The day started strange—a 4- to 6-inch snowfall had blanketed the area, catching even the locals by surprise. Located about a half-hour south of Taos, just off Highway 285/84, sits a small, snow-covered church at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. I stumbled upon it completely by accident. I hadn’t planned to stop—hadn’t even known it was there. I’d been driving with the radio off, following my GPS voice, but somehow the volume on the GPS turned itself down, had never happened before or since so I drove several miles off my route without noticing. (I still wonder how that happened.)

When I finally realized I wasn’t heading in the right direction, I pulled over, turned up the GPS volume, and let it recalculate the route, hoping it would steer me back on track. Instead, it took me somewhere else.

Through the gently falling snow, a little church appeared up ahead, its stone walls faint against the white landscape. It looked almost otherworldly, like a vision that had stepped out of another time. Curious, I decided to pull over and take a closer look.

The church turned out to be the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, a one-fifth scale replica of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, that masterpiece of French Gothic architecture. Even through the snowfall, I could make out the intricate stonework, the pointed arches, the delicate details that seemed far too elaborate for such a remote, unassuming place.

It felt like something miraculous—a piece of medieval Europe hidden in the desert of New Mexico. I spent several minutes just walking around, taking in the dark lava rock walls and the stained-glass windows that gleamed through the snow.

A story began to unfold as I read a small plaque by the entrance: the church was built in the late 1800s by a French priest, Father Camillo Seux, who had been moved by the devotion of local pilgrims and used his family’s inheritance to construct this place. The history was rich and layered, reaching back through centuries and across continents. Apparently, the land itself had once been the site of an earlier parish church destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

When I finally got back into my jeep, brushing snow off my coat, I noticed a strange smell hanging in the air. It was unmistakably the scent of incense, rose maybe. Curiously I had not been inside any buildings at all. The smell was strong, filling the enclosed space, though I’d never brought incense into my vehicle, and I had no idea where it could have come from.

Sitting there, breathing it in, I felt a flicker of something I couldn’t quite name. Was this what people meant when they talked about a “religious experience”?

I called Jeannie to tell her about it! I’d always quietly laughed at stories like this. Jeannie told me, “Since I had made fun of her mother smelling roses for years, it would be perfect karma for me to smell roses!” “I don’t want to talk about it,” ending the conversation!

But there, in the stillness of the snow, surrounded by history and mystery, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something—or someone—had wanted me to find this place.