Truchas, in northern New Mexico, is a small farming community on the High Road to Taos. Truchas, which in Spanish means trout, was established in 1754 by settlers on the 15,000 acre royal land grant, Nuestra Señora Del Rosario San Fernando y Santiago. The adobe village is at elevation 8,000 feet and is fifteen miles west of the three Truchas peaks, each over 13,000 feet.

The settlers found attractive, natural, open meadows, but, no water. The run-off from the snow at the peaks coursed down adjacent, steep and narrow valleys which are inaccessible for local irrigation. To gain water for their fields, the settlers redirected a stream by digging a mile long ditch around a shoulder of the mountain. This enabled them to bring the water to a system of ditches, which in Spanish are called acequias, thereby providing irrigation for their fields. This engineering was ingenious and over two hundred years later, still sustains the community.

Aurelio Lopez and his family explained the acequia system to me and took me onto the mountain to see the Acequis de la Sierra. Over many visits to Truchas, I sought a way to commemorate the place, the system and the generations who continue to maintain the acequias. My paintings depict the colors, looking toward the mountains, of snow, exposed granite, conifer forests, exposed soil, growing crops and channeled water. The colors, looking toward the valley of the Rio Grande, are beige, buff, red, brown, maroon, charcoal and gray of the rocks and sands, and white of desert ice.

Malcolm Montague Davis