Where the Earth Feels Thin: Finding the Numinous in the Southwest

The road bends, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains come into view, rising above the high desert. The air smells faintly of piñon and juniper. Ravens drift across the enormous blue sky. And then there is the light—that unmistakable New Mexico light that somehow makes every color richer and every shadow more alive.

Every time I return to northern New Mexico, I have the same thought:

I'm home.

It has never made logical sense to me.

I didn't grow up there. I've never lived there. I have no family roots in New Mexico. Yet something in me settles the moment I arrive, as though a part of myself has been quietly waiting for my return.

Years ago, I came across the Celtic idea of a thin place—a place where the distance between the ordinary world and the sacred seems somehow smaller. The phrase doesn't suggest that the earth itself is fragile. Rather, it describes those rare places where our usual distractions begin to fall away. We become quieter. More attentive. More aware of mystery, beauty, and our place within something larger than ourselves.

That is what northern New Mexico has always been for me.

The earth feels thin there.

There is another word I have loved for many years: numinous.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung used the word to describe experiences that evoke awe, mystery, and the unmistakable sense that we are encountering something greater than ourselves. The numinous cannot be measured or explained away. We experience it before we understand it. It stirs something deep within us that feels both ancient and familiar.

Jung believed these moments mattered psychologically. They interrupt the constant chatter of the mind and remind us that life is larger than our everyday concerns. They invite us into another way of knowing—not through analysis alone, but through wonder.

When I first learned that word, I immediately thought of northern New Mexico.

I find it in Santa Fe and Taos. Along the High Road. Standing quietly in Georgia O'Keeffe's home and studio in Abiquiú. Walking among the ancient cliff dwellings at Bandelier. Visiting Acoma Pueblo and San Ildefonso Pueblo, where beauty, resilience, history, and tradition are woven together in ways that cannot be captured in a photograph.

But perhaps nowhere have I felt it more deeply than at El Santuario de Chimayó.

People have been making pilgrimages there for generations. Many come seeking healing. Some hope for relief from physical illness. Others carry grief, fear, loneliness, or burdens that have no visible name. Whether one understands the healing dirt literally, symbolically, or somewhere in between almost seems beside the point.

Tucked beside the sanctuary is a tiny room where visitors may take a small handful of the reddish earth. The ceiling is so low that many people have to duck their heads. Two people fit comfortably. Four would feel crowded. In the center of the room is a simple opening where the earth has been gathered for centuries. There is nothing elaborate about it. No spectacle. Just quiet people waiting patiently, each carrying burdens that are mostly invisible.

The last time my husband and I visited, we were scooping a little dirt into a small bag when another man stepped inside. He smiled apologetically for interrupting our intimate little moment and explained that he was a truck driver. Whenever his route brought him through northern New Mexico, he stopped at Chimayó.

He told us he had arthritis in both knees. When he rubbed the Chimayó dirt on them, he said, the pain often eased for months.

That day, though, his knees weren't bothering him.

Instead, he reached down, took a handful of the earth, and gently pressed it against his chest.

"I don't have anything hurting today," he said with a quiet smile. "But I figure we all have something going on in here."

He tapped his chest.

"I thought maybe I'd ask for a little healing for that."

I have thought about that man many times since.

Not because I was trying to decide whether the dirt itself possesses healing powers. That wasn't what stayed with me.

What stayed with me was his humility.

His willingness to acknowledge that even when our bodies feel well, our hearts often carry wounds that no one else can see.

As a therapist, I sit with people every day who carry those invisible burdens. Anxiety. Grief. Shame. Loneliness. Old losses. Traumas that continue to echo through the years.

Healing rarely happens all at once.

More often, it begins with the courage to acknowledge that something inside us needs tending.

Standing in that tiny room at Chimayó, I realized that people don't come there simply hoping for miracles.

They come because they long for healing.

Those are not always the same thing.

Whether healing comes through faith, medicine, therapy, time, community, nature, or some mysterious combination of them all, I have come to believe that the longing itself is deeply human.

That little room has become one of my own thin places.

Not because I expect answers there.

But because it reminds me that hope is still a form of healing.

Another of my thin places is Christ in the Desert Monastery, tucked into a canyon beside the Chama River. The final miles follow a winding dirt road where the canyon walls gradually replace the noise of ordinary life. Somewhere along the way, my phone loses its signal. After the first minute of mild annoyance, I remember what a gift that is.

By the time I arrive, something inside me has already become quieter.

The landscape has begun its work before I ever step through the monastery doors.

Nothing dramatic happens there.

No lightning bolt of insight.

No profound revelation accompanied by celestial music.

Instead, there is the canyon, the river, the monastery bell calling the monks to prayer, and a silence that feels full rather than empty.

I simply become more present.

Sometimes that is enough.

It isn't difficult to understand why artists have been drawn to northern New Mexico for generations.

Georgia O'Keeffe once said that when she first came to New Mexico, she knew it was hers. I've always understood what she meant—not as ownership, but as recognition.

People often say she painted the landscape, but I think she painted attention.

She looked long enough for bones, flowers, hillsides, adobe walls, and open sky to become extraordinary.

The Southwest invites that kind of seeing.

It asks us to slow down.

To notice.

To remember that beauty rarely shouts.

It whispers.

As a therapist, I think often about what allows healing to begin.

We sometimes imagine healing as a dramatic breakthrough—a profound insight, the perfect coping skill, or the conversation that finally changes everything.

Those things certainly have their place.

But more often, healing begins quietly.

It begins when the nervous system realizes, even for a few moments, that it is safe enough to soften.

When our breathing slows.

When our shoulders drop.

When we notice beauty without immediately reaching for our phones.

When we remember that we are part of something much larger than our worries.

That is what the Southwest has always given me.

Not answers.

Perspective.

It has never erased grief, uncertainty, or the ordinary struggles of being human.

Instead, it reminds me that not everything needs to be solved immediately.

Some things need to be witnessed.

Some need to be grieved.

Some need time.

And some require us to become quiet enough to hear what we already know.

Perhaps that is why I return again and again.

Each visit feels less like traveling somewhere new and more like coming home to a part of myself that everyday life can sometimes obscure.

I suspect we all have places like that.

For some, it is the ocean.

For others, it is a forest, a mountain trail, a favorite chapel, a family farm, a garden, or simply a chair beside a window where morning light falls across a cup of coffee.

A thin place doesn't have to be dramatic or far away.

It is simply a place where the noise recedes and something deeper becomes easier to hear.

Northern New Mexico is that place for me.

It doesn't give me answers.

It reminds me how to listen.

And sometimes, that is enough.

I'd love to hear from you.

Where is your thin place?

Where does your breathing slow, your mind become quieter, and your heart remember—even for a moment—that you belong to something larger than your worries?

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Janet Nash, MSW, LISW-S, Yoga Therapist, CCTP, is a psychotherapist, writer, and founder of Interiority Wellness. She writes about mental health, healing, creativity, nature, and the lifelong work of coming home to ourselves.