autumn time gap where the trees had turned yellow. It was strange to see in a way, as the trees have no variance in colours just different hues of yellow. In England, in autumn, our trees are such a riot of all different shades of colours, but here in New Mexico it was an experience to see just the one shade. The leaves were falling constantly and I stood under the biggest tree one morning (see Candace’s wonderful picture) waiting for everyone to come out and became transfixed by a snowstorm of yellow leaves falling around me.. so beautiful.
The website features one of these trees and also the wonderful Taos mountain which was our backdrop. To see all this splendour covered in snow after the snowstorm was just the icing on the cake! The hotel is listed as one of the top romantic hotels in the U.S.
Our rooms at the Hacienda had fires and another big bed.. too high for me even to get onto, we so had to have a little step stool by the side for me to get up and down!
The Mexican colours are everywhere.. deep blue, yellow ochre, terracotta and gold. This type of décor is so much in tune with our own desire always to have vibrant colours in our lives and especially in our home. The breakfasts were fantastic every morning and the service sublime with the owners son-in-law hailing from England!
It is always so strange to hear an English accent apart from our own.
The conference in Taos went well. Steve spoke twice. One of the talks he slotted in at a later date because he had stated that he will no longer be basing his talks on his ET experiences but much more now, on the new science of DNA and the Source Energy and what it means for us all.
But it was an audience who were looking forward to hearing about ET contact and so he slotted in a separate talk just about his lifelong ET contact and it was very well attended.
Our friend Janet who put on the symposium has been working so hard for the past year to get it all to come together and I am so full of admiration for people like Janet who are driven to create a place where people can meet up and share their experiences, learn new information and get a chance to connect with new researchers. Being a conference organiser is really a bit of a thankless task as there are so many difficulties to face and overcome and yet these wonderful organisers do it without question. My admiration for them all knows no bounds, especially as they don't even get a chance to go in and see the speakers as they are working so hard behind the scenes organising!
They are driven by a need to do their bit in this changing world and to bring out the truth of what is really going on out there. Janet had decided to make this conference about Science meeting the Paranormal and Spirituality, quite a task to do as the two are usually diametrically opposed. There were talks on Parallel Worlds, Preparing for ET contact, Crop Circles, and American Native/Choctaw teachings. This teacher said that the Choctaw just take ET contact as a fact of their lives and past history. He called them ‘Company’ and kept saying that we need to get ready because ‘Company’ is definitely coming and very soon and then there was also Shamanism and a lovely Exorcist. Steve and Travis Walton were the ET-Experienc experts, supposedly, but so many of the audience that we got to speak with just take the contact as a fact, which is very uplifting for us. So in fact a huge percentage of the attendees were Experiencers. It was a very mixed bag.. and Janet is an amazing lady to be around and so funny and kind too. Also she loves my Blog and puts it on her ASPE website which is great!!
Steve did a short radio talk with Jerry Pippin a very famous radio personality and also another radio slot for The Taos radio. Now we are working hard on getting Steve onto the George Noorey show which airs every single Weekday night in the U.S. and has over 6,000,000 listeners. Steve also did a radio interview with one of my Forum Members called Race – a lovely man whom we first met in the Ozarks. We got to know Race after he approached Steve when Steve had spoken at the Ozarks. Race questioned Steve about a woman who appeared and then disappeared at Steve’s desk whilst he was signing books. (Steve has been talking about the incident and Races part in it, in his presentations ever since). Before we left for the tour Steve was ‘told’ by his ET contacts that at some talks the ET’s would appear and make themselves known to him. As Steve signed books he became aware of some unusual energetic feeling behind the people at the table but couldn’t see anything. He kept looking up and over the heads of the people at the desk and as Race was sitting watching Steve, he kept looking to see what it was that Steve was looking at … and then the woman just appeared. Steve telepathically ‘heard’ her say that they were really pleased with his talk and that it was all going very well and that as promised, they were with him every step of the way. Steve glanced down to sign another book and when he looked up again she had disappeared. Race came up to him spoke about what he had seen and described the woman to Steve and their idea of what she looked like tallied exactly and then Race said ‘She just seemed to disappear!’
Race has said that he has enough material from his chat with Steve for his radio show, to put on a whole show on Thanksgiving night with just Steve so that will be quite a coup. A shorter radio clip for Races show has already gone out and I think if they gave Steve full rein he could probably fill their radio shows for the next three months!!
Candace and I attended a few of the workshops and had a good time in a couple and a boring time in others… hey ho.. the law of averages I suppose.
There were some really good talks and I thoroughly enjoyed them, not really learning anything new just different angles on the same things. For me, it is about enjoying being in the atmosphere of talking freely with people about our subject matter and to explore Metaphysics in general. I am still always surprised at the depth of commitment Researchers in our field put into their subject. Years and years of continual seeking and sharing but combined often with loss of family and friends on the way, as they refuse to honour the very real experience people go through with ET contact.
Candace Tom and I, took some time out to do some sightseeing without Steve as he had his Book table to man and people to speak to..
We firstly visited the ancient Taos Pueblo, which was just behind our Hacienda and is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. The Native legends, language and oral history claim to be able to trace the Pueblo Indian roots back to the beginning of time! Because of the horrendous oppression of the invading Catholics and their religious fervour the Natives guard their history, culture and values and do not divulge to outsiders. Therefore their religion is passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. In the early 16oo’s the people were forced into ‘Civilisation’ by the Catholic invaders. This meant they were enslaved, killed and forcibly made to forgo their own culture and adopt the Catholic dogma. It is amazing that their own culture still survives today. I so admire the tenacity of the original habitants of the USA.
The houses/adobes are made of very thick walls, which are made of earth, straw and water mixed and poured into brick forms. The little square houses create the bigger houses by joining up but by being many individual homes built side-to-side and connecting, however there are no connecting inner doorways. Each home has just one front door entrance but the main dwelling is on the upper level with a ladder to climb up and so this way it was easier to keep our marauders… unfortunately not the Catholics. The ladders were just pulled up from the ground levels to the rooftops, a bit like the portcullises in our castles I suppose. A one-door entrance is so much easier to guard.
The Pueblo maintains an enclosed community and a restriction of no electricity or running water through the Adobe houses and so the river – The Red Willow Creek - running through the middle of the village supplies all. There is over 100,000 acres of land, which has been designated for the exclusive use of the tribe, which is brilliant and trees wildlife and fish etc are all protected. Womderful stuff.
However, we could only stay a short time in the Pueblo as all three of us started to feel very low in spirits and energy and also very depressed. There were a few natives in the little shops selling art works and artifacts and some doing building work on the rivers bridge, and they were all very polite and friendly but overall the atmosphere inside the compound was very heavy. We concluded that because of the extreme poverty and hardships the Indians had experienced in the past, and probably still do in these difficult times, coupled with the desire to keep their way of life secret from outsiders, the energy was very compressed and depressing.
I was disappointed but glad that we had visited. We also later made a trip to an Art Gallery and that lifted out spirits. Not by the art-work but by the really spectacular building and furniture which was the work of the one man owner. It was very uplifting for us all, and each one of us said we would be happy to move in immediately to live among his superb wood craftsmanship as long as we could discard the art-work!!
Tom did a fantastic job of taking care of Steve and being his ‘Roadie.’ Tom has such an organised mind and way of handling details that made it all so smooth for us all, especially for me who thinks and works the same way as Tom. Steve said how bereft he will be when we get home and does more talks and Tom will not be there to oversee, as there was a huge part of him that loved being taken care of in this way. Once Tom has left us at the airport finally and we had to make out own way to catch our flight home.. Steve was calling out loudly.. 'Tom, where are you? Which way do we go?' It was obviously going to take him a while to get back in the driving seat...
The week went by really quickly and we then were moving on to Santa Fe just a couple of hours away. The journey was lovely and picturesque and when we arrived in Santa Fe.. Tom had once again done some intensive research for the best hotels and had booked us into an incredibly luxurious and unusual Plaza hotel called La Fonda.
I think for our short trip this time, we were lucky enough to be able to stay in what were probably three of the most interesting and diverse hotels in the USA. Our time in Las Vegas was pretty spectacular but really I love quirky and ethnic the best and all three of our stays were up there in my top ten favourites of all time... anywhere in the world. Bali still being up there at number one...
We were shown up to our rooms in a separate exclusive wing of the hotel, which we were told is usually used by visiting Film and Pop stars and the like and we were amazed at how beautiful it all was. I’m sure that if our dear friend Toni Russell (our self-appointed executive marketing woman) who was so sorely missed on our trip, if she’d have been with us, she would have been telling everyone we met up with, from busboys onwards, that it was appropriate to be in the separate annex as they had a world class author in their midst! I’m not sure that Steve ever really got used to that wonderful way Toni had of engaging every one we met with the story of Steve’s amazing book. Maybe over time, he will acclimatize to that thought.
Our bed was in the middle of the room, the first time I have ever seen that and the décor was typically Mexican and dynamic. We just walked around going.. 'OMG!! this is so amazing!' We had a massive balcony area and a hot tub up on the roof – unfortunately too cold to take advantage of.. One of the really unusual churches was just opposite and we all just stood together on the balcony taking in the sights, smells and feel of Santa Fe. In essence it reminded us of Eureka Springs and the art-work and clothes reflected that intense artistic community but it had its own energy and we just loved it. Steve was speaking at our friend Lynda Stars studio for the evening and as it was Halloween, she had dressed up accordingly as did some of the members of her weekly group. The group meets to watch movies to do with the ET and related subject matter and they were a really nice bunch of people, albeit a very small group. It was a lovely cosy venue for the last talk of the trip.
We did a little bit of sightseeing in Santa Fe as we had been told to go visit the church with the “magic staircase”. After a false start but nonetheless a nice visit to another church, we finally found the church in question. Tom overheard the story about the staircase and it went like this:-
When the church was built, it was built without an inner staircase to the upper level. The Nuns used to have to climb up ladders. (We all know how nuns feel about people looking up their skirts!!.. the very famous levitating Nun in the middle ages was told off.. not for levitating but because people could see her knickers. And who knows, in those days maybe knickers were a luxury so even more reason why Mother Superior was always calling her down from the ceiling!)
As there was no money to build a staircase, the Nuns constantly prayed for a solution to the problem. One day a man just turned up and said he wanted to build them a staircase and over a short period of time – 11 days in all, he built an exquisite spiral wooden staircase with no nails and no support to a wall. Everything was jointed in.. A true carpentry work of art. After the staircase was built the man just disappeared. So the staircase just hung in space but after a while they decided to add a balustrade to facilitate safety but I would have loved to have seen it in the original form. We did an afternoon of window-shopping although Steve did indulge in a lovely Russian style hat to wear back home when he goes on his daily walk to feed his horses…and then it was time for Steve’s last talk.
It was a lovely one to do and the venue was great being Lynda’s own private space with every single wall lined with pictures of ET contact, ships and all sorts of strange metaphysical occurrences. As always Steve made himself available for quite a while to answer questions.
But the early rise for Candace was calling. She was going to have to get up at 5 a.m. and start on her incredible 12 hours non-stop drive back to the farm and all her beloved animals. Tom however, was coming with us to the airport. He was on our flight to Dallas and then he was flying on to Austin for work. But firstly he was going to put us in the super-dooper airport lounge again, as his final task of giving us sublime love and care right up to the last minute. What a difference in the 5-hour wait in an airport when you are in the special area for the wealthy .. or maybe that’s unfair to say, it’s the special area for people who think they deserve to be treated like humans instead of like cattle. The time passed in a flash and we were soon on our plane to Heathrow and our return to England.
It had been so difficult to say goodbye to Candace at our bedroom door and not know when we would be able to be in this wonderful woman’s company again but then to see Tom walk away in the lounge and disappear from sight made me very tearful. We have had such a magical time with them both and made such incredibly strong bonds. Steve and Tom are like brothers together and that is a total new experience for each of them as they have never felt a need in the past for male friendships as such. Their time together in Austin cemented that friendship and also our time on the farm cemented our joint friendships even further.
So it is back to England for us and a new path ahead for Steve to continue to get the message of his book ‘out there.’ Steve knows he now has to really focus on the Radio talk shows both here and in the U.S.A and will start to look at conferences in Europe and further afield. The ET subject is very big in China, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Italy and Russia. Hopefully my Blogs in the future will be from those countries. So many people have asked me to continue on with my Blog when I am home to let everyone know how Steve is doing and what we are both up to so I might well do some blogs of life with the Joneses in England.. Just this last night after I had completed the blog, Steve turned to me in the evening and said that he had just 'been told' that he needed to talk more about where he went when he was taken by the Light Beings in his Rhode Island experience. So I said I would look forward to hearing much more about that and then as he dropped off to sleep it was apparent to me that there was a very unusual energy in the room. Just as I was trying to work out what it was, there was a kind of 'bang' noise and then all the alarms in the street went off. I went to the window and we had a total blackout which had caused the alarms to trigger. Steve groggily woke and asked what was happening.. when I told him he said he was in the middle of an intense 'download' of information.. As he got up to look out of the window the lights came back on in the street. So more goodies to look forward to..
Watch this space..
I finish up by saying thankyou to all those people we met in the US who made our journey and Steve’s tour so memorable and to those people who put us up and put up with us.. a huge thankyou.. Especially Mary, Ann, Paulette and Gary and Michael for his kindness and chauffeuring. And to all the organisers of the talks Steve gave, especially Janet who took a huge chance on asking Steve to come to Taos, thankyou for giving him this opportunity to speak about his life and his understanding of what it all means…
I think that if you do have a bucket list of things to do before you 'go home', then doing a road trip of the United States of America would probably fulfill the majority of those things to do and see on that bucket list. I have been continually overwhelmed by the incredible innate kindness, care, curiosity and generosity of the American people. Everywhere we went we were met by unfailing politeness and interest in us as people. Unlike the English with their inherent reserve, which borders on rudeness, American people are open like a book and I so loved that about them. The country itself is so incredibly diverse that it always answers the question we get asked over and over again, by people who know no better.. ”Why don’t American people even have passports?” to which I reply.. “Why should they bother to go abroad when they have every possible vista and climate within their own shores?” You could spend your entire life just travelling in the United States and yet never see or witness all it has to offer. We are so grateful for what we were able to see and share in, on our tour.
And to Candace and Tom who encapsulated every single aspect of all that is so fine in America and it’s people.... words are just not enough… Thankyou….
Love
Annie
Pictures are from the Multi-talented farmer, Past-life-regressionist extraordinaire, Artist, Sublime cook and wonderful Mum, Carer of all creatures great and small and oh, yes, totally superb photographer..
Mrs Candace Craw-Goldman…
Thankyou once again for capturing such wonderful images for us to treasure.
1. The magical trees outside our door at the Hacienda Sol
2. The last word on loos. The toilet holder in the restaurant/ex-church in Santa Fe. I kid you not.. toilet paper sitting in the cooking pans!
And the last definitive pictures on Orbs.
Johny Two Hawks at the Ozarks and Steve also at the Ozarks just when he he had told people that the Light Beings said they would be with him on the Tour. Note that the massive singular Orb is between Steve and the dias making it impossible to be a 'speck of dust in the camera lens'..
A
No comments:
Post a Comment