I love Santa Fe and I long for it in the golden hours of the morning, Santa Fe my old friend.

When I woke up in Santa Fe, I gazed out our hotel window on the desert scenery and watched the sun heat the earth. It was a soft blue morning and I could feel Santa Fe’s unique peaceful energy. From the moment we arrived the people were sassy but kind, everyone had an approachable vibe about them.  One of my favorite moments was when the cashier at Whole Foods remarked that the residents of Santa Fe are all a bit kookie. A city filled with kookie people like myself. I daydream about returning for a sabbatical spending my days writing, painting, going to yoga and enjoying the delicious food.

Santa Fe was one of the most delicious cities I’ve ever been too. I can’t recall the specifics of the amazing meals we had, but I was never disappointed in any dish. Each restaurant we went to offered a red sauce or green sauce that would make an atheist believe in a god.

We spent one of our afternoons exploring every inch of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. At the gift shop I picked up Joan of Arc and St. Christopher medallions, discussing road trips and desert adventures with the nuns. One sister shared how in her youth, she and a friend traveled along the same journey she had read about in one of her favorite books. Her tale seemed to have been before she was called to the cloth and that only increased the intrigue. Seriously, one of my favorite things about traveling is meeting new people and hearing their stories. I hope when I leave this earth, I’m not just filled with my own story but bits of pieces of hundreds of stories.

My only disappointment from our entire time in Santa Fe was that I never had the opportunity to check out the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Every time we tried to go, the doors were closed, bad timing. I did, however, take as many pictures from the outside as possible, yet it doesn’t heal the pain from missing out on the exhibition they had at the time.

Driving through Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado helped to open my eyes to the circumstances that Native Americans have been put into as a consequence of historic decisions.

As I’m sharing about Santa Fe and with Thanksgiving this week, I can’t help but remark on the double edge sword this national holiday has. After hundreds of years, this holiday has been watered down to represent family and gratitude. In grade school, it’s an opportunity to introduce the history of Native Americans to young children. It’s to honor the coming together of the pilgrims and indigenous people, but we all know life wasn’t all kumbaya for the Native Americans afterward. So with that said, hindsight twenty-twenty of course the English shouldn’t have come over to America raping, pillaging, and stealing land from Native Americans. Yet, at that time of the world – unfortunately, that’s how things functioned. Countries and tribes either fought with each other or traded with each other, it seems now a days the only reason we aren’t all fighting is because we’re trading, but I digress. This Thanksgiving as we do surround ourselves with our loved ones and reflect on the blessings in our lives, let us acknowledge that although we can’t change the past, we should try to rectify the sins of our forefathers by not committing the same arrogant atrocities again.