A time to every purpose: "Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest"

From "Be Here Now," written by Ram Dass,
graphics by the Lama Foundation of New Mexico

(Santa Fe New Mexican) ... The disparate threads of Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest can be overwhelming in their scope and digressions, but perhaps that’s the point — after all, the counterculture was by no means uniform, and it was at its most diverse and chaotic as it began to take seed in the New Mexico landscape. Lama co-founder Barbara Durkee points out in an audio clip from the exhibit that for thousands of newcomers, the idea of taking care of the land became a spiritual practice — a countercultural tenet specific to the Southwest that, of course, really began with the Pueblo Indians the hippies so admired and emulated — as well as with earlier proponents of Native culture like the 16th-century Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whom Loeffler said his friend, poet Gary Snyder, has called “the first counterculturalist.” These strands from the past are as relatable and relevant as ever to today’s tumult. After all, as Davidson put it, “History is not a static little moment; it is a trajectory.” Continued