I’m back in the forest near Flagstaff, surrounded by tall pines. No mosquitoes!!  Drove long and hard, through Indian reservations, a thunderstorm and a place called Hot Eye,where I mean to to go back and take a soak.

It was sad to leave my friends in Colorado but that drive down to Santa Fe and the day I spent there was absolute magic.

I spent the fourth of July strolling through old town Santa Fe with about a million other people. Place was packed! filled with artists selling their work and a bandstand right in the middle of the plaza with four old folks playing strings. A guitar,mandolin,bass and a fiddle, playing Blue Grass and though I’ve never been a fan it was captivating and sweet and I sat and listened and tapped my feet and watched the most fascinating thing on earth. Humans. Of every sort. A woman got up and started dancing and I thought, “there’s one in every crowd”.  I watched her face as she freestyled around the foot of the stage and was transfixed by the pure joy on her face, in her hands and feet and knees. She was rapturous. I went and sat next to her and we talked about how beautiful it all was. I drifted through the crowd, had a martini at a bar and then went to church. The cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi where I walked and sat in the Stations of the Cross Prayer garden.  Beauty and horror planted there side by side. Blooming roses and lavender and Jesus on the cross.

I’m on my way home now.

namaste