Santa Fe, New Mexico
Tuesday, July 13. Stefan had been stressed out about this one day of the road trip more than any other. An 11 hour drive. Every other driving day had been an 8 hour effort or less. The drive into Austin stretched beyond this mark because of weather and Houston traffic, and sure enough, each added minute to our ETA added a touch of desperation to our spirits. Driving from Austin to Santa Fe would be a long day even if all went well and a delay of any kind could place us in the, “Let’s close our eyes at this rest stop,” territory. Stefan dreamed of open roads out of Texas into New Mexico with flat, smooth concrete, wide passing lanes, a high speed limit, and few trucks. He tossed and turned with more sinister possibilities: another rainstorm, more cracked roads and high barriers, Hazel hitting her limit, us drivers switching on and off for longevity to the point of half hour stints.
We knew the car had to be packed the evening before, a do or die element to a long trip. Packing was a welcome return to routine for me, as after our full weekend in Austin I wanted nothing more than to sip some tea and roll up socks, fold, stack, and zip. By the time we went to sleep on Monday night, the car was packed save odds and ends. We even had a lunch of Sweet Green salads already purchased, dressing on the side and everything, and Hazel was well exercised and tuckered. The only snafu on Tuesday morning at 6:00 am was my mistake. We decided that Stefan would throw the last items into the car and pull it around front while I led Hazel through the complex for a chance to pee. Well, Hazel knows exactly what’s happening on our moving days, and despite our most heartfelt reassurances, she still believes that we’ll leave her behind. That is to say, she was entirely uninterested in dabbling about in the dirt while her father was so clearly abandoning us. She pulled and dragged and ignored my kissa, or pee, promptings. In these scenarios, if she can back-track to where we last saw Stefan, she will pull and pull. I had to zig-zag for her to lose her sense of direction just long enough for her undeniable need to relieve herself registered. In this brilliant topsy-turvy, circuitous walk about, however, it is possible that I myself got turned around a bit.
I called Stef.
“I’m lost near the parking garage,” I said.
“C’mon, no,” he laughed. “Which way is towards the front of the building?” he asked.
“Why would I know that?” I returned.
Not how would I know that, because surely there was an available strategy for figuring out the direction of the front of the building, but rather why, as in, you should know me better than that by now.
Some architectural features very high on the complex’s buildings served as lily-pads as the voice over the phone pulled me from one to the next, eventually to the car. Hazel jumped in with pressing concern and I took my seat as co-pilot to seamlessly (or not so seamlessly) navigate. Hazel fell asleep quickly; so long as we were all in rolling-black-box together, all was well in the world.
Stefan found the highway with fastidious zeal, far too much for 6:15 am, if you ask me, but I was pleased that one of us had moved on from the Incident of the Lost Girl. It was then that he revealed to me that this day had been stressing him out, coaxing him on as a test of stamina and mental fortitude like an impending first day of pre-season. He was really locked in. We drove for two, three, four hours, finding the best case scenario of the roads heading due West towards the New Mexican border. Flat, smooth black top opened onto fields spotted with pockets of industry and ranches. At the four hour mark, I offered to drive; this timing would follow our normal pattern. Stefan refused me.
Why so determined, my one-man island? We were making such great time, he said, and the roads were so open, the sky so clear. He wanted to see how much time he could shave off that 11 hour mark. Just a little bit longer. All he needed was a mental distraction, so we listed all of the things we had done in Nashville, New Orleans, and Austin, with the details and notes that the mind erases after a bit of time. We listened to the Hamilton soundtrack from top to bottom and I cried at the spot where I always cry. (“Can I tell you what I’m proudest of?”) The minutes kept shaving off.
We crossed the New Mexican border. It was the first time that a border line drew a distinctive shift in feeling. A smell of sulphur hit our noses from a Chesapeake Bay gas tank. The smooth blacktop dropped into a gritty, light gray concrete. Roadside industry of pumps and silos and drills only fifty yards back fell away with a snap. Wild flowers grew. Purple and yellow a sea on both sides of us. The time-zone shifted and the prior hour disappeared from the clock. The signage changed. Clean and plain gave way to eclectic, to Native American designs and colors; mustards, turquoise, sunstone, clay red dotted each traffic sign. Stefan drove on, refusing my offers to switch.
We passed through Roswell and snapped photos of the aliens, UFOs, spaceships and stars on everything. We stopped for gas, bathroom, and to gobble our prepared lunch quickly, each passing minute eating into our hard-won lead. There was poverty here that we hadn’t seen in Texas, like an older woman with lined skin carrying plastic bags across a highway. We saw individuals who seemed like they had been headed towards somewhere else many years ago but didn’t make it there. After lunch, we decidedly did not switch drivers. Jekyll had become Hyde. The final hours of the drive found the sky as clear as morning. The air thinning but the rocks growing higher, striated in reds and creams, carved delicately by rivers long ago dried up.
Just before the 11 hour mark, we drove down into the valley of Santa Fe, where adobe architecture populated the landscape. Down the mountain, into the city that felt built up but not busy nor crowded. Stefan pulled slowly into the driveway of our casita, parked carefully, and drummed the steering wheel like a celebratory Olympian with a new PB. He was brimming, and we had arrived.
In Santa Fe for three nights and two full days, our casita would be more important than other Air BnB stays had been along the way. We didn’t know that yet, but we were nonetheless charmed by the welcoming Southwestern design, a comfortable front room with an open kitchen, leather couch, and bright windows facing the quiet street. A space behind with a big bed and clean bathroom finalized our relaxation. We dropped our bags and headed back out to move our legs — and eat!
Walking to the historic district around 6:00 pm, we found clean, quiet streets lined with shops and eateries. The shop signs hung overhead in uniform style. Other travelers like us meandered quietly — all searching for — any place that was...open. Wasn’t it only 6:00 pm? We sauntered through the Plaza, where locals and visitors sat very quietly chatting and snacking. It was pleasant, but gave the odd feeling of wearing foam ear plugs. When searching by foot failed us, we turned to Yelp and headed to the highest rated casual taqueria. It seemed that everyone else did as well, all of us struggling to find any open spot. The maitre d’ took our name and number down in normal fashion and informed us with a peppy smile that our table would be ready in two and a half hours. Couples and small groups around us were quoted two, two and fifteen, two and forty-five, three hours. The restaurant was half empty. The same post-shut down, COVID-related staffing shortages that we had seen across the South appeared to have hit Santa Fe equally. All of us on the sidewalk looked awkwardly around. With almost nothing else open, two and a half wasn’t exactly a hard no, but it wasn’t a solution to a growling tummy, either. To the restaurant’s credit, we got a ping not ten minutes after the two and a half hour mark notifying us that our table was, in fact, ready.
In the meantime, we’d found a Mexican spot a few blocks down and asked if we could order take out for two.
“Oh, hm,” the hostess grimaced. “Let me check.”
They advertised take out but the logistics seemed to pose a challenge. We ended up with mediocre tacos that left our heads tilted at the great Santa Fe cuisine we’d heard rumored yet couldn’t seem to locate. Regardless, we slept soundly after the long day, feeling very relaxed and somewhat perplexed by this new place.
Good riddance to the issues with restaurants, I thought, pudgy from our indulgence. We had a lovely, little kitchen! I picked up some healthier groceries and we cooked the rest of our meals (all but one) at home.
Days later, we met someone who’d been to Santa Fe and had loved it, as so many do.
“What did you enjoy about it?” I asked.
“The sun,” she declared.
Well, okay. The sun is sort of the one thing that is literally everywhere, yet, I know what she means. After grocery shopping, I took Hazel (and myself) on a long walk to investigate this city further. Walking for over an hour, I felt an easy sense of peace from the safe feeling streets, slow-moving walkers and drivers, and the clean, mountainous air with the hot but not punishing sun. Stefan stayed at home all day to work, gratified to have had the weekend in Austin and weekdays here, where he felt there was not much to miss out on. He texted a friend who’d visited Santa Fe for recommendations.
“There’s fuck all to do there,” his friend replied.
On my walk, I found a less touristy side of town, still with shops lining the streets. A pottery studio, an art gallery, a wine bar, a small brewery, two museums. All closed with posted hours of a few days a week, for a few hours on those days. Noon to four, maybe, or two to six. It seems that Santa Fe calls to the semi- or fully retired, and that’s as true for the porch-sitters as it is for the shop owners, artists, and restaurateurs. A local knows, surely, what is open when and where and I would imagine that certain spots in the city come alive for a few hours a day, before everyone heads home early. For the right person, Santa Fe could be a dream.
That evening, we opted to stay home and cook a traditional Southwestern meal: corn salad with cilantro, red onion, tomatoes, and black beans with pistachio-crusted salmon atop. For after dinner entertainment, there was Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy, a foodie’s historical tour through the major regions of Italy. Snuggled up in our comfortable casita, happily fed, with Tucci delighting, as he always does, we were feeling pretty happy. Was it Santa Fe or was it us? Does it matter? Is that what everyone’s trying to say when they say they love Santa Fe so much?
On the couch, Stefan inhaled deeply from the hand-held oxygen tank he’d asked me to buy him at the grocery store earlier in the day. The altitude was settling into his lungs, mine less so, and he’d been kind of gasping through work calls and our meal, like the father in Big Fish. He was out of sorts. An other-worldly nap took him under as Tucci traversed Milan with a hardworking social-media maven, the kind of nap that induces gurgling, drowning like expressions. He woke up for another sip from the oxygen tank, which he’d continue to breathe from until we descended into Vegas days later, where I’d stop being able to breathe for the cigarette smoke.
The next day, Stefan continued to work. I grabbed breakfast at Iconik Coffee Bar, a cool spot with yummy grub where folks in tee shirts sip, type, and whisper so quietly to one another, everything inaudible here! With our time-zones trending earlier in comparison with the New York-centric work day, we resolved for a 4:00 pm reservation at Herve Wine Bar for some wine tasting and a light dinner. As we strolled into town, Stefan squinted into the bright sun and gasped the thin air. He had driven so fastidiously to get here yet his body was rejecting the place. We forged on to settle into the atrium of the winery to disappointingly find only one other couple there. We had tried to hit the town at high tide! It was 4:00 pm! Where was everyone! How had our qualitative data steered us to this faulty outcome?
After mere sips of punchy reds and flat whites, Stefan turned a disquieting shade of purple and began to sway in his seat. His body was relaying a message that in the absence of oxygen, alcohol shall not be permitted. I paid the very kind waitress, who advised that the oxygen bar next door may be of help. I searched it out while Stef stayed very still on the sidewalk and found a spa-like dungeon where people sat in massage rooms hooked up to tanks. No one sat at the front desk, no one greeted me; dismayed and continually confused, we headed home. By that point, I could have been Nicole Kidman at the end of The Others and wouldn’t have been surprised. To get home, Stefan sort of lumbered, one foot in front of the other, for half a mile. And that was it. That was Santa Fe for us. We left the next morning after a slow pack up. It was lovely, odd, seemingly populated with people we couldn’t find, with supposed offerings that we didn’t do, and some much needed, relaxed homebody adventures of, um, just kind of lying around.
More to come!
