Santa Fe

I just did one of my famous wanderings tonight. I do them whenever I travel, and there’s often no purpose, no mission, simply to see the place I’m in. Or perhaps I decide to go someplace really far, and decide the walk will serve me a purpose. On my wanders, I think, I feel, I become much more in touch with what it is I really want after all.

It’s beautiful out here. So dry, and the altitude is ever-present. (As an asthmatic, I can never ignore that.) The running is wonderful. The first day I did a run where I fell in a brook more than once – and that was definitely the highlight. It went up and up, in a rolling way, and was a lovely downhill run on the way back.

We went on a moonlit hike that I thought to myself, “Iliana and I would love to run this!” It was lots of up, rocks, sand, lovely views. Of course, like any run Iliana and I would do, there were disasters. I dropped my shirt on a prickly pear cactus and spent much of the hike pulling thorns out of my skin. (For the record, I still have one in my finger. I can’t get it out. Also, I have to throw away my grey hoodie because they are ingrained in the fabric.) Then it got super dark on the way down, and the headlamp was in the car, and I was paranoid I was going to twist an ankle a few days before Javelina. Luckily there was lightning every so often (sarcasm here, though it did illuminate our path!) and thunder and a little rain too. We had to recover/celebrate with some Mai Tais at a bar where an older lady engaged me in a long interesting slightly drunken (on her end) conversation about fabric arts and fabric installations and clothes we sewed.

It’s been a good trip. Good in so many ways, full of love, but also, full of great running and this sense of peace. I am a bratty New Yorker in many ways (I like my good pizza and my chai and my awesome parties), but I really need to leave every so often to mellow out and be in touch with who I am. Also, the running is awesome elsewhere. One day I wonder if I’ll carry out my vision of living on a house on a dirt road where I can bike to my small-college-town library where I’m a librarian, and I write, and the beach isn’t far. Until then, I’m a New Yorker, escaping every so often for love and run.