Autumn is Here

The remnants of a tropical storm splattered Santa Fe with an all-day rain, and now autumn is here. Flowers are opening slowly in the morning after the nighttime bite of temps in the 40s. Autumn is Santa Fe’s most alluring season. I saw a brand-new, six-foot sunflower this morning on my walk, and the wild purple asters are looking spirited. The green is just beginning to blanch out of the aspen leaves with a faded outline encroaching from the outside of each leaf.

Had a great time yesterday at Los Poblanos (www.lospoblanos.com), a farm and inn in Los Ranchos, one of my favorite parts of Albuquerque with lots of horses and goats. Los Poblanos is a working organic farm, filled with lavender fields, goats, chickens, and roosters. An all-white peacock strutted by as we ate BLT sandwiches with an organic Arugula, fig, and goat-cheese salad.

Back in Santa Fe, hundreds of people showed up at the Inn at Loretto to hear Sam Shepard read from his new book of short stories, “Day Out of Days,” and earlier books. Shepard’s ironic, spare prose is brilliant. He gets at fundamental truths with a droll insight. “Reality is an internal affair,” a father contends in one short story as he recalls a decade past, dismissing current events coverage of that time as “superficial and a lie.” I get that: what ultimately matters most is what goes on inside our own heads. Shepard’s brand of introspective Americana at last night’s talk included descriptions of a dead mountain lion strapped into a pickup truck and crows strutting in snow.

There’ll be lots of sleek designer racecars skimming through town this weekend for the Santa Fe Concorso, and the chair lift starts running at Ski Santa Fe for aspen viewing.