Beside the Rio Hondo [Paperback]

Phaedra Greenwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2007

How can a lone female of 'a certain age' take her last stand on a stony wedge of land in the mountains of Northern New Mexico? Will she find a job, learn to chop wood, be eaten by a bear or give it up and fall in love again? Beside the Rio Hondo is a memoir that explores in depth Phaedra Greenwood's connection with the natural world and simultaneous need for community. Her ex-husband gives her a year to live in the old adobe where they raised their children; then he plans to sell it so they can split the proceeds. But she wants to stay in the house forever. She has a year to come up with her own financing to buy out his half of the property or negotiate a deal with the neighbors. The house is falling apart, her money is running out and she has never applied for a loan in her life. It's a hell of a time to decide to have an epiphany. 'For over three decades I have made my home in the Taos area of Northern New Mexico,' the author says, 'not just because I love the spare and dramatic landscape, but also because I am intrigued by the complex layers of history and culture. I admire the devotion of the artists and craftsmen to their work, the loving care New Mexicans bestow on their churches and the close family ties that bond them in community. As I struggle with my garden, my orchard and old adobe casa, I absorb with gratitude my neighbors' rural savvy and the skills these tenacious hunters, fishermen, and ranchers have developed over the centuries to survive and thrive in the high mountain desert. Life here is hard, but often delicious. The energy, exotic flavors and bright colors of Taos are unique.'

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Phaedra Greenwood is a freelance writer/photographer whose poems, essays and stories have appeared in many local newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She has won numerous literary prizes including the Katherine Anne Porter Award. As a journalist and columnist for The Taos News, she received two first place awards in 2000 from the New Mexico Press Association for Best Review and Columns. In 1995 she won the PEN New Mexico Award for a short story included in this book: 'Dogs and Sheep.'

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Sunstone Press (November 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086534518X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865345188
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,538,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "If the mountain wants you, you can't leave, and, November 5, 2009

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beside the Rio Hondo (Paperback)

if the mountain doesn't want you, you can't stay." The hippies "started this legend" but in Phaedra Greenwood's case, the legend was true.

After the end of her marriage, she returned to the family cabin and found a way to stay. The cabin is located in Arroyo Hondo, 10 miles north of Taos, which she initially shared with her husband Aaron and in which they raised their two children. They left to pursue careers in Colorado, but Greenwood returned to the cabin after their divorce with very little money, very little homesteading skill, and an old car.

She tells a basically true story of her successful efforts to stay in the cabin, changing the names of her neighbors and collapsing the time sequences of events so that they fit into a framework of season by season.

Her writing is clear and spare:

"Leroy Marquez was out hoeing rows to plant pumpkins in his garden plot, and Roy Barela was driving his tractor up and down the field, making his first cut of alfalfa."

"The silver river sparkled through the cottonwood trees and dropped in noisy rills as it rushed over smooth stones on its way to meet the Rio Grande. Across the stream, white Arabians grazed in the pasture, swishing their tails."

"The tawny fields and ditches lined with vibrant willows, some vermilion and some like flame."

She tells her story well, and she overcomes many obstacles in staying in this place: "I have a great love of being here and wanting to be in this place."

I found her story moving and true, and very much enjoyed her successful efforts to the place where her "heart still expands."

Robert C. Ross 2009

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Transcendentalist in New Mexico, February 10, 2008

By 

Mark Myers (Beautiful Taos, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beside the Rio Hondo (Paperback)

If Henry David Thoreau had been a thoroughly self-reliant, hot-blooded woman with a taste for the Southwest instead of a chilly Yankee who went home to his mother's dinner table every night, he might have produced a book very much like this. Phaedra Greenwood's Walden is her beloved Rio Hondo in the mountains of New Mexico near Taos. Her hut is an old adobe built by descendants of the Spanish settlers who colonized Northern New Mexico starting in the 16th century.

The book traces a year in Greenwood's life after she returns to the mountains following the breakup of her marriage. With no man, no income to speak of, and not yet enough homesteading skills to provide much security, Greenwood attaches herself to the land like a smudge of moss on a mountainside, and hangs on with a tenacity that is nothing short of heroic. Her whole life is a cliffhanger. It makes for a wild adventure story.

But it is also a love story. Like Thoreau, Greenwood engages nature with a passion so embracing and intimate, the distance between the human and what she's observing sometimes disappears entirely. After tanning a deer hide, she writes, "I draped it over the trunk to dry; it stiffened to the rectangular shape and lay there all winter to remind me that I, too, am here to feed and nurture the land, to be consumed by it, invaded and conquered from within." The book is a work of high sensuality without having a single sex scene in it.

Stylistically, Greenwood is in the minimalist tradition of the best nature writers. She just tells her story, with heart, humor, and simple but ravishing imagery. The writing never gets in the way of our getting to know her and the world she loves. She treats the reader as her friend, not her audience.

"I can bear pain and loss," Greenwood writes. "What I can't bear is being imprisoned." Beside the Rio Hondo is the story of a journey toward freedom, a travelogue that takes you miles and miles without ever leaving the property. This poignant, unflinchingly honest, beautiful, and thoroughly absorbing book reminds us that if it's freedom you want, the only road that goes there is love.

5.0 out of 5 stars Beside the Rio Hondo, September 18, 2011

By 

Cindy Bellinger (Pecos, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beside the Rio Hondo (Paperback)

For anyone living in rural New Mexico, this book is hard to put down. Especially if you're a single woman trying to make a go of it. Following a divorce, author Phaedra Greenwood (who also writes for enchantment) wanted to return to her beloved adobe house near Taos. It was a place with fond memories of raising her young family. It was a place that evoked a deep spiritual connection to the land. It was a place her ex-husband made her pay rent on while he tried to sell it after they split.

Greenwood returned to the house after 15 years and began restoring what various renters had destroyed. Locals entered her life and helped with splitting firewood and cleaning the acequia. She returned the favor where she could, often with re-plastering the little church in the village. She says much of the book comes from journals she kept. Throughout the book she needs to find work; her savings are running out. She has a year to raise enough money to buy the acres the house is on. Readers will root for her all the wa