Monthly Photo Project -- March (Taiban)

This month's photo project had me heading west to what is essentially a ghost town on the way to Fort Sumner. Taiban has never been a thriving town, at least not in my memory, but there was a time when there was a general store that was open daily, and a handful of people who lived there. These days the only claim to fame is the building on the hill that captures the attention of passing tourists and photographers alike.

The common misconception is that this building was once a church, but after reporting on this structure years ago during my newspaper days, I learned that it was actually a one-room school house. Years ago there was even a swing set on the west side of the building; that has since been removed. The school was repainted years ago, but has continued to fall into a state of disrepair ever since. There are no longer any windows or doors on the structure and the wooden floors inside are starting to deteriorate as well. Surprisingly there isn't much graffiti, and what is there is of a religious nature.

All of my previous visits have centered around the school house, but today we ventured off the beaten path (or down the dirt path, as it were) and found more, old, decaying items of long ago. A run down house was littered with a fortune in rusted tin cans, aluminum cans and glass bottles. Old cars also left clues about when Taiban might have been in its hey day.

We also followed a dirt road that seemed to be leading us to one of the many mesas in the area, but instead took us to a cemetery we never knew existed. We explored the cemetery and read headstones, finding that deaths went back as fars as the late 1800s and dated to as recently as 2010. Some headstones were impossible to read because they had been there for so long, or because families weren't able to afford more than a piece of stone or concrete. Others looked like fallen silos with headstones in front of them, and yet another one was a giant crypt type memorial to a lady who passed away in the 1960s. I always wonder about the people who are buried in country cemeteries -- where did they come from, what brought them to this remote and dry area, how did they die.

The Monthly Photo Project was designed to get me out on a monthly basis, taking pictures of the things I love (landscapes) and blogging about the adventures. This months definately hit all of the project's challenges/elements. I enjoyed the fresh air, looking for the right angles, playing with settings on my camera and doing all of this with my family. I look forward to seeing what April has in store for me!