Four chilly, but sunny days in Santa Fe, and I’ll admit the city is just as charming at 45 degrees as at 70. We love to walk down from our timeshare unit into the main plaza, browse the art and jewelry and lunch at Mexican restaurants. The surrounding mountains on the horizon are still snow-covered from the twelve-inch snow about two weeks ago.

Some highlights: pizza Saturday night at il Travittore, just a few steps from our condo; Native vendors displaying their art on blankets; finding out that the wolf is the totem for teachers (have not yet found one reasonably priced); upstairs porch dining at the Thunderbird on the city plaza (yes, outdoors!), audio tour of the Georgia O’Keefe Museum, and sampling beer, whiskey and pottery at the Tumbleroot Brewery.  Yes, a bar with impressive pottery-for-sale inventory. You have not sampled beer until you have had a Mole Stout in a gorgeous tumbler like this one:

Of course, you’ve already figured out the origin story of this place: husband brews beer, wife throws pottery. Hence the outlet where you can get potting lessons and buy tumblers and coffee mugs for artist’s prices. We had already had a margarita and a tumbler of Mole Stout, so, of course, we had to have the tumbler and the coffee mug.

Our home-away-from-home had a purple door just like ours: a compact studio apt, where the bed is surrounded by a kitchen galley, a basic sofa, a wall-mounted TV, and a gas-fireplace.  I think I understand the life-style of space satellite inhabitants.

The gorgeous blue mountains of Pedernal (below) come from Georgia O’Keefe’s neighborhood near Abiqui, New Mexico.  As the caption informs us, Georgia spent  hours and days contemplating this vista for its spectrum of color and majesty.  Some of her brilliant color and contrast appear in this painting, the mountain looking other-worldly in the background. Although she lived in New York and Texas at various points in her life, this was her happy place and a good reason to put the Museum in Santa Fe.

O’Keefe rarely painted crosses, but she wanted them to represent their culture. The cross with the red heart and the blue sky represented  exuberance in France, and the heavy brown cross, the gloomy, self-punishing faith of the Southwest Mexican Catholics.

Outside the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture a fully armed Apache warrior greets you fiercely. This is one of five Native  and Mexican art museums on Museum Hill, Santa Fe.

The surprising display that greets you at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is a bold, orange Triumph (TR-6) decked out with the orange and black designs of the Native culture. The museum entered a competition with the theme “Driving the Market,” and the Triumph and other exhibits helped the museum to a major award. The museum displays tools, domestic artifacts, art photography, and paintings representing the troubled history of Natives in New Mexico.

This panoramic and reflective image greets in the entrance hallway of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

This image is a dancing warrior conveyed in sound and motion near the front door of the museum.

This photograph below  depicts a day when Indian farmlands were flooded for development purpose of the federal government.

When we started our vacation-journey in the middle of August I remember thinking it seemed like a short span, considering how long the summer was. But “It’s not about the days in your life, but the life in your days,” and we had abundant life.

We traveled two days  to Chautauqua, N.Y., participated in the celebration of the “mythology of equality” in jazz and the Word spoken; we drove on to Stratford, ON, and were absorbed by theater in  every corner of the town; we journeyed on to Traverse City, MI, where we felt the  love of family.  It was rich with joy, a little grief, and much learning

On the second leg of the trip to Chautauqua, Victoria drove through a pounding rain up the coast of Lake Erie, but we arrived safely in sunshine. The campus was in full bloom with anticipation and flowers. Some highlights of our week:

I touched Victoria’s shoulder at the first refrain of “the Gospel shout can not be sung without the blue note” [ from Rev. Dr. Otis Moss Jr.] because she knew it was an echo of “joy and pain in the same hand” she had been quoting for months.

The preacher told a story that became a parable.

In a cavern he visited you can not reach the central room without going through a pitch dark tunnel. The guide went first and the visitors marched single file behind, each person with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them. As they approached the light of the room, people in the front exclaimed,” I see the light.”

Yet the people behind could still not see it until they turned a corner and the light gradually filtered through. The implications: “We need faith, faith is risk,” said the preacher.

Chautauqua has celebrated the theme “All Rise” all week in sermons and lectures. As Wynton Marsalis told us on Monday, he wanted to write “a piece that will allow us to come together.” It was about paying tribute to “Believers who are willing to do what’s impossible.”

The jazz symphony “All Rise,” ending with I Am (Don’t Run From Me): The act of  rising is itself thanks for God’s love, which is the source of all life and creativity.  A joyful Dixieland band.

The winding road to Stratford, the puzzle that was the Bradshaw Suites: security devices,  foreign streaming TV and thermostats with delayed action, it all became home for seven days.

• the welcoming dining and theater establishments, the Tom Patterson Theater by the Avon River, Mercer’s Hotel and Bar, the rainstorm on the roof of the “Bru Garden.”

Opening Set of La Cage Aux Folles – Festival Theater

Set of Cymbeline Patterson Theater

• the hilarity of “Something Rotten:” Nick goes to a soothsayer, Thomas Nostradamus [who could be brother to Back to the Future’s Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd)].  He peers into the future to discover Shakespeare’s next hit and keeps stumbling into the Twenty-first century, discovering plays where characters burst into song. It seems to Nick musicals are the most preposterous invention, but he pursues it trying to get ahead with Nostradamus’s prediction of Shakespeare’s peak production–Omlette!

The loving hospitality in Traverse City from Kathleen and Gordie, touring the Leelanau Peninsula and sailing on “The Madeleine.”

• the unexpected brisk weather everywhere, leading to the purchase of sweatshirts and outdoor vests. Not a bad thing

We are on the final leg of the journey today, feeling the joy and blessings all the way. Two plus weeks could not have been more inspiring and satisfying!