Santa Fe

I woke around 5:50 and returned to White Sands for a ranger-led walk. I arrived much earlier than expected, which turned out to be a gift: sunrise spread across the road ahead, and I stopped to photograph a sky that seemed to hold every color at once.

The walk was excellent and deeply educational. Several Taiwanese travelers and a couple from Texas joined me; both groups were also crossing the United States by road. For a brief morning, our separate journeys overlapped in the dunes before everyone continued in a different direction.

After checking out in Alamogordo, I began the four-hour drive north. A very large lunch at the halfway point made the second half harder than the first. I pulled over to rest, stopped again near Santa Fe looking for coffee, found the place closed, and settled for chocolate ice cream instead.

Pueblo Bonito was a welcome arrival: quiet, warm, and full of character. I walked for more than two miles through Santa Fe that evening, letting adobe walls and the high-desert light introduce the city without a plan.

The next morning began with a three-mile run, followed by a cortado and granola in an art-filled coffee shop. Then came an irresistible bakery, a quiche I did not need, and a long conversation with two women in their seventies. One was preparing to sell her home and business and move to Todos Santos, Mexico.

I chose not to force the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum into a tight afternoon. Instead, I walked, ate a salad at a French restaurant, collected a compass and water reservoir for the Grand Canyon, and left with the sense that Santa Fe had shown itself most clearly when I stopped trying to see everything.