For the past 12 days I've been living in an 850-square-foot adobe high on a hill in Santa Fe, New Mexico, house sitting for a friend who is celebrating a significant birthday with a dream trip to Italy.
I've been visiting Santa Fe since the late sixties but really don't remember much about it until 1982 when my first husband and I made a trip here. In the late eighties and early nineties my sister Cindi lived here and we had several adventures, and yet another set of treks to this enchanted city with Thinking Man and our family starting in the late nineties until just this past summer has added to the treasure chest of Santa Fe memories. Every visit Santa Fe weaves magic with 400-year history, diverse cultures and people, extraordinary food and of course, art.
Over the years I've watched Santa Fe evolve from a quixotic, dusty little historic town into a thriving international destination. While I enjoy the Santa Fe of high art, gourmet food, stunning multi-million dollar showplaces, window shopping on the plaza, and people watching at the farmers' market, for me it is this city's raw edges -- tiny, unpaved side streets, rambling, narrow byways, small adobes with rustic walled yards and vibrant, colored doors -- that are most appealing. In walking these pathways a more authentic time resonates.
New Mexico lives up to its moniker, Land of Enchantment, in every way, but in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, as so many painters and writers have noted, the sky and light are particularly spectacular, mesmerizing in fact. I decided early on in my visit this time to take photos every day, several times a day from approximately the same place out the back window of the adobe, which overlooks the mountains surrounding Ski Santa Fe slopes, and peeking over the shoulder of the mountains you can just see the tip of Santa Fe Baldy. I wanted to document how the sky and light evolved and intertwined with the mountains, trees and clouds.
It's been such a gift and an adventure being here with family, friends and with bits of solitude thrown into the mix and while I am happy to be returning home to my family, I'll definitely miss waking up to mountains outside my window every day, the fresh smell of pine, the scent of pinion smoke on a chilly evening.
I've watched a stunning array of Nature's moods out the back door here, and at one point after a beautiful early snow trekked high into the mountains at sundown to see even more of Nature's reverie. During these 12 days, the sky has transformed over and over again and in virtually every hour, sometimes every minute, it's been different. Colors, hues, tints, clouds, swirling, reforming, evolving, singing the sweet siren song of endless majesty. In some small way I hope the images in this photo album entitled "Offering," reflect Nature's timeless glory and serve as a reminder of all that's at stake in an increasingly crowded world.
