Personally I can’t see going to a conference in a wonderful place like Santa Fe and spending all the time in the hotel. So, I did a little conference time at Left Coast Crime and a lot of sightseeing time. The picture is me next to the Rio Grande River somewhere between Santa Fe and Taos.
It was almost research since Molly Pink's parents live in Santa Fe and who knows maybe in an upcoming book she'll go visit them.
But for now what sticks in my mind are the colors of the area and unfortunately photographs just don’t seem to be able to capture them.
Maybe it’s the altitude, but the sky is a particular shade that’s almost a crisp royal blue I’ve never seen anywhere else. Blue seems to be a big deal for doors. I saw doors in all different shades. Apparently, the color is supposed to protect the place from evil.
Turquoise comes in more than it’s namesake color. Some was almost a jade green and other samples had flecks of brown. I bought some hand dyed yarn in Taos in a shade of blue I’d call electric turquoise.
Most of the Pueblo style buildings seemed to be a mustardy shade of brown that matched the ground around them. Along with t the blue doors, a lot had blue painted around the windows. And just about all of them had a string of dried red chiles hanging out front.
But what surprised and delighted me the most were the pink cliff we saw in Bandalier National Monument. They are made out of something called tuff, which is from ancient volcanic eruptions. Not only was it a rosy shade of pink, but the surface had swiss cheese like holes. The holes and softenness of the material made it easy for the Native American’s to build their dwellings using the cliffs as part of them. There are only remnants of their houses, but you can see places where they carved out rooms into the cliffs.
There were lots of green chiles which are surprisingly are hotter than the red ones. The small Pinon trees dotting the hill sides and ground everywhere were a dark, water- starved shade of green. When we looked around a little town called White Rock, almost nobody had a lawn. I saw a woman doing her version of gardening as she arranged a pile of big blue rocks across the front of her pebble covered front yard.
The cottonwood trees still had some toast brown leaves hanging on their branches. There were lots of the almost naked trees along the dry Santa Fe River bed. When we took the aerial tram to Sandia Peak on our way to the Albuquerque and I looked out toward Santa Fe, the ground was a deep red in spots. I didn’t get to see it, but the tram attendant said the cliffs of Sandia Peak were feldspar, and glowed pink for ten minutes at sunset. Next time I want to see that.
What colors do you identify with where you live?
