Here Comessanta Fe
Here Comes SANTA FE Chile wreaths, parades by candlelight, enchiladas two ways: the holiday season in New Mexico’s capital is unlike anywhere else. By Diane Tegmeyer Photographs by Miki Duisterhof 134 TOWN & COUNTRY www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com Local actress Aimee Dale and her family at play at the San Miguel Mission, just steps from Santa Fe’s Plaza. Opposite: Lili and Lucien Dale pick out ristras, wreaths made with chiles, a Santa Fe tradition. www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com A view of the Inn and Spa at Loretto, in the center of town. Below: Chef Charles Dale, the maestro behind the Encantado resort’s Southwestern-inspired Terra restaurant. IT IS THE second week of December, and my husband, Brooke, and I are lying in bed at Encantado, the year-old Auberge re- sort just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, feeling like children getting an early Christmas present. During the night, a fine layer of fluffy snow has blanketed the Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountains, adding a magical sparkle to the fifty-seven- acre former ranch in the upscale suburb of Tesuque. Not that snow is unheard of here, particularly around the holidays, when temperatures average a crisp forty-five degrees. It’s just that in the thirty years I have been visiting this New Mexican high desert, I’ve rarely seen powder on the swaths of brown sagebrush, nor have I spied a dark cloud hampering those end- less turquoise skies. In the past, at the end of our eight-hour drive to Santa Fe from our home in Aspen, Brooke and I made a habit of stopping at Ten Thousand Waves, a slightly funky Japanese-style spa with private outdoor hot tubs and unusual treatments, includ- ing a mask made of sanitized nightingale droppings.
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