2014 Bienvenidos Teaser

BIENVENIDOS PU B LIS H ED MAY 1 8 , 201 4

2014 S UM M ER G UID E TO SA N TA F E A N D N O RT H E R N N E W ME XICO

INSIDE 12

City parking map

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New Rio Grande del Norte National Monument beckons

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Acequias nurture both land and customs

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City of markets cater to every interest

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Three day trips: High Road, Jemez Loop, Las Vegas

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The melting Sangres: A shrinking snowpack

100 Valles Caldera’s human face

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Standout summer events

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New restaurants entice!

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Water for the river — what a concept!

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Mountain biking galore

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Museums: A guide to what’s up in Santa Fe

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Most romantic bars in the City Different

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Galleries present jam-packed summer schedule

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Avanyu: A Pueblo portent of water

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The River Trail

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Small town farmers markets

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Three free, live music series

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Summer Calendar 2014

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Conserving water — A user’s guide

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Good meat = good eats

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Backstage at The Santa Fe Opera

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The generosity of water

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Three writers on nature: Nichols, Crawford and deBuys

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Water sports of the region

Santa Cruz and Nambé Lake

PHOTOS: GENE PEACH, KERRY SHERCK, KITTY LEAKEN

COVER PHOTO

OWNER

EDITORIAL

ADVERTISING

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ADVERTISING SALES

TECHNOLOGY

PRODUCTION

DISTRIBUTION

WEB

ADDRESS

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Art Trujillo, 505-995-3852 Vince Torres, 505-995-3830 Mike Flores, 505-995-3840 Wendy Ortega, 505-995-3892 Matthew Ellis, 505-995-3844

operations director Al Waldron assistant production director Tim Cramer prepress manager Dan Gomez press manager Larry Quintana packaging manager Brian Schultz

circulation manager Michael Reichard distribution coordinator Reggie Perez

digital development Natalie Guillén www.santafenewmexican.com

Ginny Sohn

advertising director Heidi Melendrez 505-986-3007 marketing director Monica Taylor 505-995-3888

technology director Michael Campbell

COVER DESIGN

creative director Deborah Villa 505-986-3027 magazine editor Daniel Gibson copy editors Deborah Paddison, Kris Ota

office: 202 E. Marcy St. hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday advertising information: 505-995-3852 delivery: 505-986-3010, 800-873-3372 for copies of this magazine, call 505-428-7622 or email rperez@sfnewmexican.com

Deborah Villa

PUBLISHER

EDITOR

Ray Rivera

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Summer Visitors Guide for Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico

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generosity THE

STORY BY STANLEY CRAWFORD PHOTOGRAPHY BY GENE PEACH I have always been attracted to the linear oases of streams and rivers in the arid Southwest. As a native Southern Californian, I grew up beside a tiny stream — a rarity in San Diego County. Our little family stream was, in fact, seepage from a riprap reservoir where Colorado River water was stored, and so it was in effect a distant extension of the Colorado itself. No wonder, then, that I eventually ended up settling next to the Rio Embudo in Northern New Mexico. And no wonder that I was to spend the next 40 years deriving much of my livelihood from its waters as a market farmer.

Water is often about expectation. In the eastern U.S., one is frequently waiting for rain or snow to stop, for the floods to come, for waters to subside. In the west, one is always waiting for it to start raining or snowing, waiting for the arroyos to fill, waiting for the streams and rivers to return to “normal,” and in the spring, waiting for the acequias to start running again.

A dry acequia channel in the fall after the water has been shut off looks almost natural, not quite constructed, ribbons of silt and gravel meandering through it, banks overgrown with grasses and willows. A spring ditch crew, slicing off the dry grasses with sharpened shovel blades and cleaning up the banks, renews the channel into a trim, sinuous form wandering through a landscape of brush and trees, improbably high up on a bank, in a way that evokes artist Andy Goldsworthy’s constructions of leaves and stones, twigs and branches.

Then the water flows, improbably, down the improbable channel, led by a leaf- and twig- and foam-clogged tongue, as tended by a mayordomo and an assistant or two with pitchforks and rakes.

I don’t know how many times — at least 40-some — I have walked into the house and called out to RoseMary, “The ditch is running again!” It’s always a strange, even magical moment. On our south-facing side of the river, the Acequia del Bosque is often the first to be dug out in March, because its banks are mostly or completely thawed, and because our south-sloping fields are the first to need irrigation after a dry winter. Invariably I climb the steps up the ditch bank and inspect the new flow, richly brown with silt, but not expecting to see anything new. More like greeting an old friend.

If I have been home during the winter and have gone to the effort, the three main feeder ditches will be ready to receive the water, though not the drip system, which must wait for the water to flow much clearer so as not immediately to clog the filter and the drip lines themselves. And if I have cleaned out the feeder ditches well, the water will go where it’s supposed to, not all over the backyard, creating mud bogs and small ponds.

After a good wet winter, increasingly a rarity, the Rio Embudo and other Sangre de Cristo-fed streams will rise through April and May and crest in June, their winter-clear waters becoming muddier and muddier. More expectation: How high will the water go? Or maybe there will be no noticeable spring runoff at all, which is increasingly the case. Will the monsoon season hold off beyond its once-usual start date of July? Will the streams dry up again? As people greet each other throughout the days, at the village post offices and stores, gas stations, churches and schools, invariably there will be allusions to, comments on and wishes about the weather, the possibilities of rain and snow, of drought, the movement of the jet stream, the effect of this or that Gulf hurricane, el Niño o la Niña o Nada. New Mexicans are experts in talking about the lack of weather. After a month of perfectly blue sky, the arrival of a small cloud or two can set off wild speculation.

With rising waters, or even without, vegetation finally leafs out, flowers and then gives shade. I suspect those who live in dry, arid climates are far more 32

OF WATER

Dawn on the Rio Grande between Pilar and Taos Junction sensitive to the joys of swimming and boating than those in climates where immersing oneself in a river or lake is only experiencing a slight increase in humidity. This may, in part, account for New Mexico’s unusually high rate of drowning. The best way, I find, to get through a hot afternoon is to go sit in the cool, often frigid, waters of the Embudo, either too shallow or too fast for actual swimming; or drive over to the nearby Rio Grande and plunge into its warmer and deeper waters; or head north for the primitive camping area of Heron Lake,

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a reservoir near Chama not particularly notable for its herons, having been named after engineer James B. Heron.

In countless small villages and river valleys of Northern New Mexico, water is the stuff of community. As mayordomo (ditch boss) and then as comisionado (commissioner) of two acequias in Dixon, through managing the flow of water from property to property, organizing ditch cleaning crews, going from house to house to collect ditch dues, and meeting with commissioners and mayordomos

of the other seven acequias of the valley during times of water shortage, I came to know and become part of the community in which my wife and I settled and raised our two children. In these experiences, I received far more than I gave.

It might have something to do with what I could call the generosity of water.

Stanley Crawford writes and farms in the Embudo Valley. He is the author of numerous books, including Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico. See story on page 70.

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NEWEST NATIONAL MONUMENT PROTECTS RARE ECOSYSTEMS AND PROVIDES ENDLESS RECREATIONAL ADVENTURES S TORY BY K R I S T E N DAV E N P O RT PHOTOG R A P H Y BY G E N E P E AC H Standing on top of a 3-million-year-old volcanic cone in northern Taos County, there’s not much for the eye to see but sagebrush, piñon pine, rugged rock, gnarly juniper and the distant white peaks of Colorado. It’s dry and the wind whistles high.

The landscape is lonely. Someone from wetter and greener climates might say it’s desolate.

Thanks to a stroke of the presidential pen last year, this high-desert landscape will remain this way, mostly empty of human signs. The Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, signed into existence in March 2013, is one of the nation’s most recent — and biggest — national monuments.

That declaration protects the arid high-mountain Taos Plateau from any development — no fracking, no drilling, no mining, no suburbs, no wind farms, no new roads — and ensures that rain and wind will be the primary factors shaping this region for centuries to come.

And, it protects the existing myriad human uses of this land, from collecting piñon nuts to rafting.

Encompassing 242,555 acres in Taos and Rio Arriba counties, the new monument puts under federal protection nearly a fifth of all the land in

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NATIONAL MONUMENT Summer Visitors Guide for Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico

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View south from Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

THREE MEMORABLE ADVENTURES ON A TANK OF GAS

ROUTE DETAILS

Be sure to travel all of these routes with a road map.

THE HIGH ROAD

From Santa Fe, take US 84/285 north to Pojoaque and turn right onto NM 503. At NM 520, turn left and proceed to Chimayó.

In Chimayó, visit Ortega’s Weaving Shop (53 Plaza del Cerro, 351-4215), and if hungry, stop in at Rancho de Chimayó Restaurante (right on NM 520, 351-4444, www.ranchodechimayo.com). Shop for the village’s famous red chile and milagros (religious tokens) at El Potrero Trading Post (next to the Santuario, 351-4112). Santuario de Chimayó hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., May to September; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., October to April.

JEMEZ LOOP

Author Henry James said his two favorite English language words were “summer afternoon.” Mine are “road trip.” Crank up the music, open the sunroof, pass the trail mix

To reach San Ildefonso Pueblo, take 84/285 north of Santa Fe 15 miles to the junction with N.M. 502 in Pojoaque, then go 6 miles west on N.M. 502. There is a sign on the highway. Los Alamos is 39 miles northwest of Santa Fe via U.S. 84/285 and N.M. 502.

Bandelier National Monument is 46 miles west of Santa Fe via U.S. 84/285, N.M. 502 and N.M. 4. Valles Caldera National Preserve is located on N.M. 4 about 15 miles past Bandelier. Note: There is no gas station between Los Alamos and San Ysidro.

LAS VEGAS

and start your engine for a cruise to beat the blues.

With Santa Fe as your base camp, you can fill up the tank in the morning, hit the road and by evening download enough photos of scenic beauty, historic significance and wowfactor discovery to make your Facebook friends jealous.

For an immersion in legend and lore, plus shopping and dining opportunities available only in New Mexico, try car tripping along the following three routes: the High Road to Taos; a Jemez Mountains loop taking in Los Alamos or Bandelier National Monument; and a journey to Las Vegas and back. Each of these trips may be completed within a day at a leisurely pace or extended as suits your fancy and schedule.

To reach Las Vegas, travel an hour, approximately 67 miles northeast from Santa Fe on I-25. Visible are the landmarks of Starvation Peak on the right and, as you approach Las Vegas, Hermit’s Peak, an enormous granite knob, on the left.

Above, Estella’s on Bridge Street: Las Vegas Route.

Left, Classical Gas Museum in Embudo: The High Road.

y a d

g n i p p i r t

STORY BY BY SHARON NIEDERMAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KERRY SHERCK

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IRVIN TRUJILLO

Above, Ditch workers, Acequia de la Cañada Ancha, Chimayó, 2014.

Facing page, Acequia de la Cañada Ancha, Chimayó, 2010.

Below left, John Trujillo, Acequia de los Ortegas, ca. 1995.

Right, Mercedes Trujillo, Acequia de la Cañada Ancha, ca. 1989.

THE LONG AND WINDING DITCH

Acequias nurture both land and customs of El Norte STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY DON USNER

I was a long way from home and yet felt that everything around me was oddly familiar. There at the magnificent Alhambra in Granada, Spain, the tiled roofs and whitewashed walls, the ornate ceilings and horseshoe archways — not to mention the intricate Arabic calligraphy in the golden stucco — resembled not at all the flat-roofed, brown-stuccoed adobes of New Mexico. But the dry air and the wideopen blue sky evoked the ampleness of light and space that I so love about the Southwestern U.S. And here I was in the Patio de la Acequia, a place whose name rings with familiar words of the Spanish spoken back home in Chimayó.

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I grew up among many acequias, those small, winding waterways that bring life to the gardens and orchards in Chimayó and all over New Mexico and southern Colorado. These, like the acequia in the Alhambra and others in Spain, have their origins in Arabic North Africa during a time when much of Europe convulsed with the traumas of the Middle Ages. Then, engineers and laborers under Islamic caliphates designed and built as-sāqiyas to channel water to the agricultural lands and towns spread throughout the flourishing Islamic world. Acequias, along with the associated body of formal, written water law and the word “acequia” itself, reached the Iberian peninsula in the early eighth century C.E. and later came to the New World with the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

It’s hard to imagine this vaunted history when you’re bent over a shovel, heaving mud and sand from a dry ditch under the warmth of the New Mexican spring sun. Yet this is a ritual that goes on each year in Northern New Mexico, as it has since 1599, when the first Spanish colonists founded their regional capital, San Gabriel. Digging the acequia was a defining act in the establishment of Spanish and Mexican communities throughout New Mexico, including the plazas in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Mesilla, for the next 200 years.

Sometimes, this entailed scraping out the acequia with wooden hand tools through rocky terrain for many miles from distant mountains, where they diverted waters from snowmelt-fed streams.

The springtime custom of sacando la acequia (clearing the ditch), remains one of the primary markers of the annual calendar in New Mexico, a time when the land and people turn the corner Summer Visitors Guide for Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico

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from a long winter and embrace the promise of spring. I’ve taken part in this backbreaking, ditch-cleaning ritual a few times, but not often, as I am not and have never been a farmer. And in this respect, you might say I’m part of the problem facing acequias in New Mexico today: Many people live on but do not live off the land, and so they have little incentive to take care of the acequias. As a result, many ditches have fallen into disrepair and some have been abandoned.

On the other hand, I love fresh chile from small

NEW KIDS

ON THE RESTAURANT BLOCK

BY JOHN VOLLERTSEN P H O TO G R A P H Y B Y K I T T Y L E A K E N

Like flowers pushing up through the frozen ground, new restaurants pop up in the late spring in our food-crazy town, whetting the appetites of hungry locals and visitors yearning for new eats. Many newborn restaurants take advantage of the first thaw to burst forth, giving them plenty of growing time before the dog days of summer. Here is a sampling of six I think deserve a visit. Who knows?

They might just become your new local favorites.

Izanami has over 50 different kinds of sake; this one is Inemankai, “Ine’s Full Bloom” red rice sake. An ‘over’ pour, when the liquid spills over into a saucer, is a gesture of generosity.

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