I have a date with New Mexico’s master of the handmade fireplace. We’re to meet at 5 p.m. in front of the St. Francis Church in Ranchos de Taos. I admit I have a picture in my mind of Carmen Velarde—a native Taoseña well up in years, a living legend known for her marvelous, one-of-a-kind fireplaces; a woman who carries the traditions of Taos Pueblo and Spanish northern New Mexico in her bones, who has spent a lifetime animating those traditions with her hands. I imagine a wizened, fantastically wrinkled elder in black, with long dark braids wound around her wise old head, rosary in one hand and basket of tortillas in the other.

As I wait among the crowd of camera-toting tourists, someone calls my name. A stylishly coiffed woman with a smile as bright as a Taos morning steams up in a green half-ton Ford pickup, her tanned, well-muscled forearms commanding the steering wheel. Don’t go making a little old lady out of this one just yet, I think.
“Just follow me!” she calls. I do as she says, and, after a crawl along the rough, hilly dirt roads of Ranchos, we come to a handmade sign for Artista Road. Atop the steep, rutted climb is her home, a 300-year-old adobe, a warren of tiny rooms with gracefully arched, impossibly thick walls. Since 1949 she has lived here with her husband of 54 years, Ernest.

“My great-grandmother was Taos Indian, and my great-grandfather was Apache,” Carmen explains over a dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn she has prepared and serves on paper plates. “They were forbidden to marry and could not live on the Pueblo. So they built their house on this land instead.” Living nearby in what amounts to a family compound is Carmen’s progeny of three children, 17 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

Knowing she just turned 74 a few days ago, I ask Carmen if she had a good birthday. “Of course I did!” she replies. “Let’s get supper under our belts and get to work!” At 74, she carries her 5-foot-4-inch person with defiance and pride, assuming her stance like a martial arts master, her sturdy body yielding not a fraction to the weight of years.

Her grandparents, Trinidad and Julian Ybarra, raised Carmen and taught her survival skills: farming, gathering wild edibles, food preservation, remedios, carding, spinning, weaving serapes, colcha embroidery, soap making, brick making, and adobe plastering. “As I was growing up, I had to learn everything. There was never a dull moment in my life because I was always learning something new,” Carmen says.

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