Perfect Little Vacation

On Sunday Will and I headed out to catch the plane and go to Santa Fe - Will to visit my college, and I (ostensibly) to accompany him, but really to see my old home town and visit friends that I had neglected for far too long. It turned out to be a fantastic trip - only two days, but a true vacation.

We started out, when we arrived, at a pasta dinner that Melissa and Ron had thrown together - very graciously - on very short notice. (I had only emailed them to reconnect a few weeks ago. As Melissa put it, "One week, it's 'Maya Exists!' and then the next week, it's 'Maya's Here!'") Will & Janette, Brett & Ondine, and John Schillo were there (plus a whole passel of kids!). John reminded me of a t-shirt that I'd screen-printed that was pretty racy — in Ancient Greek. Oh my, I'd forgotten that! Will (mine) grilled my friends about what I was like in college, and Mel obligingly gave a demonstration of me dancing back then (lots of arms & elbows, for those who must know). We laughed, and talked, and remembered, and it was wonderful. Here's a photo of some of us from that night - naturally we only remembered cameras when half the crew had gone home and the afternoon light had faded. ;-(

On Monday, after crepes for breakfast with Janette, I took Will up and showed him the campus. It was a strange feeling, not being an insider anymore, but it was all still so familiar. The view is still incredible, the buildings are the same (with some nice new ones), and the students also felt the same. (As we walked past one small group I heard a young man exclaiming very happily that his tutor had marked his paper with "Not False".) I dropped Will off, and he spent the next 24 hours there visiting classes, touring the campus, sleeping in the dorm & eating in the dining hall, etc.

My vacation continued - with my time to myself, I met Mel & Ron for lunch, then Mel took me to a fabulous chocolate house called Kakawa, where we had traditional hot chocolate - hot, frothy, dark, slightly sweet, about the size of a shot glass. Yum!

I felt like the bad influence - I was taking time off from my work & kids, but everyone I was visiting there was still working/going to school/etc. And here I was arriving on a school night, and inviting people to lunch who really meant to be working, and staying out late to dinner with friends with kids. Bad me! But I was having such a nice time...


Anyhow, after lunch I went up to the end of Canyon Road, to the Audubon Center there, and went for a hike up the canyon. The trail started on the dry hillside, full of piñon, juniper, sage & chamisa, but soon found its way into a small canyon between two hills. There, the air was scented vanilla from Jeffrey pines, and a cool stream trickled down the sandy streambed. I could hear the wind blowing in the treetops, but the air was still where I hiked.

When I was done, I headed downtown. I'd been unable so far to reach two more friends (Will & Elizabeth), and was trying to make up my mind where to eat by myself when they called - they had just gotten home, and were willing to drop everything and meet me for dinner. It couldn't have worked out better if I'd actually planned ahead!


The next morning, I got up early and headed out to Tsankawi, which is an Anasazi ruin on the way to Los Alamos - it's one of my favorite places on the planet. Unexcavated, unimproved, the path winds along the mesa, with a few wooden ladders where needed, past amazing ancient caves & petroglyphs. I got there early enough to be the only person there, and ambled along taking pictures and remembering other visits.* I could sit and dangle my feet over the edge of the mesa, and if I looked south the view was untouched desert. But if I turned my head to the west, there were the strange bulbous white towers of Los Alamos. As I was contemplating the view, I heard a loud boom - looking to my right, a blast cloud was forming on the outskirts of Los Alamos. I guess the modern world was pretty close by, though the ancient one at my feet felt untouched.


I left Tsankawi just before the first (other) visitors started up the trail, and headed back to Santa Fe for the frosting on the cake of my vacation, a cup of Turkish coffee with Hans von Briesen, my mentor (and boss) at college. One of my favorite memories of the years I worked for him as a lab assistant was the Turkish coffee he'd make for us on a Bunsen burner in his office in the lab building. It was marvelous to talk with him again. It could be hard to catch up with someone after 13 (or really, 23) years - but I found with Hans, as with all my friends, that it wasn't difficult at all. The shared experience of St. John's was enough to make up for many years of living different lives, and conversations flowed.

Finally, after I was thoroughly caffeinated, it was time to pick Will up at the college and head back home - a long drive, a long flight, and it's back home to the family I love & the home we've created here. Someday soon I have to take the rest of the family out to see where I lived for 4 years - to let Carson & Reed climb the rocky trails at Tsankawi and smell the dust and sage on the air, and to show my husband the place that meant —means— so much to me.

*In October of my senior year of college, my friends and I went to Tsankawi before dawn on the day of Equinox. We knew there was a hole drilled at an angle through the rock at the very end of the mesa, and wanted to see if it pointed at a celestial event. We got there in the dark, and ran out over the top of the mesa, on the soft Tufa gravel, hoping to beat the sunrise. It was cold and still, and as the sun rose a cloud formed over the Sangre de Cristos, blocking it. But we waited, and waited, hoping the clouds would burn off before the sun rose too high. We were about to give up when finally, at about 9am, the sun broke through and shone directly, exactly down through the hole in the rock. And we laughed and laughed at ourselves, and at the idea that the ancient Anasazi who drilled the hole had had much more sense than to want to sit in the freezing cold morning, and had aimed it for 9 a.m. It was so cold still, even then with the sun shining, that as we headed back across the mesa, picking up Piñon nuts off the ground to snack on, Laureen almost picked up a rattlesnake. It was too cold to react to her, but gave her quite a start anyhow.

Here are all the photos I took.