Last week I flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and drove to Santa Fe. I added the bit of driving so I could get the feel of New Mexico before reaching my destination. Well, you have to love the Southwest in order to love that road. Fortunately, I do love the southwest. I love the long vistas and the huge bright blue sky overhead.
Santa Fe was delightful. I stayed at La Fonda, the conference hotel. It’s an old hotel and it’s well preserved in the Santa Fe style. That means stucco painted in some creamy sunsetty color, big logs sticking their ends out, shadowy places and smooth corners.
My room was small, but the bed was new and comfortable and the soaking tub was amazing. Do they still make those lovely deep tubs with a slant on one end so you can lay back with the warm water up to your chin and just relax? Wonderful.
The furniture was painted dark turquoise with a black trim and painted flowers all over it. The painted flowers were all over the hotel. Even direction signs were painted on the walls. Add to that framed posters from events in Santa Fe and some real pieces of art. The artist in me was singing and I hadn’t even been to the famous Santa Fe galleries.
Yes, I went there for a conference, not specifically for the hotel. I went there to attend Left Coast Crime 2011 (Santa Fe). I found myself explaining this to a lot of people. If you stand facing a map of the United States, the left coast is the Pacific Ocean and the right coast is the Atlantic. Just for fun, we westerners call it the left and right coasts. Santa Fe is not near the ocean at all, but it’s part of the area defined for this conference, so there we were.
Even before the conference began I knew this was going to be a good one. I saw it in the happy anticipatory faces of people who were arriving. They were expecting a party and we got one.
We heard the name “Tony Hillerman” splashed around a lot, so I wasn’t too surprised that at the welcome reception, a group of pueblo Indians came to do a Blessing Dance for us. This was to bless the conference. OK. Most of us were delighted to have them, and particularly the smallest who was 1 1/2 years old and dressed to dance. Well, mostly he stood around and looked cute while people took photos.
If I were to describe the dance, I’d say it was something like a line dance in costume. They were fancier than line dancers of course, because they wove in and out making different patterns to the beat of drums and the songs of the singers. In his books, Tony Hillerman often described these dances and it was a treat to see one.
Later in the program Hillerman’s daughter Ann and her husband showed slides of the sites where Hillerman’s books were set. Beautiful colors, beautiful skies, long lonely roads, male rain and female rain (I think male rain is the fall and winter rain while the female rain is the life-giving rain of spring.) About a year and a half ago my husband and I had toured Arizona and New Mexico and since we love Hillerman’s work, we surely would have liked to have Ann’s book about the places. Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet available when we wanted it, though I do have a copy now.
From there on, the conference just got better and better. I started most mornings with crusty, flaky croissants and coffee. Then we heard one author after another talk about how they solved writing and publishing problems. The writers there were so approachable. If they weren’t on one of the panels they were signing books or sitting in on another panel. It was such a friendly atmosphere.
I collected 10 free books at the conference and bought three more. It was not fun getting my luggage to the airport in Albuquerque, but once there I check them through, keeping one to read on the way home. I arrived home exhausted and happy.
Marilynne
If you want to check out Left Coast Crime, try this link. Next year Left Coast Crime will be in Sacramento. Here’s a link for that.
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