Land of Enchantment
Monday broke Santa Fe beautiful, the sky blue, blue, the temperature perfect. Pam, Anne and I decided to visit Bandelier National Monument. We first went to Bishops Lodge for a chile brunch, sitting on the patio, watching the cottonwood leaves flutter green in the gentle breeze against the clear blue sky.
Bandelier is in a canyon of the Jemez (HEY-mehz) Mountains. The Jemez are the remnants of a HUGE volcano that blew eons ago –- the eruption was 600 times greater than that of Mount St. Helens in 1980, with ash flung as far as Nebraska and Iowa. Closer to home, ash settled out in thick layers that compressed into tuff –- a soft, easily sculpted stone. Eons of erosion have left fingers of tuff separated by steep canyons.
In one such canyon –- Frijoles (free-HO-lays) Canyon -- the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indian enlarged wind-eroded caves in the tuff walls and built additional rooms against the canyon wall using tuff bricks. In the bottom of the canyon, they built a circular pueblo with kivas in the center plaza. The ruins of all this can now be explored, including climbs up wooden ladders into claustrophobic cave rooms whose ceilings are darkened with the soot of ancient fires. The bottom of the canyon away from the stream was desert with fields of Indian blanket –- a beautiful daisy-like flower that has an outer ring of yellow and a center of red. Along the Frijoles stream was a forest of Ponderosa pines (with bark that smells like vanilla), blooming New Mexico locust, gamble oak, and a variety of wildflowers. It was very hot in the sun, and cool and luscious in the shade.
On the way back, we stopped at the Overlook at White Rock (a bedroom community for Los Alamos – the atomic city). Glorious views down into the Rio Grande canyon, across to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, north to the mysterious Black Mesa, and south to the Sandia Mountains. Anne saw a canyon wren; we all saw violet-green swallows swooping along the basalt cliff. On the way home, we stopped in Española for dinner at El Paragua. I had the Mexican combination with carne adovada, tamale, taco, and enchilada. Each bite was a taste of heaven. I then tried and failed to find the historic plaza, but in the process drove us through a lot of Española you would never guess exists from the highway.
Tuesday, Anne and I joined her friend Ron for breakfast at Tia Sophia’s (huevos rancheros, red, yum), then met up with Mary Lou to visit the Cathedral, the Alan Hauser sculpture garden (the face atop the highest sculpture looks like Wallace, as in Wallace and Grommet), Loretto Chapel (with the mysterious spiral staircase that shouldn’t be standing, built by an unknown carpenter with few tools and unknown wood), Señor Murphy’s Candy (addictively good piñon caramels), Packard’s (fine Indian jewelry, blankets, Kachinas, fetishes, etc.), the Indian jewelry displays under the portal of the Palace of the Governors, and the Georgia O’Keefe museum. It was well past lunch time, so we ate at the delightful garden of the St. Francis Hotel –- believe it or not, salads instead of green chile –- then drove along some of Santa Fe’s quaintest streets –- Canyon Road, Upper Canyon Road, Cerro Gordo, Alameda, Acequia Madre, Palace. Mary Lou went home, Anne and I went home and changed, and Pam, Anne and I went to the Cantina at Casa Sena for dinner. Ron was playing piano, as he has for years, and the servers periodically would stop waiting to sing show tunes. Having been raised on show tunes, this was an establishment I spent many evenings in when I lived in Santa Fe.
Wednesday we puttered around the house for the morning. Pam has made her backyard a paradise for birds –- 5 bird baths, numerous bird feeders, a large Russian olive excellent for perching and singing, a cherry tree laden with fruit that the birds find delicious. Santa Fe has few local species, but, as Pam explained, it is on the flyway of a major migratory route –- down the Rocky Mountains, right at the Santa Fe River, left at the Rio Grande. Pam is very close to the Santa Fe River, so gets all sorts of birds visiting her bird spa. That morning and over the course of the week we saw 3 kinds of dove, black-headed grosbeaks, canyon towhees, Bullock’s orioles, mountain chickadees, lots of finches, sparrows, and robins, and probably several other species I’m forgetting.
In the afternoon, Anne and I drove to Ghost Ranch. On the way we went into Abiquiu to see the house where Georgia O’Keefe lived, and down to the Rio Chama below Abiquiu Dam, which was high with a strong current of cold water. At Ghost Ranch we took the Chimney Rock hike, which leads to the top of one of the beautiful mesas that surround Ghost Ranch. The brochure said it would take 1-1/2 to 2 hours, but it took us 3, because we stopped so often to look at birds and the view. At one point, we paralleled an absolutely vertical cliff across a ravine. We saw a raven soar along the cliff, then land on a tiny ledge near the top and feed a chick. There were 4 black chicks, looking very grown, jockeying for space on the tiny ledge that barely accommodated them. First time out, it will be fly or die for those chicks. We later saw both parents holding majestic vigil at points above the nest.
The views from the top were just profoundly splendid. To get a wan sense of it, go to Google images and type in Ghost Ranch and then Google again adding the word Pedernal (name of a distinctive mountain on the horizon south of Ghost Ranch, painted many times by Georgia O’Keefe). But it is impossible to convey the feeling of the vastness, of the incredible scenery every direction you look, of the stretch in your soul exerted by the constantly shifting light and the huge sky and the billowing clouds and the deep, deep silence. We walked down as the sun sank, which of course turned the red and gold cliffs redder and more golden, and the blue steak of Abiquiu Reservoir bluer. A huge cumulous cloud above a mesa was white at the top, pink in the middle, and gray at the bottom. A rainbow hooked another cloud to a mesa top. Many cottontails were out munching on grass, and several more birds slowed our progress back to the car. I feared we had fed our souls at the expense of our bodies, but we reached Abiquiu Inn just before its closing at 9 pm. Excellent green chile enchilada. Tourist tip: the Inn has a wonderful gift shop.
Thursday was uncharacteristically cloudy, so we stayed in town. Lunch with Mary Lou at the Museum Hill restaurant, which has a stunning view across Santa Fe and the Rio Grande Valley to the Jemez Mountains. A tour of one of my alma maters, St. John’s College. Some more driving around the narrow streets endlessly lined with beautiful adobe homes. Lattes at the Santa Fe Bakery so we could use their WiFi to view some emails with graphics too large for Pam’s dial-up computer. Dinner with Mary Lou and her friend Diane on the patio at La Choza –- one of my favorite New Mexican food restaurants (out of about 20 favorites, ;) ). Red chile enchiladas. Yum. Beautiful sunset.
Friday we drove to Taos on the high road. We ate lunch at Rancho de Chimayo, which serves delicious New Mexican cuisine in an historic hacienda (ranch house). We then backtracked a little to Sanctuario de Chimayo, a beautiful chapel which is the object of an annual pilgrimage at Easter, with the faithful walking from as far away as El Paso. Next to the main sanctuary is a small narrow room, at the end of which is a tiny room with a hole in the floor. The hole is filled with holy dirt, which people rub on themselves for healing. The narrow room is full of pictures and statues of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and saints brought by pilgrims, and has a collection of crutches left by the healed.
Then the mountain drive through a number of small, centuries-old villages –- Truchas, Las Trampas, Ojo Sarco, Peñasco, etc. The architecture is distinctive –- adobe walls, but pitched and often gabled galvanized tin roofs to let the winter snows slide off (versus the flat roofs common in Santa Fe and elsewhere).
In Taos we walked around the plaza, dropping a few dollars into the economy and admiring the astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly expensive western clothing, made in Texas, doubtless to be purchased by Texans. We then went to Taos Pueblo, acknowledged to be 1000 years old, bought some fruit pies, were amused by the very dirty dogs sprawled unmoving any old place, looked at some drums and jewelry. We stopped for fry bread and salads at the pueblo café –- delicious –- then drove to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and walked across its span and back. The bridge shook each time a truck roared by. 650 feet below was the Rio Grande. The gorge is a training-wheel version of the Grand Canyon, with spectacular views along the gorge and to the Sangre de Cristos in the east. We then drove home back through Taos (stop for coffee at a hole-in-the-wall cafe that had no sleeves for the hot cups as an environmental statement: "Saving the planet one sleeve at a time") and down the beautiful Rio Grande canyon, with one stop to admire the breathtaking view of the Rio Grande rift, and another to go down to the river and put our feet in it.
Saturday sadly required me to drive Anne to the airport and say goodbye. I then drove through the revitalized and tourist-friendly Albuquerque downtown, and stopped awhile at Old Town. Something pulled me to visit the Patio Market, where I hadn’t been in decades, even when I lived in Albuquerque, but which was a must-see when I was little. To my amazement, the piñata shop –- an endless source of delight when I was young (visions of sugar plums danced in their heads) –- was still there. There was some kind of festival on the plaza, with a Mariachi band playing on the bandstand. Classic. I then drove through the North Valley, a relatively lush neighborhood of horse ranches, cottonwood trees, and alfalfa fields irrigated from the Rio Grande, then went east to a Northeast Heights neighborhood to have dinner with friends from DC who had moved to Albuquerque a couple years ago. It was odd to be in my home town, interacting with people with whom the common memories were all in DC, but was a delightful evening. A nice cap to a week of enchantment with Anne.
Bandelier is in a canyon of the Jemez (HEY-mehz) Mountains. The Jemez are the remnants of a HUGE volcano that blew eons ago –- the eruption was 600 times greater than that of Mount St. Helens in 1980, with ash flung as far as Nebraska and Iowa. Closer to home, ash settled out in thick layers that compressed into tuff –- a soft, easily sculpted stone. Eons of erosion have left fingers of tuff separated by steep canyons.
In one such canyon –- Frijoles (free-HO-lays) Canyon -- the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indian enlarged wind-eroded caves in the tuff walls and built additional rooms against the canyon wall using tuff bricks. In the bottom of the canyon, they built a circular pueblo with kivas in the center plaza. The ruins of all this can now be explored, including climbs up wooden ladders into claustrophobic cave rooms whose ceilings are darkened with the soot of ancient fires. The bottom of the canyon away from the stream was desert with fields of Indian blanket –- a beautiful daisy-like flower that has an outer ring of yellow and a center of red. Along the Frijoles stream was a forest of Ponderosa pines (with bark that smells like vanilla), blooming New Mexico locust, gamble oak, and a variety of wildflowers. It was very hot in the sun, and cool and luscious in the shade.
On the way back, we stopped at the Overlook at White Rock (a bedroom community for Los Alamos – the atomic city). Glorious views down into the Rio Grande canyon, across to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, north to the mysterious Black Mesa, and south to the Sandia Mountains. Anne saw a canyon wren; we all saw violet-green swallows swooping along the basalt cliff. On the way home, we stopped in Española for dinner at El Paragua. I had the Mexican combination with carne adovada, tamale, taco, and enchilada. Each bite was a taste of heaven. I then tried and failed to find the historic plaza, but in the process drove us through a lot of Española you would never guess exists from the highway.
Tuesday, Anne and I joined her friend Ron for breakfast at Tia Sophia’s (huevos rancheros, red, yum), then met up with Mary Lou to visit the Cathedral, the Alan Hauser sculpture garden (the face atop the highest sculpture looks like Wallace, as in Wallace and Grommet), Loretto Chapel (with the mysterious spiral staircase that shouldn’t be standing, built by an unknown carpenter with few tools and unknown wood), Señor Murphy’s Candy (addictively good piñon caramels), Packard’s (fine Indian jewelry, blankets, Kachinas, fetishes, etc.), the Indian jewelry displays under the portal of the Palace of the Governors, and the Georgia O’Keefe museum. It was well past lunch time, so we ate at the delightful garden of the St. Francis Hotel –- believe it or not, salads instead of green chile –- then drove along some of Santa Fe’s quaintest streets –- Canyon Road, Upper Canyon Road, Cerro Gordo, Alameda, Acequia Madre, Palace. Mary Lou went home, Anne and I went home and changed, and Pam, Anne and I went to the Cantina at Casa Sena for dinner. Ron was playing piano, as he has for years, and the servers periodically would stop waiting to sing show tunes. Having been raised on show tunes, this was an establishment I spent many evenings in when I lived in Santa Fe.
Wednesday we puttered around the house for the morning. Pam has made her backyard a paradise for birds –- 5 bird baths, numerous bird feeders, a large Russian olive excellent for perching and singing, a cherry tree laden with fruit that the birds find delicious. Santa Fe has few local species, but, as Pam explained, it is on the flyway of a major migratory route –- down the Rocky Mountains, right at the Santa Fe River, left at the Rio Grande. Pam is very close to the Santa Fe River, so gets all sorts of birds visiting her bird spa. That morning and over the course of the week we saw 3 kinds of dove, black-headed grosbeaks, canyon towhees, Bullock’s orioles, mountain chickadees, lots of finches, sparrows, and robins, and probably several other species I’m forgetting.
In the afternoon, Anne and I drove to Ghost Ranch. On the way we went into Abiquiu to see the house where Georgia O’Keefe lived, and down to the Rio Chama below Abiquiu Dam, which was high with a strong current of cold water. At Ghost Ranch we took the Chimney Rock hike, which leads to the top of one of the beautiful mesas that surround Ghost Ranch. The brochure said it would take 1-1/2 to 2 hours, but it took us 3, because we stopped so often to look at birds and the view. At one point, we paralleled an absolutely vertical cliff across a ravine. We saw a raven soar along the cliff, then land on a tiny ledge near the top and feed a chick. There were 4 black chicks, looking very grown, jockeying for space on the tiny ledge that barely accommodated them. First time out, it will be fly or die for those chicks. We later saw both parents holding majestic vigil at points above the nest.
The views from the top were just profoundly splendid. To get a wan sense of it, go to Google images and type in Ghost Ranch and then Google again adding the word Pedernal (name of a distinctive mountain on the horizon south of Ghost Ranch, painted many times by Georgia O’Keefe). But it is impossible to convey the feeling of the vastness, of the incredible scenery every direction you look, of the stretch in your soul exerted by the constantly shifting light and the huge sky and the billowing clouds and the deep, deep silence. We walked down as the sun sank, which of course turned the red and gold cliffs redder and more golden, and the blue steak of Abiquiu Reservoir bluer. A huge cumulous cloud above a mesa was white at the top, pink in the middle, and gray at the bottom. A rainbow hooked another cloud to a mesa top. Many cottontails were out munching on grass, and several more birds slowed our progress back to the car. I feared we had fed our souls at the expense of our bodies, but we reached Abiquiu Inn just before its closing at 9 pm. Excellent green chile enchilada. Tourist tip: the Inn has a wonderful gift shop.
Thursday was uncharacteristically cloudy, so we stayed in town. Lunch with Mary Lou at the Museum Hill restaurant, which has a stunning view across Santa Fe and the Rio Grande Valley to the Jemez Mountains. A tour of one of my alma maters, St. John’s College. Some more driving around the narrow streets endlessly lined with beautiful adobe homes. Lattes at the Santa Fe Bakery so we could use their WiFi to view some emails with graphics too large for Pam’s dial-up computer. Dinner with Mary Lou and her friend Diane on the patio at La Choza –- one of my favorite New Mexican food restaurants (out of about 20 favorites, ;) ). Red chile enchiladas. Yum. Beautiful sunset.
Friday we drove to Taos on the high road. We ate lunch at Rancho de Chimayo, which serves delicious New Mexican cuisine in an historic hacienda (ranch house). We then backtracked a little to Sanctuario de Chimayo, a beautiful chapel which is the object of an annual pilgrimage at Easter, with the faithful walking from as far away as El Paso. Next to the main sanctuary is a small narrow room, at the end of which is a tiny room with a hole in the floor. The hole is filled with holy dirt, which people rub on themselves for healing. The narrow room is full of pictures and statues of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and saints brought by pilgrims, and has a collection of crutches left by the healed.
Then the mountain drive through a number of small, centuries-old villages –- Truchas, Las Trampas, Ojo Sarco, Peñasco, etc. The architecture is distinctive –- adobe walls, but pitched and often gabled galvanized tin roofs to let the winter snows slide off (versus the flat roofs common in Santa Fe and elsewhere).
In Taos we walked around the plaza, dropping a few dollars into the economy and admiring the astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly expensive western clothing, made in Texas, doubtless to be purchased by Texans. We then went to Taos Pueblo, acknowledged to be 1000 years old, bought some fruit pies, were amused by the very dirty dogs sprawled unmoving any old place, looked at some drums and jewelry. We stopped for fry bread and salads at the pueblo café –- delicious –- then drove to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and walked across its span and back. The bridge shook each time a truck roared by. 650 feet below was the Rio Grande. The gorge is a training-wheel version of the Grand Canyon, with spectacular views along the gorge and to the Sangre de Cristos in the east. We then drove home back through Taos (stop for coffee at a hole-in-the-wall cafe that had no sleeves for the hot cups as an environmental statement: "Saving the planet one sleeve at a time") and down the beautiful Rio Grande canyon, with one stop to admire the breathtaking view of the Rio Grande rift, and another to go down to the river and put our feet in it.
Saturday sadly required me to drive Anne to the airport and say goodbye. I then drove through the revitalized and tourist-friendly Albuquerque downtown, and stopped awhile at Old Town. Something pulled me to visit the Patio Market, where I hadn’t been in decades, even when I lived in Albuquerque, but which was a must-see when I was little. To my amazement, the piñata shop –- an endless source of delight when I was young (visions of sugar plums danced in their heads) –- was still there. There was some kind of festival on the plaza, with a Mariachi band playing on the bandstand. Classic. I then drove through the North Valley, a relatively lush neighborhood of horse ranches, cottonwood trees, and alfalfa fields irrigated from the Rio Grande, then went east to a Northeast Heights neighborhood to have dinner with friends from DC who had moved to Albuquerque a couple years ago. It was odd to be in my home town, interacting with people with whom the common memories were all in DC, but was a delightful evening. A nice cap to a week of enchantment with Anne.
posted by Annventurer | 7:27 AM
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