Zen and the Art of Doing Nada

by Ellen Barone

Not too long ago, I was chatting with a guest in the lobby of the Inn on the Alameda, where I love to stay in Santa Fe. Perhaps some of you know her: 30-something, Pilates lean, size zero designer jeans, stylish hair cut, perfectly nice. When conversation turned to travel, as often happens in hotels, she told me that she and her husband had recently returned from an African safari. "Sure, the wildlife was awesome, but what they don't tell you," she said, "is that there's a lot of down time with nothing much to do. Four hours a day, at least," she said, "to entertain yourself with no gym, no Internet, no TV, no cell coverage."

So there I was, in my not-even-close-to-size-zero Patagonia quick-dry travel pants, snuggled in front of a flickering piñon fire, quite prepared to do absolutely nothing for the evening, wondering if I should admit to this kind stranger that my favorite part of any vacation is her dreaded down time.

In fact, I confess, one of my favorite escapes was a month spent doing nada at a friend's no gym, no Internet, no TV, no cell coverage, Mexican beach casita. I like to think of myself as an adventuresome sort, the kind of gal that says yes to rappelling down 9,000-foot mountains, yes to a 2-week camel trek across the Moroccan Sahara, yes to cycling up a rumbling Mount Etna, yes to sailing across the Atlantic, and have in fact done all of the above. But, to my ego's horror, I have come to discover that I am, in all honesty, an A-plus student of doing nothing. I can hang-ten in a hammock, watch butterflies, swing in a porch swing, listen to surf and read 17 books in one month, with the laziest of them.

Raised by Presbyterian parents who measured your worth by achievement, I grew up thinking sloth was a deadly sin. Until a few years ago, like any good addict, I hid my idleness well. I'd take the dogs for a walk in the mountains, just so I could tuck in beside the stream with a good book or my journal; I went to the gym only to go through the motions of a workout. I bicycled to the coffeehouse... not for exercise but for muffins and a mocca; I hired a personal trainer to kick my ass.

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Dead And Dragged Out On The Throughway: Is this really a better way to go than by air?

by Sallie Bingham

Santa Fe to Tucson in a one-day mad dash

Jack the Pup is riding shotgun on the roommate’s lap as we head west on I-40 at nine AM, planning to reach my sister’s house in Tucson in time for dinner. The first miles across the desert, numbingly familiar by now, yield as this time we’d planned a back roads excursion south, just across the Arizona border. The map shows one of those intriguing dotted lines, a scenic highway, just what we need after hours of rumbling 18-wheelers…

To ready ourselves for adventure, we stop in Gallup at what is now our favorite eatery: Earl’s Family Restaurant. Here in Navajo Country Earl’s is shopping center, family reunion, and good staple New Mexico food: guacamole, burritos and so forth. Outside, Navajo craftspeople jam the sidewalk with their tables; inside, they patrol the aisles, silently holding out pins, bracelets, necklaces, and, in a departure from the usual, a pair of weird lamps, the ceramic bases coated with sand and then painted with iconic motifs. I’m charmed, I must buy at twenty dollars each, then wonder, too late, where in the world I’m going to put them….

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A Potter's Life

by Ellen Barone

©ML Pearson/mlphoto.zenfolio.comMy 11-year-old Audi rattles down the dusty dirt track road, across the cattle guard, through the rusted open gate and past the listless cattle that turn an indifferent eye to my arrival. Four miles ago, I’d rolled through the nearest town, White Oaks, a once booming, now bust, ghost town, boasting, at last count, population twenty-three. Preceding that was an hour-long drive across empty two-lane county roads through desert scrubland, a sleepy motel and gas station crossroad, past the vacant plots of a fledgling real estate development, and over the same transcontinental railroad tracks that had once carried East Coast pioneers to the Frontier West.

With the eager anticipation of a great journey to an exotic land, my husband, Hank, and I make this pilgrimage to our friend Ivy Heymann’s pottery studio, and home, at least three or four times a year. In the tradition of rural hospitality, we go to visit over a cup of coffee, to see a valued friend, to add a new piece to our growing collection of Ivy’s pottery, and, if we’re lucky, to learn a thing or two—about art and living.

A waif of a woman with a vivacious spirit and sturdy practicality, Ivy is legendary in these parts. The Georgia O’Keefe of Lincoln County, New Mexico. What she makes is fine porcelain pottery, hand-crafted with the patience and simple elegance of a perfectionist. Who she is, I think, is extraordinary; although, I suspect she’d cringe at this depiction.

Like the colorful mismatched mosaic tile floor in her studio office, the story behind the artist is vivid with the uneven shards of an uncommon life.

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