It was the afternoon of Christmas Day. Fat falling snowflakes coated the ground, trees, brush, fences, the adobe dwellings and little church at Tesuque Pueblo, 12 miles north of Santa Fe.
As my wife and I stood partially sheltered by an adobe portal, about 75 Indians strikingly garbed in white blousey shirts, turquoise and coral necklaces, black skirts with long shell-studded sashes, white leggings bound with red binding and moccasins overlaid with fur anklets, filed into the snow-covered plaza for the traditional rainbow dance, a celebration of the winter solstice.
Each male dancer wore a headband with two eagle feathers and one vivid orange feather and held a gourd rattle in one hand, an evergreen bough in the other. Arched headdresses distinguished the two women dancers participating in this annual ritual. As the dancers entered the plaza through the falling snow, they shook their rattles, creating a sound of pelting rain. Directed by several elders and accompanied by a single throbbing drum, deep as a heart beat, the dancers chanted and moved through the formations.
Other pueblo elders and families, some sitting in folding chairs, and nearly 100 chilled Anglos, watched this haunting tableau in black and white as Indian children romped in the snow on the fringes and showed off their Christmas toys.
The images at Tesuque Pueblo were the most vivid of 2000, a year that brought journeys to Hong Kong and Kyoto for me and my wife in April, a trip to Wales for me in October, and finally a nine-day family trip to Santa Fe for the Christmas holiday.
Outside of Santa Fe, I can’t think of another place in the U.S. where you can enjoy such a multi-faceted holiday season, one that blends Anglo, Hispanic and Indian traditions amid adobe ambience and wilderness landscapes. Besides the Indian dances, we savored holiday concerts by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale in Guadalupe Santuario and the Santa Fe Pro Musica in Loretto Chapel; and visits to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Museum of International Folk Art, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.
On Christmas Eve, Santa Fe glowed. Late that night we strolled along Canyon Road, Acequia Madre and intersecting lanes, illuminated by thousands of farilitos (candles flickering in paper bags filled with sand) placed along walkways, curbs and atop adobe walls and roof lines. Our other activities included visits to excellent art galleries, meals in good restaurants and a short hike in the snow along a favorite trail near the Santa Fe ski area.
And, to make the trip leisurely and avoid airline hassles, we opted during the summer to book round-trip sleeping accommodations on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief between Chicago and Lamy, N.M., 18 miles from Santa Fe. While not the perfect trip–trains run late in the winter, sleeping car toilets were inoperable on the return–the Chief afforded a view of holiday lights and winterscapes between the two points. We’re already planning a repeat trip next year.
The big journey of the year, however, was a two week trip to Hong Kong and Kyoto, places I had visited before but my wife hadn’t. This was my first trip to Hong Kong since the former British Colony was handed over to China and became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic.
While old images of Hong Kong remain sharp, some have changed forever. White-knuckle landings at Kai Tak Airport, where the approach to the runway, a finger jutting into the harbor, was perilously close to apartment buildings and fluttering laundry, are no more. They have given way to calmer descents into sprawling modern Chek Lap Kok Airport on Lantau Island. The harbor, once an image of perpetual motion with junks, sampans and freighters on the go around the clock, is quieter now. The harbor is smaller, too, thanks to reclamation projects undertaken to create more land for development. If there’s one constant in water traffic, it’s the ubiquitous Star Ferry, which shuttles thousands of Chinese residents and foreign visitors between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island and other points every few minutes.
Hong Kong’s skyline always provides a host of lasting images–tower after rising tower of glass and steel glistening in the sun by day, and garishly illuminated at night.
One image that never seems to change is Nathan Road, a broad, heavily trafficked boulevard in Kowloon spanned by ranks of towering neon signs. The sidewalks teem with Chinese, all it seems, with a cellular phone at an ear.
Unlike Hong Kong, Kyoto appears to stay the same–calm and traditional, the quintessential Japanese city, its skyline punctuated with elegant temple roofs and pagodas. When I think of our visit to Kyoto, several images come to mind. At Kiyomizu Temple, swarming with Japanese school children in blue uniforms and clean white sneakers, I can still see a Japanese woman in a pale blue brocade kimono bound with a earth-toned obe (sash) staring pensively at the massive temple.
In contrast, I can picture two teenage girls on Teramachi, an arcaded shopping street. Both wore miniskirts, tight T-shirts and wigs–one blonde and short, the other red with twin pony tails. One wore clean platformed sneakers accented with white legwarmers, the other six-inch red platformed sandals and white knee socks. They grinned as I took a photo. And then there’s Nanzenji, a Zen Buddhist complex, with a serene forested garden where bamboo rustled and a large shaded pond where orange and gold carp swam near the surface.
The one place new to my travels was Wales, a marvelous and mysterious appendage on the west side of England. In Wales I found a mix or rolling farmland and grazing sheep, stark mountains and sweeping views of the Irish Sea.
But several months later, when I think of Wales, I picture the haunting ruins of Tintern Abbey, established by Cistercian monks in the 12th Century, and immortalized by the poet William Wordsworth. There I walked amid the stones and walls of the great abbey church and tried to imagine what the great windows looked like.
Wales is a land of castles–some active, most in ruin. On a rainy Saturday I trooped through Conwy Castle in the north, its ancient walkways slick and shiny from the wet. Eight drum towers still protect the western and eastern walls, a formidable sight. The little town of Conwy itself is cozy, with bookshops, art galleries and a little Teapot Museum.
The same goes for Tenby, a harbor town in the south. The image I remember most is seeking shelter in a musty, jammed used bookstore near the harbor as rain driven by gale force winds drenched the town and anyone walking about.
No matter about the rain: I’d put Wales on my return list, too.
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Alfred Borcover’s e-mail address is aborcover@aol.com.
