April 30, 2019
And so we conclude my travel adventures with a little story and a link to a longer one.
During one of my hikes I shared an overlook spot with a woman who started to talk to me. She had just completed her annual pilgrimage to Chimayo, an event joined by tens of thousands of people each year during Holy Week.
https://www.newmexicoexplorer.com/pilgrimage-to-chimayo/
Now she was taking in the sights and recommended that there was one other thing in the region I should not miss. The best Trading Post in NM, she said, was some 30 miles away in Nambe. Be warned, though, she continued, I drop a thousand bucks there on every single visit. Hmmm. How do you reconcile pilgrimages with that kind of spending. Well, not my business.
I did make it my business, though, to explore the Trading Post – the perks of traveling alone and changing plans at the drop of a suggestion. I found a sleepy little hollow with a store, an orchard in bloom, and two very tired women, the owners, sitting on the porch. Mother and daughter had just returned from a long trip to Venice, Italy, where the daughter had gotten married to a camera man. She had worked in the film industry as a stylist, while her mother had been a costume designer. We chatted about Italy and the fact that I had photographed in Murano, the glass making center, from which she had shipped her only wedding present, a chandelier. A Murano chandelier in Nambe – I was intrigued.
Enter the shop – photography strictly prohibited. No wonder: there were costumes from Dances with Wolves and other Western movies displayed on mannequins, costumes for which Cathy Smith, the owner, had won an Emmy award. Add to that big pictures of her induction into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame or some such. All amidst a cornucopia of Indian artifacts and tchotchkes. No wonder she had vehemently rejected my request to photograph her with the words: “I look too wiped-out from jet lag, ” despite the fact that we had a longish conversation in which I was told that the area is a “spiritual vortex.”
I wouldn’t know how to confirm that, but can attest to the fact that New Mexico provides a maelstrom of impressions, including one that suggests a single visit is not enough. I shall return!
Attached my musings on the history of art in Santa Fe.
And this from a local composer, title says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-pxMFLtd34
