Nothing Better Than A Dirty Jeep....My "Anniversary" Trip
As my year continues to move along, a fitting metaphor is the road trip. I have always loved to travel by road. There is something rewarding about watching the miles tick away under your tires. A real turning point for me was this past Fall when I took a couple weeks and just drove back and forth to Illinois. When my anniversary began to creep up on me, a road trip was exactly the right idea.
This trip was planned over lunch with my daughter-in-law's aunt. She and I have become very good friends over the past 4 years and she has loved hearing about my road trips. She is a college professor so she has some free time in January and so she insisted that I do something for my anniversary with her, and Santa Fe has been on her list of places to go for a long time.
The idea was for me to drive there, pick her up at the airport and she would drive home with me. We had a great time. it was cold and snowy, but beautiful. We took the jeep to Taos one day and ate and shopped the rest. It's always such fun to show someone a place that you love.
What Diana didn't know ahead of time was that my husband and I have spent many anniversaries in Santa Fe...it is one of our special places. It only made sense for me to be there this year. But although it was bittersweet, I loved sharing our favorite restaurants and stories.
Santa Fe is a spiritual place. There is a presence about it that appeals to the soul. It's interesting to me that I have the same type of attachment to Santa Fe as I do to Venice. There are similarities too....a beautiful presence, the buildings, the food. And also they can appear on the surface to be commercial with store after store of similar shops. A casual visitor might not sense the underlying beauty.
My purchase to myself was a Zuni Fetish of a series of bats, carved from antlers. The Zuni people attach special meanings/purposes to animals....called the "medicine" of these creatures. The bat flies through the darkness by sense and not sight. They hang upside down which gives us new perspective. Finally they emerge from the darkness time after time. I liked that idea of emerging from darkness.
Here are some pictures from my trip.
The open road the first morning in Arizona
The Loretto Chapel
An incredible art gallery we found
Inside the St. Francis Cathedral
The Bill Worrell Gallery....the Shaman (I've wanted one for a very long time)
Me and the Shaman
The vivd colors
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