Magical Light and Chile at Chimayo New Mexico

At the beginning of the month, we drove to Santa Fe to give a lecture at Southwest Seminars. While there, we made it a point to drive to the small village of Chimayo to buy powdered chile. We love chile! Red, green and Christmas, we don't care, we love it all. Even at the Day's Inn in Albuquerque, they served a nice green chile sauce right next to their rubberized eggs. It was delish!

It felt like winter and we had the place all to ourselves.

How many times has this scene been photographed. But with literally no one here, I could take time to shoot slowly. And the light was great.

Note the luminaries on the top of the wall.

I think it is the gravity acting on the old wooden doors that makes the scene look so old.

Or maybe it is the furrows set deeply in the aged Cottonwood trees.

Poinsettia and Christmas at Chimayo New Mexico

Close-up of the statue. If you Google "Statue in front of Santuario Chimayo", you will not see one reference to this. I assume this means it is new. I have never noticed it before.

But there are plenty of images and references to this statue located behind the Santuario. Note the fiame texture in the rock. Fiame is compressed pumice particles in a rhyolite ash flow. The rock is from the Bandelier Tuff, a deposit from the Jemez super volcano eruption some 1.25 million years ago and located at the Valles caldera some 25 miles west of Chimayo.

This angle gives a better view of the upper story where the bell towers are located.

Winter!

There is plenty to see for the roadside sign enthusiast here.

This must have been a busy place in October...

...but no fear, the Vigil Store was our main destination for this trip out of Santa Fe.

We have shopped for powdered chile often at this place through the years and we never tire of our chile expeditions to it.

As the Rio Grande rift widened beginning in the Eocene, gravelly and sandy material was washed into the expanding basin. The deposits are called the Santa Fe Group with many different formations within the Group. They form colorful badlands between Santa Fe and Chimayo.

Open country, clear days.