New Mexico's Wide Open Skies Beckon

New Mexico

By Sonya Zalubowski

          The first thing that hits you after landing in New Mexico is the vastness of the blue sky, a panorama that surrounds you amid the state’s rough high desert and mountainous landscape.  The next thing is this sense that you have landed not just in another U.S. state but in another country.  All without having to use your passport.

          Perhaps that sky with all its limitlessness, including the unrealized possibility of finding more of the gold they found in Mexico, is what first attracted  the Spanish to settle this area.  Their influence dating all the way to the 16^th century plus the large indigenous native American presence color the area’s flavor to this day. Over 40 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic.  All of it combines with Anglo influences in a mosaic that is celebrated throughout the year with regular festivals.

As do most tourists, I flew into New Mexico’s main airport in Albuquerque, the north central city flanked by the Sandia Mountains that’s home to more than one-fourth of the state’s two million people.

 

A cab-ride away, I arrived at my destination, the bed and breakfast inn known as the Bottger Mansion of Old Town.  The home is one of the few Victorian era constructions left in Albuquerque, just steps away from the main Plaza.

 Albuquerque was founded as a Spanish colonial outpost along the Rio Grande River.  The city to this day retains its old town in the traditional Spanish fashion with a central square or plaza with its church,  the  San Felipe de Neri. The area retains its historical character with its flat-roofed adobe buildings featuring original roof timber vigas and kiva fireplaces.

Native American Indians make up nearly ten percent of the state population and have their own system of 19 self-governing pueblos based on tribal affiliations.  That culture is celebrated at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.  The facility features a teaching garden with native plants, a restaurant with native food and exhibits featuring native art.  Live performances of Indian dancing are held on a regular basis.

Albuquerque, with its Central Avenue that runs along the original Route 66, of course also features a modern downtown and is home to the University of New Mexico.  The city –what better way to appreciate its open skies -- hosts its annual world famous hot air balloon festival every fall.

The Indian population owns over ten percent of the state’s land and many pueblos have opened casinos that speckle the route from Albuquerque that I took on my way north with the Rio Grande by rental car to Santa Fe and Taos, both internationally known for their art colonies. I stayed at the Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder hotel with casino owned by the Pueblo of Pojoaque.  It is located at the convergence of the Pojoaque Creek and Tesuque River, an oasis in the middle of the desert. The architecture resembles earlier pueblo construction with its kivas, vigas and urns.

During my stay, the hotel’s Red Sage main restaurant featured a tasting menu for the upcoming Wine and Chile festival hosted by Santa Fe featuring such delicacies as crabmeat Napoleon with roasted jalapeno guacamole to dessert of a sweet empanada with whipped cream, all paired with appropriate wine flights.

A word here about the food. Be sure to bring your “Bean-o.” Most local food features beans and rice along with peppers, plenty of them. You can ask for both red and green pepper sauces by ordering “Christmas.” Delicious as various dishes covered with cheese can be, there is a fatigue factor that can “out bean” you by the end of your stay.

If food indulgence was not enough, the Buffalo Thunder hotel also features its Wo’ P’in Spa which means Medicine Mountain in the native Tewa language. There for an extra fee visitors can experience rejuvenation through facials, body treatments, massages and foot baths and pedicures

Festivals, yes. They continued on my stay that coincided with one of two weekends of the High Country Art tour.  The backroads studded with purple wild sage, cacti, and yellow chamiso (rabbit weed)  wound  past gallery after gallery filled with works ranging from weaving to sculpture to painting to pottery and wood carving, on the backroads to Taos.

          I ended my stay in Santa Fe,  “the city different” that is also the state’s capital.   Santa Fe, which means Holy Faith,  is 408 years old and 7,000 feet in elevation at the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains. The tourism board touts its differences: it is the country’s oldest and highest state capital.  And, it is neither desert nor high desert  but is located at the foothill slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.   

          The city boasts 360-degree mountain views, more than 300 days of sunshine, moderate year-round temperatures and 1.5 million acres of pristine national forest.

          But perhaps the most outstanding is the city’s reputation for its art market.  Santa Fe was the first designated UNESCO Creative City for craft and folk arts and with 250 plus galleries is the third largest art market in the United States.

         

One of the newest areas is the Railyard District with open land that has been developed for more art galleries as well as restaurants and the farmer’s market. Wander New Mexico offers a tour of the district “off the beaten track” that takes visitors behind the scenes at restaurants and other sites.

I stayed in Santa Fe at La Fonda, the 1920s era hotel that sits on the ground where other hotels have sat since Spanish colonial times, not far from the Plaza, the epicenter of downtown. The Palace of Governors, the oldest continuously occupied government building in the U.S., was built in the early 1600s.  Indigenous American artisans still sell their fine crafts beneath the palace’s long portal on the plaza as they have for hundreds of years.

          The hotel features original kiva and timber  viga construction as well as delicate painted windows and even ghosts, though I blissfully encountered none.

         

Near the hotel, there are several museums, all within walking distance. They include a museum devoted to the work of painter Georgia O’Keeffe.  An independent woman before her times, she relocated from the East Coast to New Mexico after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz.  “I realized I had things in my head not like what I had been taught,”  she wrote.  Known for her giant flower paintings, she became  more of an abstract artist. I was most drawn to her large paintings of clouds, depicting the wide open skies of New Mexico.

        

  Santa Fe, with its devotion to retaining its historical legacy, established historic districts in the early 1980s.  Today, there are five such districts covered by building regulations aimed at preserving historic character.

          Lynn Zeck, realtor with Casas de Santa Fe, says many visitors, often retirees,  come here with the idea of trying it out, rent one of their homes and later she helps them to find just the right spot in historic Santa Fe. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently ranked Santa Fe as the forty-third most popular city chosen for relocation by seniors.

          “They love the city and all its cultural possibilities,” Zeck said.

          Sources:

 www.wandernewmexico.com

www.santafe.org

www.casassellssantafe.com

www.VisitABQ.org