Santa Fe

 Santa Fe

Right now, I’m in a colorful local diner on the side of the “Old Las Vegas Freeway” just outside of Santa Fe. I love mountain towns, and though Santa Fe might look different than Vail and Tahoe, looks are deceiving. I’m at over 7000 feet in elevation, and I can feel it. The air, though thin, is so clean, and the sky is ink-black at night. Skies during the day are powder blue, far above the smog that intrudes on Los Angeles. I love the creosote and manzanita-crested mountaintops. The rust sand contrasts with green scrub in a near-illusory way, with warm golden sands and flame orange buckwheat to round out the southwestern palette. The high desert is a magical place, 

This morning I slept until 10 before enjoying coffee and an hour-long chat with my AirBnb host, Dana, who is wonderful. We talked about our travels in the UK- her life in Wales with her Welsh husband, and my abroad in Sussex. She told me about her time as a comparative religion professor, her youth in DC, her adorable adopted cats (one is a big ginger boy that charms me with his wobbly belly), and her heartbreak over Palestine. This is what I love about travel- meeting new people. I also shopped at an art collective after grabbing a delicious Mexican Mocha and raspberry oat bar at a local coffee shop. The artist manning the register talked to me about his life growing up just outside of Goleta, in the Angeles National Forest. I immediately bonded with him, as I grew up in the same forest on the rural outskirts of Santa Clarita along San Francisquito Canyon (y’all know I lived right by the sticks). We talked about hiking, travel, and strokes (he unfortunately had one ten years back, around the same time my Grandma did). A friendly man came into the shop to check out the art and chat. He wore the most incredible turquoise and natural stone jewelry that he set in silver, himself- I wanted to ask if he sold more, though I likely couldn’t afford it. It was truly some of the most gorgeous jewelry I’ve ever seen, and some of the stones he had found on hikes and hunting trips. He is part-Anasazi and works in conjunction with biologists to study the hormone levels in local game, and he told me lots about the cultural taboos local tribes and pueblos had against eating certain types of meat. He was incredibly knowledgeable about the biology of each animal and the cultures of native peoples stretching across the country! We talked about the heirloom seeds and agricultural practices of native southwestern peoples, and how Chumash native Americans leech toxins from acorns before preparing them to eat (which is something I always found fascinating).

People in New Mexico and Arizona are truly so friendly and pleasant. There’s something unmatched about the hospitality of people in the Southwest- the empathy born of the shared experiences in surviving intense conditions- blistering heat, freezing mountain winters, galeforce winds. Being from the upper midwest originally, where winters reached -40 C and we contended with the brutal windchill of the Lake Effect, I knew this kind of hardy, rugged warmth from my semi-rural youth in Lake Villa, Illinois. While I’m going to miss LA more than I can describe, I’m a country girl at heart. 

Yesterday, the freeway between Winslow, AZ and Gallup, NM had a road closure, so I was taken on a detour that added over an hour to my trip. While I normally would dread *more* driving, this turned out to be a huge blessing- I was routed through the Navajo Nation, which was absolutely stunning. Beautiful rock formations abound, with fiery mountainsides and plateaus and gorgeous wildflowers along the Indian Routes (the Navajo Nation’s highways). Magnificent pinto horses graves on wild grass along the roadsides. Schoolkids hopping off a bus waved at me and smiled- I was one of the few non-Native people to drive through some of the remote areas, it seemed. It was such a gift to get to see this gorgeous place. While I’m not Native myself, my dad’s cousins are half-Navajo, and he’s always had a deep appreciation for Native cultures and histories, which is something I’ve inherited from him. 

Tomorrow, I journey onward to Oklahoma City, though I’m not eager to leave beautiful Santa Fe. Though I hope for everyone in the south’s sakes that the hurricanes will abate, I also selfishly wish this for my own travel plans. I hear that OKC is famous for its big, juicy steaks and barbecue, and I’m excited to treat myself to a charbroiled sirloin with a baked potato. The food in the southwest is delicious- I had some unreal chicken fajitas with Spanish rice and refried beans at the Javelina restaurant in Sedona- but I’m also excited for some down-home cookin in the south. I’m planning on getting cheesy grits out in Arkansas, and maybe some grilled catfish!