Land of Enchantment/Entrapment?!

(By: Dinah and Steve) We’ve been told that New Mexico not only enchants, but that it also makes people not want to leave. Indeed, there are charms galore here that infiltrate all of one’s senses. The scale of Santa Fe is such that small, free, low-key music venues open up in places like El Rey. (Rosa Pullman is now my soundtrack for Santa Fe. Yes, the word ether came up in a few of her songs.)

Railroad district with a slew of galleries.

With a population of ~88,000, Santa Fe somehow remains the 3rd largest art market in the country. This translates to every turn revealing something visually interesting.

February Ground Hog Clay Challenge at Tumbleroot Pottery Pub, with house-made elixirs/cocktail ingredients on the side.

Additionally, low-key venues like Tumbleroot Pottery Pub offer creative outlets for everybody. Here you can make things out of clay and drink fancy cocktails. I’m totally enamored with this Groundhog Day clay-making challenge.

The quality of restaurants includes not just a focus on New Mexican culinary traditions but also a wide variety of cuisines, and again feels exceptional for the population size. Add in the inspirational nature of the surrounding mountains and desert, a remarkably blue sky, with hiking/outdoor opportunities everywhere, and there is a wonderful sense of specialness here. There is a reason that native artists and newer arrivals, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, have captured the landscape in their ceramics and visual arts forever. Plus, the people are nice (what is happening?) So the entrapment is understandable.

Like everywhere, there are also downsides. Lack of quality healthcare (more on this later), lack of a locally based college, plus a high cost of living, takes a toll on folks here. Still, the artistic, independent, culturally significant sensibility here is like food for the soul, and I can see us returning here multiple times in our lives for a dose of blue sky and the wealth of other wonderful sensorial attributes.