A house off Acequia Madre in winter They call Montana “Big Sky Country” and Wyoming “The Big Empty,” but Santa Fe’s huge cornflower-blue sky and wide-open spaces were what struck me the other morning. Travel makes us see things with a fresh view. Just back in Santa Fe from a trip east, on my walk I hightailed it along in sweats with no jacket. I tuned in to the many birdcalls—cheerful high tweets from the smaller birds and low caws from crows--and the calming color palette of creamy adobe homes silhouetted against blue skies. Santa Fe is Southwest Spartan compared with the varied oaks, draping Spanish moss, and wildflowers I was walking among on my trip, but it seems like we can breathe deeper in the quiet tranquility here. We can find our own individuality easier in the peace. In March it still looks like winter without much blooming in Santa Fe. Our landscape is all browns, greens, and blues. But it feels like spring is sneaking in. March and April are the two most pervasive juniper allergy months; it helps to take Allertonic from Herbs Etc. (http://www.herbsetc.com/). Soon the rare bunches of forsythia and crocuses will emerge. Having fewer blossoms in our surroundings makes us value them even more. Our ever-shifting crystalline light works wonders on a landscape turned barer and more architectural at this time of year. The other night at sunset the sky was swirling with grape and orange as I drove through town, wondering where my future was going to be.
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A friendly Santa Fe goat “Acting the giddy goat” is an expression meaning to behave foolishly, but goats aren’t really foolish, I found out when I recently visited some in Santa Fe. They are curious and intelligent. Goats can be trained to pull carts. They are sometimes escape artists when it comes to fleeing their pens. They tend to be picky eaters, fast runners, and agile climbers. They are closely related to sheep and antelope. Female goats, called does or nannies, make milk that is ideal for cheese, ice cream, and soap. All-natural moisturizing goat soap is what the Santa Fe-based company Milk and Honey (www.milkandhoneysoap.com) makes from its two goats. These goats live near a rooster pen inside Santa Fe city limits. Back-yard poultry are somewhat popular in Santa Fe. The Feed Bin on West Alameda sells chicks like the Rhode Island Reds for less than $10 each. But back to the goats--they were super friendly, coming right up to be petted. The goats smelled just fine, although un-castrated male goats—called bucks—can be stinky. It’s a hormonal thing. This corral smelled like the earthy alfalfa the goats were noshing, reminding me of horses. Goats are often friendly with horses. A goat is a good companion for a solo horse since a goat tends to be cheaper to care for than a second horse. Both horses and goats like the companionship of other farm animals since they are herd animals. You know: safety in numbers. It was comforting to pet the goats and enter their nature-ruled world. Santa Fe in winter Santa Fe is one big sheet of ice right now. You don’t only need a hat—you want a facemask too. Our coldest spell of the winter is here, along with snow storms that brought a few inches in town but more than a foot to nearby Chupadero and Glorieta. Tuesday night: -4. Wednesday night: -14. Daytime highs? Try 5 today. So much for that Santa Fe saying: “Oh, it snows here but it’s all melted by noon.” Yeah, in March or April, that is. As of Wednesday morning, there were more than 291 weather-related car crashes in New Mexico. The Albuquerque Sunport website (www.cabq.gov/airport/) is tracking flight cancellations and delays, as are individual airlines like Southwest Airlines (www.southwest.com/). A friend did manage to get off yesterday on the small American Airlines jet leaving Santa Fe Airport for LA. Wish the “TODAY Show” would include New Mexico as they report about the monster storm swath from Texas to Maine! We’ve all got our faucets dripping and cabinet drawers open so the pipes don’t freeze. The sub-zero temps can destroy young trees--adding a bed of pecan shells, bark, straw, and wood shavings to their roots can help. Now’s the time to give horses extra feed! The forecast is better for this weekend, when the Terra Bar at Encantado will be serving Truffle Pommes Frites, Howlin’ Beef Sliders, and Red Chile Wild Boar Stew with Gouda Polenta for the Super Bowl. And by the way, you'll also be finding my blogs now at the new Santa Fe Arts Blog on www.CanyonRoadArts.com. Latte at New York Deli Wintertime lunch is when the locals circulate. Everyone has been talking about the Caribbean-African themed Jambo Café (www.jambocafe.net), so I finally popped in, opting for a sweet potato-taro root soup and spicy grilled salmon salad. The unprepossessing Mangiamo Pronto (http://www.mangiamopronto.com) at 228 Old Santa Fe Trail has a great little antipasto salad and white bean hummus plate plus tempting sea-salt caramel gelato. I’ve run into realtor friends at New York Deli, which took over Bagelmania and added lattes. Vinaigrette (https://vinaigretteonline.com) has the most inventive salads in Santa Fe, and is where the art crowd flocks. Recently opened restaurants? Slurp is serving soups like Curried Cauliflower and Fennel until 3pm weekdays from an Airstream trailer on Galisteo Street near the state capitol. Nile Café just began dishing up falafels from a food truck on Rodeo Road. And the Pink Adobe is re-opened. Closed or closing? Los Mayas, The Plaza Café Downtown, A La Mesa, Railyard Restaurant, Celebrations, El Nido (with plans to re-open), Ore House (with plans to merge with Milagro 139), and Café Paris (with plans to re-open where Mission Café was). Soup is the centerpiece at Souper Bowl XVII, approaching on Saturday, Jan. 29 at 11:30am at the Santa Fe Convention Center, with a bevy of restaurants competing for best soup awards. A $30 ticket ($25 in advance, www.thefooddepot.org) will get you in. Michael Herzenberg Now that the winter snowstorms are lining up to sock it to Santa Fe, I’ve been watching the 9pm TV news more and missing Michael Herzenberg. Herzenberg was the main male anchor for KASA Fox 2 TV and special assignment/legislative reporter for KRQE CBS 13 TV, and I worked with him when he covered the “Crash” TV series with friendly professionalism and aplomb. After four years in Albuquerque, he left last August, moving back to New York. Why did he go? “I figured if not now, then when,” says Herzenberg, 39. “I moved to Manhattan without a job, but my agent quickly landed me a dream job. Unfortunately, it’s only freelance. I am a freelance correspondent for CBS Newspath,” Herzenberg recaps. The service feeds CBS TV affiliates around the country, so you may have seen Herzenberg on TV recently from snowy Times Square covering the big blizzard that hit the Northeast. Does he miss New Mexico? “The list is long,” he responds. Specifically, he mentions missing Dick Knipfing, Larry Barker, Jessica Garate, his TV crew, mountain biking, skiing, and covering our legislative session. “With a new governor and a new party on the 4th floor of the roundhouse, I am now deprived of the front-row seat my job afforded me to the most dynamic and the most important game in town,” Herzenberg laments. We’re thinking of you and missing you too, Michael Herzenberg! A pretty Farmers Market candle We’ve all got our hot water faucets dripping so the water lines don’t freeze. It was 1 this morning when I headed to the gym. Tonight’s forecast is 4. Snow turned to ice is everywhere. The freezing transition to 2011 seems appropriate, as all Gov. Richardson’s high-level Democratic appointees clear out of their offices here in the state capitol, and all Gov. Martinez’s Republicans move in. I guess power changeovers are rarely warm and fuzzy. Likewise on its own cold mission, a northern pygmy owl was spotted near Upper Canyon Road during the Christmas Bird Count, one of 9,000 birds noted in Santa Fe. These woodland owls are arrestingly handsome with their small grayish-brown bodies, white-feathered chests, and piercing yellow-and-black eyes, but they are fierce attackers. Owls are thought to be prophetic: it’s said that the Ojibwa believe owls foretell evil and death, and the Apache fear them beyond all other creatures, but the Pawnee consider them protective and the Oglala Sioux think wearing owl feathers increases vision. Maybe this owl arriving in Santa Fe is a sign of change to come in the new year. Meanwhile, natural rhythms persist—longer days, the Saturday Farmers Market, and snow clotted in tree branches. Outside a Canyon Road gallery The almost-full moon was sinking behind gray-streaked clouds in a mackerel sky this morning. My neighborhood roosters and ducks were sipping un-frozen water as I walked by—although snow is on the way. Downtown, the Pink Adobe is happily re-opened and galleristas are loading up farolito bags with sand. When colder nights come, that elf-like being Jack Frost will be out scribbling patterns on windshields. Frost, the freezing cousin of dew, most often appears during cold, cloudless nights. Ancient Anglo Saxons believed evergreen plants and trees were sanctuaries for the woodland spirits during winter. Santa Fe’s juniper trees with blue berries and pine trees sporting pinecones are looking like steadfast havens. A house near Canyon Road There is the sense that Santa Fe is a haven itself, with 30,000 strollers predicted for Canyon Road’s Christmas Eve Farolito Walk amid gallery decorations and bonfires, streets closed to traffic after 5pm. But I don’t know that Santa Fe is any different than Los Angeles when it comes to deep, inner thoughts—and when I used to produce Mike Harrison’s legendary talk show on KMET FM radio, I remember holiday callers could be depressed, the holidays being a time for reckoning with the state of our lives under the frivolity. With reckoning comes insight and then energy for change if it all doesn’t measure up. “All the best for 2011—we deserve it!” wrote an unemployed friend on a Christmas card I got today. Hopeful words! “Good fortune,” wished another. “The secret to happiness is lowered expectations,” a friend once commented. Too true. And also to be grateful for every bit of good health, peace, prosperity, and goodwill. Outside Nathalie's on Canyon Road With more than 100 art galleries, Canyon Road probably has the prettiest holiday decorations of anywhere in Santa Fe. It’s great to drive up on a quiet night. The newly formed Canyon Road Gallery Association is organizing a holiday celebration with Canyon Road galleries staying open late this weekend Dec. 17-18 and again on Dec. 21-22, for holiday shopping, farolitos, bonfires, and hot chocolate. Patricia Carlisle Fine Art on Canyon Road It was tempting to stay home today with two inches of snow slowly amassing on the tree branches outside my windows, but I had a lunch date at Bagelmania, which has been taken over by New York Deli. It’s now not only serving deli fare, but also lattes, a Chinese chicken salad, and fabulous Chocolate Maven chips from local Gemini Farm-grown vegetables like plantains, parsnips, leeks, and beets. Even though it snowed all day, folks were hustling and bustling in and out of there. Back at home, I found a great source for home-delivered firewood in Santa Fe—leave me a blog comment if you’d like his name! Nothing like a wood-burning fire for peaceful companionship on a winter’s night. A few weeks ago Full winter is here. The yellow leaves of a few weeks ago are all gone. Now the trees are bare and brown. It hasn’t snowed for a while so there is no ice underfoot, which is great for us walkers. When the earth is resting like this, seemingly asleep with nothing growing and not a flower in bloom, all the energy has retracted deep underground to nourish the seeds that will sprout when the sunlight grows stronger again. Evenings seem better spent at home reading than venturing into the cold—although Charles Bowden at the Lensic on December 15 is tempting. I talked to the Santa Fe-based novelist Jo-Ann Mapson (http://web.me.com/jamapson/Site_3/Welcome.html) recently, author of the entrancing “Solomon’s Oak,” about three wounded souls who make it through a rainy California winter by finding new reasons to go on. Mapson reads six books a week, and she recommended “Pictures of You” by Carolyn Leavitt (http://www.carolineleavitt.com/), about a car accident in foggy New England involving two women running away from their marriages, and how the lives of all involved change in the aftermath. It’s a literary mystery with plenty of Cape Cod ambiance that’s all about love and betrayal, and how we get over love, or sometimes never do. Think: a less supernatural “The Lovely Bones” with more romance. I couldn’t put it down! Outside Santa Fe Airport My friend Maria came from L.A. for the Thanksgiving weekend, and it was like a fresh wind blowing through town. First discovery: our fabulous Santa Fe Airport (http://www.santafenm.gov/index.aspx?NID=177), where she flew in. It’s an old-fashioned, beautifully tiled, sleepy little airport with just one line for security check-in, mere steps from the restaurant and lone boarding gate. Parking is just outside the only terminal. So convenient! Second discovery: Maria’s little red Fujitsu Lifebook P Series computer—under two pounds. We hiked every day on trails near Old Las Vegas Highway and Glorieta with Maria’s friend Peter Weiss, a terrific tour guide and photographer (http://www.peterweiss.com/), as they caught up on mutual friends in Bhutan, including one described by a Buddhist as having “expired,” which seems a gentler word than “died.” Peter drove us to Chimayo, where Maria gathered dirt from the Santuario, we bought heirloom chile from El Potrero Trading Post, and Peter showed us an ancient walled village. We visited retablo artist Roger Montoya, who painted a retablo in his studio as Warren Zevon’s final CD blasted away and we all pondered life’s passing. On Black Saturday, we hit the sales at Simply Santa Fe. Lunch was turkey chile at the popular Café Pasqual’s (http://www.pasquals.com/). We roamed Border’s, buying “Shantaram” and “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, 2011.” Airplane boarding at left, restaurant ahead Our final dinner was at Vinaigrette (https://vinaigretteonline.com/), where I had White Bean and Andouille Soup, Maria raved about her Italian pino white wine, and Peter told us where Cormac McCarthy and Murray Gell-Man have breakfast. On Sunday, just after Maria took off in her 44-seat small jet returning to L.A., it got super windy. Wish those planes were a bit bigger. |
Above: My mustang Ryo in Tesuque, NM. Our barn owner in Malibu described him as Ghandi-esque because Ryo didn't fight for the best feed bin like the other horses. When Ryo died in Tesuque, I turned on my car radio to hear John Lennon singing "Imagine"... that was Ryo "living life in peace." PHOTOS BY WOLF SCHNEIDER
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