Sublime Santa Fe

Pecos multi-tribe settlement near Santa Fe.
Home to nearly 2,000 inhabitants
 prior to 1400.

Santa Fe is chock-full of pricey art galleries, steeped in Spanish and Native American history, and not too easy to navigate.  Santa Fe is a fascinating, quirky and culturally-rich city.  This is probably due to it's age (home to the oldest (1610) still-standing church in the US), and the fact that it was at different times a Native American settlement in 10,000 BC, then conquered by the Spanish in the mid-1600's, later part of Mexico and finally fought over in the Mexican-American war, gaining statehood in 1912.

A wonderful message painted on the wall of the Basilica of St. Francis

Miracle Staircase at Loretto Chapel.

Visiting the missions and chapels here during Holy Week was
a moving experience for both of us.  The crowds are light which leaves that impossible pause as you stand in the middle of a sacred place and wonder at the beauty and serenity around you.  The massive wooden structure in the photo below was shipped, section by section, from Spain in the early 1600's for St. Michael's Mission.  Also on display in the church is a large church bell from the 1400's which visitors could actually strike (I did this, naturally).  I imagined millions of villagers over hundreds of years in Spain and here in New Mexico hearing this same bell strike with important news and an urgency I'll never experience in a kind of life I'll never have.  I'm reminded often on this trip that we are all a part of a larger whole.  The human experience and the marvels and results of human passion bring us together.

All of these changes have created a diverse cultural base in which artists and bohemians thrive.  Restaurants tout "New Mexican" style cuisine, galleries proudly sell Native American art next to Contemporary works, architecture is a varied meld of Territorial, Pueblo and Northern New Mexican.  I think I'm still a little overwhelmed by what I've seen here.  I understand why they say Santa Fe requires repeated visits to truly understand it's complex roots.