Tag: Santa Fe

  • Notes for the Road

    Notes for the Road

    Salt, Ink & Soul — Field Journal Series, Part II

    We’ve all heard the phrase, “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

    But for me, it’s never really been about age — it’s about gravity. The pull of places, the way life settles you down unless you fight to stay awake inside it. Some people live where they were born, their stories looping through familiar streets and steady skies. I’ve always lived apart — even when I was close, I was at the edge.

    People call it a wandering spirit.

    I prefer searching spirit. Wandering implies lostness. Searching carries intent — a hunger for something not yet found but deeply felt.

    The Pull

    When I first moved to Albuquerque, the desert had its own kind of whisper. The space between things felt wider here — room for thoughts to stretch, for silence to mean something. I learned about  Earthship homes — houses built from recycled materials, designed to sustain themselves off-grid and to live with the land rather than against it.

    It wasn’t just their design that intrigued me — it was their defiance. They refused permission. They were proof that you could live differently and still live beautifully.

    So I made the trip north.

    The Earthships

    The drive into Taos feels like crossing a threshold — sagebrush to sand, sky expanding until it seems to hum. Then, at the edge of nowhere, the Earthships appear like a dream half-finished — domed roofs, bottle walls shimmering in sunlight, glass catching sky.

    I took the tour slowly. Inside, the air felt calm, held. The walls glowed faintly green where glass bottles caught the light. Planters of herbs ran along windows, drinking sunlight and water collected from the rain. It was quiet — not empty, just balanced.

    The guide spoke about sustainability, but I was hearing something else — a kind of philosophy of living: build with what’s been discarded, make beauty out of survival. It reminded me that creation isn’t always new; sometimes it’s just rearranged endurance.

    “Exterior of Earthship home near Taos, New Mexico”
    exterior of earthship

      The Staircase

    From Taos, I drove south to Santa Fe, to the Loretto Chapel. I’d heard the story — the mysterious carpenter, the spiral staircase with no visible supports, built after the nuns prayed for a solution. Seeing it in person was something else.

    The staircase curves upward like a question that answers itself — no nails, no center post, just precision and faith. I stood beneath it, tracing the grain of the wood with my eyes, thinking about the people who build because they have to believe it will stand.

    Stairs said to be made by an Angel

      The Gorge

    Then there was the Rio Grande Gorge — where the land simply falls away.

    I parked, stepped out, and felt the wind announce itself. Heights and I have never been friends. I walked to the railing anyway.

    Below, the river glinted like a silver thread stitching through time. When a semi-truck passed, the bridge shuddered beneath my feet, and I gripped the rail tighter than I’d admit. But I stayed long enough to feel it — that strange marriage of fear and awe.

    breathtaking View
    View from the bridge

    That’s what this road was always about. Not conquering fear — just walking out far enough to meet it honestly.

    On the drive home, I realized I wasn’t chasing wonder anymore. I was studying it — seeing what remains when the awe fades and only understanding is left.

    Maybe the Earthship homes, the staircase, and the gorge were all saying the same thing:

    Build something that endures.

    Trust what you can’t see holding you.

    Look down, but don’t stay afraid.

    The road home was quieter. The car hummed its low prayer, tires counting miles of reflection. I thought about all I’d seen, and how every place had its lesson written in silence.

    Maybe I’m still searching, but it’s a better kind of searching now. Not for arrival — but for alignment. For the places and people that hold when the ground trembles.

    The road doesn’t always offer answers.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • The Roads of NewMexico

    The Roads of NewMexico

    I do not go out as much as I should. I have learned to live with the quiet corners of my home, to accept the stillness as both refuge and weight. The city’s hum, with its restless people and anonymous noise, is sometimes too much—like standing in a crowded room where the air feels claimed before I can breathe it in. Out there, in the public world, I sometimes feel like I am trespassing on a story that was not written with me in mind.

    And yet, some roads call to me.

    I am from farm country, where the land stretches wide enough to hold every thought you’ve been avoiding. Out here, beauty is not a spectacle but a constant, a birthright of the horizon. The sky spills itself in all directions, unapologetic, while fields—golden in some seasons, green in others—move gently under the wind’s persuasion. You learn, if you grow up here, that beauty is not always something you chase. Sometimes it is something you stand still for.

    But when the itch for movement comes, when the air in my lungs feels stale from sameness, I take to the road, not for the chatter of tourist shops or the curated charm of main streets, but for the wide‑open arteries that connect this land’s beating heart.

    Once, the road took me to Santa Fe. The church stood there in quiet defiance of time, its walls holding centuries the way the land holds roots. I didn’t linger. I didn’t wander through galleries or sip coffee in some sunlit corner café. I came for the church, and once I had seen it—once I had my proof in the form of photographs—I left. It wasn’t a snub to the city. It was more like an instinct: I had come for one truth, and once it was in my hands, I needed the road again.

    The next pull was Taos, where I saw the earthship homes—structures like prayers whispered into clay. They are born of the land and return to it, designed for self‑sufficiency, for a way of living that doesn’t ask the earth for more than it can give. I toured them, let my hands trace the walls, and wondered how many of us truly know how to live with the earth instead of on it.

    On my way back, I stopped at the gorge. They call it breathtaking, but “breath‑stealing” is closer to the truth. One moment you are on solid ground, and the next the earth has opened its jaws before you, deep and indifferent. I felt my stomach fall, my body pull back. It was too much—too wide, too high, too close to the idea that we are small and fragile. That was the end of my trip. I let the road fold back into itself and carry me home.

    There are other routes in New Mexico, I’m told. Places where the land tells its own version of scripture—mountains that seem older than time, desert plains that remember the tread of people who came long before us. I want to see them. Not for the itinerary or the postcard moment, but for the quiet it might stir in me. For the way the road, with all its curves and stretches, might teach me something about moving forward even when the destination is unclear.

    The truth is, I am not searching for new places as much as I am searching for new ways to inhabit myself. Each mile is less about escape than about arrival—the slow unfolding of who I am when I am far from the rooms that have learned my silence too well.

    So if you know the roads in New Mexico—roads that are not just scenic but soulful, roads where the wind speaks and the earth listens—I am listening too. Because the journey is never just the land you cross. It is the terrain you carry inside you, waiting to be mapped.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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