Halting for a moment on a high ridge overlooking the basin, the lead rider turned and said, “The world looks different from the back of a horse, doesn’t it?”
Indeed it does. Expanding in all directions was the wide open midsection of Santa Fe County, a mostly unpopulated range of brown sagebrush and juniper and random clumps of purple, yellow and orange wildflowers. Twice a year, the arid range is awash in color as the chollo cactus that are everywhere blossom in magenta and yellow. The bright blue sky and sun only magnify the largeness of the place.
It’s a sight that resonates with the words of writer Wallace Stegner, who in his essay “Thoughts on a Dry Land” offered a helping hand to Easterners confused about the West’s splendor.
“You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time,” wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the dean of Western writers.
It’s also a sight that provides relief from another shade of green, the color of money-the commercialism of Santa Fe and Taos, the two destinations that were the original draw for my springtime trip from Massachusetts to New Mexico.
For a quick getaway, my wife and I spent three nights in Santa Fe, with a day trip to Taos, and one night in Galisteo, a town of 250 residents 23 miles southeast of Santa Fe.
In hindsight, we should have reversed our sleepover arithmetic, using the quiet but accessible village as a home base for day trips to Santa Fe, Taos and elsewhere.
The easy driving along the empty roads of this wide-open land is actually one of the continuing delights.
The peace and quiet of slow time-the time of a low-slung place like Galisteo-was what we were looking for. We found it in this tiny, picturesque village, lined with knee-high rock walls, much of the rock cut from the bed of Galisteo River by Indians centuries ago.
It’s a village of adobe- and stucco-style homes, a centuries-old trading post that once was under Spanish control and, before that, Indian.
The town itself is along New Mexico Highway 41 in the Galisteo basin, which stretches across Santa Fe County, between the town of Lamy to the north and Cerrillos to the west.
The village has become increasingly popular with artists, photographers and jewelers, all of whom join the older Hispanic residents. But it’s clearly still a place off the beaten track. Cats, dogs and goats roam the dirt roads.
The few businesses in town include a store specializing in tamales, Jose’s Remedios, which also sells herbs, and Chris Griscom’s Light Institute, which gained notoriety after publication of a book by actress Shirley MacLaine, “Dancing in the Light,” which promotes the idea of healing through past-life regression.
There isn’t even the proverbial gas station in town.
We stayed at the Galisteo Inn, a Territorial-style bed-and-breakfast nestled beneath a half-dozen towering cottonwood trees. Its 8 acres consists of a gentle and shady front lawn, a horse stable and a private pond.
The 12-room inn occupies a 240-year-old hacienda once belonging to one of the region’s original settlers, and features large, missionary-style, wood-carved doors, throw rugs and period furniture and fixtures, many handmade and hand-carved.
The airy, well-lighted rooms have wide-planked pinewood floors and cross-beamed ceilings that are 12 feet high in some rooms.
In our room the walls were white stucco, the bed frame was wooden and night tables and fixtures were antiques. Steps covered with hand-painted tiles led down to a tiled private bathroom.
In addition to an outdoor pool and horse stables, the inn also has a Jacuzzi and sauna.
The dining room was closed the Sunday night of our arrival, and the innkeepers’ idea of a “picnic supper,” served outdoors on a back patio at sunset under a yellow half-moon amounted to the casual work of an epicure: pureed carrot and curry soup, grilled strips of chicken on a bed of mixed greens with vinaigrette, freshly baked whole wheat cheese rolls and chocolate mousse cake.
To be sure, Santa Fe was not a bust. It was simply that its crowds and rampant commercialism, even during spring, did not match the impression friends had given us, that of a funky, artsy haven featuring Southwest history and styles. It’s all still true, though the presentation has become so packaged that it oozes the trappings of tourism, not authenticity.
From the ruins of a Pueblo Indian village, the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 1600s and built a city. For the next several centuries, mostly Spanish Americans populated the city, even as tourists discovered its stunning natural sights throughout the 1900s.
But no longer. The city has changed in recent years, becoming more affluent. In the last census, for the first time, Hispanics became a minority. Many of the wealthy tourists, once just passing through, have stayed on. Property values, and taxes, have soared, forcing longtime residents to move farther out from the city. In the past decade, the population grew 14 percent, to about 56,000.
The Santa Fe Trail actually ends in town, at the old plaza, but what once was a quiet city center is now often choked with traffic-vehicular, pedestrian and street vendors. T-shirt shops are ubiquitous.
The museums, in a way, are a respite from the commercial veneer of modern Santa Fe. The Palace of the Governors and the Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures are a chance to meander through its Indian and Spanish past.
The city is widely known for its art galleries, which abound from downtown to the long, winding Canyon Road, devoted almost entirely to galleries and studios.
Much on display is trash art, but we found captivating the works of resident Anne Wu at the Munson Gallery, who works with collage and word scrawls.
But for all this, perhaps the best moment during our stay in Santa Fe was standing atop an overlook known as the Cross of the Martyrs at dusk and watching the sun set behind the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
It was a hike that took us out and above the bustle of the square, enabling us to peer over the low skyline and put the sprawling city back into its larger context of seemingly endless open land and mountain ranges.
The moment of the sunset was silent and grand.
It also was a prelude to a view that could be continued from the Galisteo Inn, where to the northwest we looked out at the same mountain range, and to the Ortiz Mountains to the southwest, each displaying watermelon hues, created by the green junipers that dot the countryside.
The payoff for our brief stay was a morning hike along one of the ranges south of town, coming upon petroglyphs, rock art carved in giant stubs of stone by Indians.
There also was the chance to ride horseback at a slow pace, under a blue sky and glinting sun, along the arid range.
“It sure slows you down,” said one of the riders, an Easterner, to the guide’s question about how different the world looks from the ridge.
The Galisteo Inn is owned by Joanna Kaufman and Wayne Aarniokoski, who formerly lived in Berkeley, Calif. The inn is a 30-minute drive from Santa Fe and about an hour and 15 minutes from Albuquerque. The restaurant is open to guests and the public Wednesday through Sunday. Room rates vary according to size: single, $55-$65; double, $90-$165. The address is HC75-Box 4, Galisteo, N.M. 87540. Phone 505-982-1506.
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The Galisteo Inn offers one room that has accessibility for the disabled.
