Santa Fe 2019

We’ve often been asked whether in making our 2018 circuit around the US we found a favorite place. I almost never answer that the same way twice because it’s like naming your favorite song. Do you like James Taylor better than Eric Clapton? We have a long list of favorite places, all with distinctly different attributes, including NAPA Valley State Park, Jedediah Smith in the coastal redwoods, Nehalem Bay on the Oregon Coast, as well as several favorites near home in NC. But any listing brings to mind as well most any of the spectacular Provincial Parks in British Columbia, the spit at Homer AK, Great Basin National Park and many more still.

With that all being said, we do have a sweet spot. During our almost yearly visits of a week or two, we have developed an intimacy with Santa Fe, and in particular Black Canyon campground in the Santa Fe National Forest that provides us a special peace and stability.

Like our home in North Carolina, our Santa Fe ‘home’ is a frame of reference, a perspective that informs our view of nature, people and the world in general. To me it seems that everywhere we’ve been, the folks who live in a place are indicative of the environment. Here in Santa Fe you get to see people who from their dress and demeanor might be very well off, living in an exclusive Canyon Road flat, or as easily could be subsisting happily on jewelry making or raising peppers for the market. The food, the art, the people, even the street musicians on the plaza reveal so pleasantly how everything in Santa Fe is local, organic and casually sophisticated.

Our son from Nederland and his growing family visited during this year’s 12 day return. Two of Jennifer’s colleagues from Valdese Weavers came for the Santa Fe International Craft Festival. As always we hiked and ate great food and people-watched on the Plaza – and dreamed of making our next trip to our sweet spot a trip to our new home