Santa Fe in the Quiet Months

On a January morning the Plaza lies open to the cold. The bandstand throws a long shadow across the paving stones, and the trees at the corners of the square stand bare, their branches holding the glaze of the last storm. Snow sits against the north walls, hard and granular by mid-morning, gritty underfoot. The air is thin—the town stands above seven thousand feet—and so clear that the mountains on the east side seem close enough to touch.

Along the north side of the square runs the portal of the Palace of the Governors, an adobe building that has stood on this spot since 1610, the year Santa Fe was founded as the northern end of the Camino Real. In summer the portal is packed, tables of silver and stone shoulder to shoulder, the artists at work in the shade. In January the tables are few. The vendors who come set up late and pack up before the sun drops behind the hills. Between them, the empty tables. They know the regulars who stop to talk, and the regulars know to keep moving on a cold morning.

The people crossing the square now are not carrying cameras. They carry grocery bags, coffee cups, briefcases. A man in a state-government jacket cuts across the paving stones at a steady walk. A woman with a dog waits at the curb. The restaurants around the square steam their windows from the inside.

In summer the Plaza is a destination. In January it is a crossing, a place on the way to something else. It is the town's natural state, the one it returns to when the visitors go home.

The Galleries' Own Hours

East of the Plaza, Canyon Road runs narrow between adobe walls. In summer it is a slow parade of cars hunting for parking and people walking the galleries in the heat. In January the road is quiet. The galleries keep the hours they choose. Many open late. Some close for a stretch at a time. A few are dark all winter, a note on the door. The owners who stay are the ones who live here, and in the off-season they do the work the summer crowd never sees—repainting a wall, rehanging a show for the spring.

The light does the real work on Canyon Road in winter. It comes in low over the mountains and slants down the narrow canyon of the street, turning plaster walls the color of old paper, then apricot, then a deep burnt orange as the afternoon goes. Piñon smoke from the chimneys hangs level in the cold air. Snow stays on the roofs. A gallery door opens and closes, and the quiet settles back.

Inside, the rooms are warm and still. The floorboards talk. The paintings on the walls outnumber the people in the rooms, and the people who do come in are often from the neighborhood—collectors, the owners of other galleries, the artists themselves—here to look at what the summer crowds walked past.

This is the season the galleries take a breath. A piece of work gets hung, considered, moved three inches to the left, considered again. Nothing is on the clock.

A Working Town

Santa Fe in January is a state capital that happens to have galleries. The government offices near the downtown run their ordinary hours. The hospitals run. The schools run. The midmorning train down to Albuquerque carries the people who work in the other city. After a storm, the plows do the hospital road first, then the school routes, then the long grade up to the ski basin.

The farmers market at the Railyard thins out to a few cold stalls, but it does not close. The same farmers come in from the valley towns to the south, the same bakers, the same hands in the same gloves counting out change. The tables hold the winter goods: roots, squash, dried chiles, honey, wool.

At lunch the state workers stand in line with everyone else. New Mexico's official state question is red or green, and the answer that means both is Christmas. In January the answer is usually red—the dried pods simmered all morning, ladled over posole.

The off-season is legible. The streets are drivable. The tables are available. The light has room to work. The man who runs the frame shop can talk to a customer for an hour because neither of them is in a hurry. A gallery owner closes early on a Tuesday, and no one in town thinks anything of it.

This is the thing the summer visitor never sees: a town that keeps its own schedule and does not apologize for it.

The Long Light

By half past four in January the sun is already on its way down. The mountains east of town take the last light first. The Sangre de Cristo—blood of Christ, the name for what happens to the range at sunset—goes red along its ridges, snow pink, rock dark. Then the color drains, and the air goes cold fast.

The light at this altitude does not go quietly. It goes long and gold, then sudden. One street lies in shadow while the next still burns. The adobe walls give back the day's warmth. The chimneys smoke. The lights come on in the low houses, one after another, up the hillsides, and the town settles into the dark.

Night at seven thousand feet is a serious thing. The stars are close and bright; there is hardly any haze to dim them. Orion hangs over the mountains all winter. The streets are empty by nine. A dog barks on the far side of town. Santa Fe goes to bed early because Santa Fe gets up early.

In the slow weeks of February the light begins to change. The days stretch. The snow shrinks on the south-facing roofs. The galleries that closed reopen, without announcement, the way they always have. The town does not rush into it. The quiet is the last thing to go.

Photos: Tony Hisgett (CC BY 2.0); Gerd Eichmann (CC BY-SA 4.0)