Santa Fe

For creative and artistic types, Santa Fe, New Mexico is a great place to spend some time. I just returned from my fourth trip in the last nine years. As quickly as the second morning of my visit, I found myself walking and talking slower, breathing more deeply and evenly and thinking more profound thoughts. Brainpower normally reserved for the chores of life gets freed up to process the things we are seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting and learning of. If you are good at bracketing, (ask me privately) everything is a fresh and new experience, even the things you think you have done before.


I stayed at a lovely ranch/mansion in a place called Pojoaque (Po hoah KAY) Pueblo about 15 miles north of Santa Fe on the way to Taos. The photo above is the view from the front porch where I would read in the mornings before breakfast.

The area is full of opposites. There is ancient history and an increasingly fast-paced modern world growing up all around it. Los Alamos is a few miles west, up in the mountains which was (and still is) home to the most brilliant minds ever assembled. They gathered there in the middle of World War II from several nations and became one- to try to figure out how to split the atom. The bombs created there were used in the greatest single act of violence ever committed by humanity which, in another opposite, mercifully ended the war. All of this technology is situated right next to others who still live simply off of the land. It's encouraging to see lots of people there who embrace technology such as solar and wind power to live a modern life but leave the smallest footprint on the earth as is possible.

There are elements of spirituality and religious traditions juxtaposed with very humanist or secular philosophies. Santa Fe is home to a violent history of conquering "Christian" priests and missionaries who brutally enslaved the native people. Recently, a bronze statue was erected at a house of worship depicting one of those conquering priests on the back of a horse in a heroic pose. During the night, the leg of the priest was torched off by a local who wanted to make a statement that they hadn't forgotten the ancestor slaves whose legs were chopped off when attempting to escape. The artist recast the leg and there has been no further vandalism but the locals all cast a knowing glance that their point and the remembrance was made.

Variations of Catholicism are alive and well, but the mainstream Catholic church probably does not recognize or endorse several of the rituals that go on there. Each year, the "Penitente" attracts hundreds (maybe thousands) of people who walk on their knees for several miles, some carry crosses and some more extreme types flog themselves bloody and as late as the 1990s, certain penitents allowed themselves to be nailed to crosses until the local officials put a stop to such things. Stories also abound of the healing powers of the dirt or the water or the leaves of the trees of this or that location.

On to lighter things- I visited Bandalier National Monument. It's the ruins of a city in a canyon that was occupied 1200 years ago. They would migrate south in the coldest of the winter months and there is evidence that they actually traded with people in Mexico as far as 1000 miles south. It appears that they outgrew the available space in the canyon and began to abuse the land and resources that supported them and they disappeared. I thought it interesting that there are now hundreds of times more people occupying the land but we still seem to be able to exploit the resources by shear force of will and brute force of our technology that allows us to dig deeper and to ship things to and from distant locales.

I would sit on this porch pictured below in the mornings or evenings to read and the neighborhood dogs from some of the other properties around would always come and say hello or bring a stick or a ball for me to throw. The two ranch dogs on the property are getting old and sick. They would sleep most of the day but when feeling up to it would at least come out and watch the festivities.

I heard a story about one of the neighbor dogs- Molly. A large mixed breed, very friendly and very rambunctious. There was a colt born on one of the ranches nearby which Molly witnessed. She went home and got a pull toy and came back and taught that colt how to play catch/fetch/tugowar with a length of ragged rope. The horse is grown now and can be seen regularly tossing sticks and catching them.

I didn't get a photo of it, but the Santa Fe Opera House is a beautiful and imposing structure about 2 miles south of Pojoaque Pueblo. I was a week too early for a major music festival held there. The venue sits on top of a hill and is the master of all it surveys. I'd like to hear a concert there on another visit. Listening to a classical station in Phoenix when I got home, they mentioned that if you left right now, you'd get to Santa Fe Opera House in time the opening concert that evening to kick off the festival.

I needed to come home earlier than I would have liked for the birthday party of a major event industry figure around Phoenix and then a DJ job the next evening. My last stop before heading out of Santa Fe was at an art gallery. I was speaking with the artist while looking at her work. About mid sentence, she stopped and said- are you a Disc Jockey? Yes. Do you live in Phoenix? Well- yes, Mesa. She continued that she had been the featured artist at an art show at Inspirador in Chandler about 18 months ago and that I was the DJ. I remembered her and we chatted about that event. I told her that I hadn't been back to Inspirador since that night even though I thought I had won them as a customer but oddly, I had been invited to an industry party that night- at Inpirador- and that after I left her gallery, I would be driving home to get back in time for the party that night.

I'm thinking of returning in October.