Today we took the Rail Runner from Albuquerque up to Santa Fe. The thing is, this place is such a feast in every way, it is impossible to take it all in, or to convey what its like. While we were still home, my girl asked what we would be doing in New Mexico. She wanted to know if she had to worry about being bored. And one answer is yes, you will be bored. Visiting relatives is innately boring for children in a deeply dependable and comforting way. This is that. But what I told her back at home is also true and the kids are feeling it. When you are here, you are in a place so different and so special that just being here is an event. Grammie was trying to tell us what to look for as we road the train an hour through stunning high desert flanked by mountain chains on either horizon. I had to cut her off as an act of mercy. There is so much to see in the simple looking, its not helpful to think about what you're missing. What you're seeing is a feast. Everywhere you turn, feast feast feast. And its all just normal life here. We began with lunch at Tomasitas.  If you click over you'll hear the owner speaking God's Honest Truth. They serve the best red and green chili you can find. Feast feast FEAST!

Then we began walking around the Plaza. It only took about 4 minutes to pass an artist installing a piece in a window front. It was 1 degree here last night. So next I bought some shearling boots and wool socks and put them on my feet, possibly permanently.

Everything here is done well. Yes, its for tourists. But locals live here and they are living well. We were surrounded by locals, for the most part today. Its not tourist season right now. The people in the bookshop all live here. Imagine if this were your local book shop. We stopped for coffee, book browsing, and resting by this fire on generous warm linen couches.

I lived here in the late 1980s. So walking around was feast-full as well as sentimental. I used to live right down East Alameda, in the direction of that mountain you can see there, walking distance from this intersection. I saw shadow selves of me and my brother and sister all over these streets. We were so young, so clueless. It was so good then and its so good now. You can't hold any of it in a permanent way. You must understand you're missing it as you're living it. You can only feast.

On the train up we met an Opera singer named Dante who sang for us. On the way home, an auctioneer who cried for us. I didn't know it was called crying. I tried on a ring today in the Plaza. A translucent opal circled in tiny diamonds set in gold with no back. I studied lapidary when I lived here and I was pretty good at it too. A bunch of people in my family are metal smiths. I know jewelry. This was the most beautiful ring I've ever seen. It was magical, spectacular, a stone larger than a quarter that sat on your hand like shiny air, unbelievably subtle and striking at the same time, completely one of a kind and the man who made it was also selling it. Santa Fe is the sort of place you see such things. But these are trifling details. We exhausted ourselves just being happy stupid feasting tourists. Then we rode home. It was 16 degrees by 6:30 pm. There was frozen fog this morning and 22 inches of snow fell yesterday on the mountain tops behind Grammie's house, though not a single flake on us. We were cold, tired, almost hungry, and glad to let the train take us home.