USA

High Travel – On the Way to Santa Fe

Article and Photography by Lisa TE Sonne

“My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world has given me.”– Georgia O’Keefe.

Finally, I am in the clouds again. Cloud watching was a childhood game, but also a recent playful pastime for me — looking up and conjuring animals, faces, and stories from the layered shapes. My mind left the ground.

Recently, though, all of me was actually in the clouds heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a U.S. state where imagination is encouraged by the creative atmosphere and rich, complex history. It’s one of the older cities in North America with indigenous populations going back thousands of years in the area. Europeans from Spain named it “Santa Fe” (Holy Faith) in the early 1600s.

In my exhilaration to be over the earth, I did some cloud bingeing 30,000 feet above the earth. It’s not just their shapes. The cloud’s textures, densities, movements, and shadows are works of nature and art. They make a dreamy pathway to the galleries and landscapes that Santa Fe is renowned for.

Once there, my husband and I sampled the creativity and culinary sumptuousness of Santa Fe– talking with First Nation artists selling their first-rate jewelry along the Palace of the Governors, and seeing diverse art in galleries and outdoor settings. We also enjoyed the food scene, savoring meals and the settings at Pasqual’s Café & Gallery, and at La Plazuela, the restaurant in the historic La Fonda on the Plaza hotel. We also grabbed snacks at the Farmers Market of the Santa Fe Railroad yard, another arts district.

Like many travelers, we visited the 19th century Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis and the Loreto Chapel, with its mysterious spiral staircase built without supports. We spent time walking around the 400-year-old Plaza, people-watching and exploring shops and galleries.

Near the Plaza, we visited the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. The famous artist had long been an avid traveler, pursuing what she called “the wideness and wonders of the world.” While journeying through this lovely museum, I learned that, when O’Keefe was in her early 70s, she was particularly taken with the perspectives from an airplane, and she expressed her interest in a series of paintings on clouds and aerial views.

The exhibit’s text explained that O’Keefe advocated “taking time to look.” She made and used her own viewfinders to change her perspective. She would use the hole in a pelvis bone or hold up the hole in a piece of Swiss cheese in fun to re-frame what she saw.

Flying home, I noticed the airplane window’s confinement was not unlike the viewfinder eyepieces O’Keefe had fashioned to frame and focus differently. Looking out my “eyepiece” window, I sometimes felt like I was in a floating polar region with pillowy icebergs on the horizon.

Time may be the most precious commodity that you can’t buy, but clouds are free. This trip reminded me that “taking time to look” is one of the great reasons to travel. Whether we see a different big picture, understand a detail once missed, or savor another perspective, we can all take moments to live like artists.

It felt good to enjoy “the wideness and wonders of the world” in Santa Fe and the sky high journey there and back.

www.santafe.org