Early in July, we left Santa Fe to go to the next stop on our vacation, Pagosa Springs. On the way we passed through the town of Espanola where I was born. I was on the lookout for Cerro Pedernal. A flat topped mountain that Georgia O’Keefe painted over twenty times.

And hey we found it along with a handy oversized parking lot right off the highway. Cerro Pedernal is close to the place where I have my earliest memories. Coyote, New Mexico. A village up in the mountains where my father was the Coyote District Ranger of the Santa Fe, National Forest. I don’t remember the mountain at all. We had lots of mountains up there.

O’Keefe liked to claim that because she painted the mountain so many times, that God gave it to her and it was hers. I read a story somewhere, I can’t find it to confirm it. that she climbed the mountain once. It stands at 9866 feet above sea level. The last segment, I read, involves scrambling up a steep slope with and hand over hand climbing. So kudos to her. The trail up there is about 7 miles so I don’t think I’ll be making the trek anytime soon. Upon her death in 1986 at 98 years of age she was cremated and her ashes spread over the mountain.

Cerro Pedernal in Spanish means flint hill. The Tewa people call it Tsi Ping and it is sacred to them. There is an ancient village nearby,  Tsi’pin-owinge—translating to “Village at Flaking Stone Mountain,” occupied from 1275 to 1450 AD that housed about a thousand people. They still call the mountain Tsi Ping. It was renamed by the Spanish when they explored the country and claimed it for their country and renamed everything they could. Earlier in our trip, at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, they had an exhibit of art by Tewa members. One of them was on a project to paint Tsi Ping 30 times and thus reclaim the mountain for his tribe from O’Keefe. I find this all fascinating. There seems to be a movement by indigenous Americans to reclaim their history, including place names, as a way of reestablishing and confirming their identity under their own terms.

Georgia O’Keeffe. My Front Yard, Summer, 1941. Access O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, https://access-ok.okeeffemuseum.org/object/1020. Accessed 19 August 2026

Here is one of O’Keefe’s paintings of the mountain. (You can see their entire collection online and download many of the works, subject to their terms of use at the museum web site.) It looks to be close to the same vantage point as my photographs. Both live and in the art, the mountain seems like a living being and just dominates the whole landscape.

We stayed for a little while and then drove on.

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