EDITORIAL: Pagosa Springs… Santa Fe… Pagosa Springs

The drive back to Pagosa Springs from Santa Fe, NM, late Sunday afternoon, was fairly uneventful, except for the moment when 7-year-old Simone suddenly announced that she was car-sick and promptly puked on the back seat, her shoes, and her iPad.

That event necessitated a stop at the grocery store in Chama, to purchase paper towels and a spray bottle of Windex multi-surface disinfectant cleaner — “KILLS 99.9% OF GERMS!”

Next trip to Santa Fe, I will be sure to have a roll of paper towels, and a handy barf bag.

And there will indeed be a “next trip”. Presumably, this coming weekend.

Towards the end of 2021, my two daughters — Lily Hope and Ursala Hudson — learned that they’d been selected for an ‘Artist Residency’ program, which included three weeks of access to the art studios at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe, plus room and board, plus a small stipend. The program started last week, and I had volunteered to bring Ursala’s daughters down to Santa Fe for the weekend, and to spend Saturday and Sunday as the family babysitter while Lily and Ursala worked in the IAIA art studio.

My two daughters are award-winning fabric artists who are carrying on a family weaving tradition they learned at the knee of their mother, noted Alaska Native weaver and artist Clarissa Rizal (previously, Clarissa Hudson). Clarissa passed away in 2016.

Clarissa Rizal, 1956-2016, wearing one of the numerous Alaska Native ceremonial dance robes she created.

Lily had brought her five children with her, from Juneau, Alaska, to live with her in Santa Fe during the three-week program, so my babysitting duties included supervision of seven kids — Nicholas, Amelie, Louis, Simone, Mary, Ella, and Anastasia — all of whom are seriously addicted to iPads.

I hadn’t seen Lily or her children for about five years. I had never met Anastasia, who is only four years old. A visit to Alaska had been planned in 2020, but got canceled due to COVID. Another trip, planned for last summer, also got canceled.

Remarkably enough, the Artist Residency at IAIA did not get canceled, so Ursala headed for Santa Fe on Monday to meet up with Lily, and Amelie and Simone and I drove down on Friday, to visit the cousins — a visit which also included Violet and Tavi, who live full-time in Santa Fe with my son Kahlil and his wife Miki.

The physical transition from Colorado to New Mexico, at the state border — just past the ranching community of Chromo — has always struck me as remarkable, when the jagged peaks and tall Ponderosa pines on the Colorado side suddenly give way to the pink mesas and rolling desert of New Mexico, with its short, rounded Piñon pines scattered across the landscape as far as the eye can see.

Both landscapes are, of course, overwhelmingly rural. That, they share in common. Thousands of acres of undeveloped land that will, in my imagination, remain undeveloped forever, due to the general (and well-known) lack of water in the American Southwest.

The arid climate of New Mexico does not easily align with the steady growth of the City of Santa Fe, curiously enough.  Back when Clarissa and I lived in Santa Fe — for two years, 1987-1989 — the population had already exploded to include about 50,000 residents. The latest Census pegged the population at 86,000.

Thankfully, the kitchen tap in Lily’s apartment, this past weekend, still delivered clean water, and the toilets flushed successfully. How the Santa Fe Public Works Department manages this miracle, I have no idea.

It’s also something of a miracle that my daughters are able to manage their lives as working artists, based upon an ancient, labor-intensive weaving style from Alaska. The creation of a traditional dancing robe is painstakingly slow; it can easily take six months of full-time weaving to complete a robe.

Even longer if you are also raising children.

From left, Alaska Native weavers Ursala Hudson and Lily Hope, and their mother, master weaver Clarissa Rizal in 2016.

During our weekend, the kids and I made two trips to the Railyard Park, an “award-winning” children’s playground at the west end of Santa Fe’s extensive commercial-cultural Railyard development.

This was January, of course, and the Park was not populated with active children, like in the photo below. In fact, my seven grandkids and I were the only ones at the Park when we visited on Sunday. The lawns were dry and brown, (as might be expected in January,) and some of the playground equipment was in disrepair.

Climbing wall at the Railyard Park in Santa Fe, NM.

After about an hour of play, the kids were ready to make the walk back to the apartment, where their iPads awaited them.

Now Amelie, Simone and I are back in Pagosa Springs, with another trip to Santa Fe planned for next weekend. Perhaps a visit to a different playground?

I’m personally interested in playgrounds, at the moment, because a group of parents at Pagosa Peak Open School are working on a grant to create a community playground surrounding the PPOS school building in Aspen Village.

Although the Town of Pagosa Springs has spent millions of dollars developing its downtown parks, there are, as yet, no municipal parks at the west end of town — the part of town where about 75% of the population lives.

What would it take to convince the Town government to serve the west end with a community playground?

Good question.

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.