So last weekend I went to Santa Fe with my friend Brian from Denver. The whole week leading up to the event, I had that Newsies song in my head, but I couldn't remember any more than the "Santa Fe" part of the words. I forgot until I grabbed this picture how cute all those newsies were.
We went down because a cousin of mine was getting married, one I rarely see, and hardly any of my family was going to be there. Oddly enough, this compelled me to go more than less; I felt somehow obligated due to our lack of connection. My aunt called me nine days out and asked me if I would play the guitar for the ceremony, which was to be held outdoors in some sort of ruined church. After a half hour of deliberation, I said yes, and ended up playing last Saturday with approximately an hour total in practice time. Thankfully the guitar is like a horse or a bicycle, and even though my fingertips felt like knives were slicing them, I managed to hold on just long enough.
The wedding was at Pecos National Historic Park, and the ruins turned out to be pretty cool, a sun-baked mud-brick sort of structure that had an open roof and back, but the front and sides were mostly intact. The wedding party was small, the attendence was sparse, and the ceremony was short. My favorite kind of wedding. Brian liked it because there was beer at the reception, and he got to say the word "horno" about 97,000 times. [There was a little display type thing set up just across the road from the ruins, with a native type of stove, called a horno, that was used to bake bread.] The ceremony itself was performed by some kind of priestess, who talked about the four sacred elements, and I kind of felt like Captian Planet might come barreling down the aisle at any given moment. I found out later that Lauren (my cousin) had become Wiccan, and so this answered a few of my immediate questions, but quickly brought up more pertinent ones.
So, on to post-wedding activities: Brian and I checked into our Red Roof Inn accomodations prior to the reception, and promptly both felt too tired to go back out like we had planned. So we watched Tommy Boy on TBS and fell asleep. The next morning we went downtown and had breakfast, and walked around a little. Then we stumbled onto the Plaza and the annual Spanish Festival. It was actually really great, and ended up being my favorite thing about the whole trip. We walked around for a couple of hours, looking at art, sculpture, hearing music, viewing beautiful handmade jewelry, smelling foods, and watching live performers of several different genres. We met up briefly with my family to say goodbye before they headed to the airport in Albequerque, and then took a spin around the old and beautiful Cathedral of St. Francis. Then we walked back to the car, making a pit stop at a Cold Stone Creamery, and finally headed in an easterly direction on I-25.
The car ride back was great- a little napping, a lot of reading of Harry Potter, some eating of Swedish Fish. The best, most epiphinal moment for me of the entire weekend was when we got north of Pueblo and I saw the Peak and began to recognize finer points of the geography. I said it out loud before I even realized it to myself; "Finally, I'm home." And I realized it was true- this little hippie, gay, backwoods town has really become my home, as far as I am able to claim one. And I was honestly glad it was true. Santa Fe was nice, but I could care less if it remembers me or not, because for now I'm a Colorado Kid.
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