Daily Times

I had seen enough of Santa Fe’s beauty on business trips to want to come back and tour. So one December, we arrived there to spend our year-end holidays.

The adobe exterior of the hotel mirrored that of the pueblos in the old town. We tasted the local cuisine in the town plaza the next day and admired the beauty of Native American handicraftsthat were on display at a nearby festival.

After that, we went into the Palace of the Governors. It houses a museum that showcasesfour centuries of history. One of the displays had a quote from a Mexican lamenting how he and his people had become ‘strangers in their own land’ after the American conquest.

The Bradbury Museum had exhibits showing how the bomb was made. The exhibits may have appealed to high school students, but to me, they evoked the horrors shown in in the film, ‘Rhapsody in August’

An old map of the continental US showed that back then theWest was controlled by the Spanish, the Center by the French, and only the East by the colonial US. On the second day we examined the art collections at the Georgia O’Keefe museum. The iconic painter had divided her time between New York and New Mexico and done some of her best work here. One of her lines read: “Nothing is less real than realism.”

Later, we toured the Loretto Chapel and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, both testimonials to the city’s name which means ‘Holy Faith’. We also toured the state capitol, the only round state capital in the country. It is designed to resemble Zia, the sun symbol.

We dined at an Italian restaurant which had once hosted the prime minister of Italy. The food, the ambiance, and the service were exceptional.

On the third day, we drove through the Sandia mountains to visit the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The drive offered stunning views of the mountains and valleys. Los Alamos was the place where the first atomic bomb was developed as part of the Manhattan Project. The legendary Robert Oppenheimer was its first director.

The Bradbury Museum had exhibits showing how the bomb was made. The exhibits may have appealed to high school students. To me, they evoked the horrors shown in in the film, ‘Rhapsody in August’.

Eventually, we were seized with the urge to check out the natural beauty which lay outside of the city. From the many good options, we picked three: the gorge over the Rio Grande, the Bandelier National Monument, and the Ghost Ranch.

As we drove toward the gorge, the road began to go through mountains of increasing elevation.The views became more dramatic and sweeping. The mountain tops were covered with snow. As we came near the gorge, there was snow on the ground but the road was clear. Anticipating the weather, we had rented a SUV which interestingly was Hyundai’s Santa Femodel.

Now we are in a high-elevation flat area surrounded by red mountains in the distance. The gorge was not too far away according to Google maps but itwas nowhere in sight. At some point, the road went over a flat, non-descript bridge and we suddenly realized that we had just driven on top of the gorge.

The Rio Grande had cut through the earth and lay buried deep at the base of the V-shaped gorge. It was hardly visible. I parked the SUVafter crossing the bridge. We covered ourselves with all the woolen gear at our disposal and got out with some trepidation.

Then nature hit us with all its fury. The air was cold, terribly cold, but what made the situation difficult was a fierce and howling wind.

It was blowing straight at us and cutting through our heavy coats, inside of which were woolen sweaters, like a knife. The gloves on our hands and the hats on our head were rendered useless.

But we had come to see the gorge up close and not from inside a parked vehicle. So we started walking toward the bridge that lay just the length of a cricket pitch away from us.

It was the shortest and the most arduous walk ever. The sheer cold had rendered us unable to talk with one another. We were now on top of the bridge looking down. The river had been reduced by the cold weather to a ribbon, shiny and silvery, cutting through the gorge. But the gorge was a sight to behold.

After the sightseeing, we drove back to Santa Fe, past houses and farms covered with snow. They too were a sight to behold. It was such a relief to return to our warm hotel room and soak in the bathtub. That night we ate at the hotel. After dinner, I read that DH Lawrencehad spent his last days at a ranch in Taos and his ashes were buried there. We would have to pay homage to the spirit of that talented and controversial writer on a future trip.

The next day, we visited the beautiful ruins of the Anasazi Indians, a Navajo word meaning ‘the ancient ones’. The ruins were located in the Bandelier National Monument, an hour’s drive from Santa Fe. The Jemez Mountains surround the area and look down upon a canyon, a river valley, and a pine forest. The site is at an elevation of 6,500 feet and evokes the aura of a secret enclave, a ‘literal paradise…a walled garden’, as the art historian Vincent Scully put it. It was in those blue humped mountains that the Anasazi had dug in their famous dwellings. We explored a few dwellings by climbing upon ladders. Once inside the caves, I wondered what life must have been like for the Anasazi.

On our last day we checked out Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keefe’s home and studio, an hour from Santa Fe. The scenery was smothered with colours, whose hues probably changed as the sun moved through the day. Many movies had been shot there, including “No Country for Old Men” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

The ranch also included an archaeological museum which contained the remains of dinosaurs among other treasures. A resident scholar answered all our questions. His flowing beard endued his sense of humor with pungency. He could have come out of a Jurassic Park film.

Santa Fe had cast a spell on us. We did not want to go home. We left with amazing memories, some human, some scenic, and some historic.

The traveler-at-large can be reachedAhmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, May 21^ST 2018.