Santa Fe, Taos, and two Catholic churches

I've spent the past few days in New Mexico. After leaving Cloudcroft, I drove to Santa Fe. By the time I got to my hotel, unpacked, found a place to stay in Taos, and then went to the Plaza in Santa Fe, most of the shops were closed, boo hoo. But at least I ate fabulous New Mexican style food at the Coyote Cafe's rooftop cantina. The only problem with it was, that the only available seats were outside, and it was cold! I had no idea that Santa Fe would get so chilly in the evenings....it was in the low 50s, and the sunset was just happening. Turns out, it got into the mid-40s overnight.

Sunday morning was Mother's Day. I woke up and went to a yoga class from 10-12. It was pretty great, actually. I needn't have worried that I'd look like an idiot (those of you who know me, know I do this, right?) Anyway, it was really good. I came home, showered and changed, spoke to my family, and then headed out for the plaza. It was nice, just wandering around, not having to drive that day. I saw the St. Francis Cathedral, which was beautiful, and just wandered through some of the galleries and shops. Didn't do any of the museums, though. Next time, I guess. By 7pm, I was completely and totally spent. I went back to my room and crashed -- slept until 10pm! Then ate my leftovers from the night before, and went back to bed at 11pm. I slept until 8 yesterday morning.

Anyway, after I finally dragged my lazy bones out of bed, I packed and left for Taos. I took the "high road", which was amazingly beautiful. One of my earliest stops on this little trek was to the Santuario de Chimayo, which is a little Catholic church on the Chimayo pueblo. It was beautiful...they have a little outdoor chapel, with the river running right behind it, and a few icons (like the Virgin Mary in the photo). I went into a side room, where there was a (somewhat unexpected) statue of a priest blessing a skeleton (the picture is attached). Then I went into the shrine. I couldn't take pictures in there, but there was a mass going on, so I watched quietly from the back for a few minutes. Off to the side of the church, there is a room with "holy dirt" in it. The holy dirt apparently has healing powers. And the room you walk through to get to the holy dirt room is filled....with pictures of the sick, with pictures of military men slain, with baby shoes, with MRI and CT scan pictures of heads and spines, with back braces and head halos, and with an long bar hanging across the top of the room on which many, many crutches are hanging. It was amazing, the evidence of people who've come to the Santuario to be healed. I so wish I had a picture of that room, but photos weren't allowed in there, either.

Anyway, I arrived in Taos and stayed at the cutest little place, the Historic Taos Inn. I wandered around downtown Taos for hours, just looking at all the stores and chatting with the shopkeepers there (by the way, there are some characters in Taos!). But I had some interesting conversations, for sure: the first was with a woman in a crystal shop who tried to convince me to buy a book called "Animal Speak". She said that if you see an animal, you note what thoughts are in your head at the moment you saw the animal, and then you look that animal up in the book, and it tells you "so much about yourself". It was reasonably interesting, I admit -- but I wasn't convinced enough to buy the book.

The second occurred in a batik shop. The owner/artist's name is Gary Fey, and his work is equal parts beautiful, quirky, psychedelic, and just plain odd (he has one batik of a local native man dressed in drag....). He does batik in a nontraditional way -- he stretches the silk on a frame, and then just does the batik on the silk like a painter would paint a canvas. The funniest part, though, was when he made me put on 3-D glasses to look at the batiks. He said he was a 3-D artist and didn't know it, until one day he came to work with 3-D glasses on (!) and noticed that the colors are totally 3-dimensional.

The third occurred last night, while I ate supper at a bar that had some live music. This random guy, older than me, sat at the table with me and started chattin' me up. He had this large photo album with him, of pictures of rock stars and professional athletes he's taken pictures of over the past 30 years. He says he brings the book with him as a "conversation starter". After talking with him, I'm convinced that if one needs a photo album to start conversation, that one is not a particularly good conversationalist....hmmm....

So today I'm off to Durango, Colorado. Looks like my New Mexico adventure is ending, at least for now. But there's something about New Mexico that I really like. It's very casual and friendly, extremely sunny, and it has this soul to it, which I assume comes from the centuries of natives who lived there before long before the white man came. Cool. I like it here.