What it is like to live in Santa Fe

The three of us were born in New Mexico. Two of us grew up in Santa Fe. We have lived other places and come back. When people ask what living here is actually like, this is what we tell them.

The light

Santa Fe sits at 7,000 feet on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The air is thin and dry, most days are sunny, and the light does something to color that painters have been trying to get down for a hundred years. Sunset is the daily event. Adobe walls go orange, the mountains go pink (the name means Blood of Christ for that reason), and then it is cold. In winter the sky is a blue you do not get at sea level.

The flip side: sunscreen, lip balm, and a humidifier in the bedroom. Newcomers take a few weeks to adjust to the altitude.

Red or green

New Mexican food is not Mexican food. The base is chile, red or green, and the question “red or green?” comes with almost everything. “Christmas” means both. The green comes roasted from Hatch in the south or from Chimayó up north, and in September the whole town smells of it. Beyond chile: posole, carne adovada, blue corn enchiladas, sopaipillas with honey, biscochitos at Christmas.

Most people who move here develop a loyalty to one restaurant within a month and defend it for life.

Four seasons, all of them real

Santa Fe is high desert, which means snow. Ski Santa Fe is 16 miles from the Plaza, with a base at 10,350 feet, and runs from about Thanksgiving to early April. Spring is windy. Summer afternoons bring the monsoon, a thunderstorm most days in July and August that clears by evening. Fall is long and gold. The aspens turn in late September and the cottonwoods along the Santa Fe River go a few weeks later.

If you want to be close to the ski hill and the trails, look at the Northside and the east foothills. If you want warmer winters and bigger sky, look at Eldorado and the Galisteo basin.

A town that looks the way it does on purpose

Santa Fe passed its historic district ordinance in 1957. Inside the historic districts, which cover Downtown, the Eastside, and South Capitol, new buildings have to follow the Spanish Pueblo or Territorial styles: earth-colored stucco, flat roofs, vigas, portals. It is why the town looks the way it does, and it is something to understand before you buy, because it governs what you can change on a house. Outside the districts the rules relax and you see more contemporary work, especially in Las Campanas and La Tierra.

The calendar

Fiesta in September, Indian Market in August, the Opera all summer, Spanish Market in July, farolitos on Canyon Road on Christmas Eve. We put the big ones in things you only see in New Mexico. The small ones, the Thursday night gallery openings on Canyon Road and the Saturday Farmers’ Market in the Railyard, are the ones that end up mattering more.

The size

About 90,000 people in the city, around 150,000 in the county. Big enough for an opera and a hospital, small enough that you will see your broker at the grocery store. Albuquerque and its airport are an hour south. The Rail Runner train connects the two from the Railyard station.

What people get wrong

That it is always warm. It is not; see above. That it is only for retirees and artists. The Los Alamos lab, the state government, the hospital, and a growing film industry employ most people here. That the whole town is adobe. Much of what looks like adobe is stucco over frame. A good inspector can tell you which.

If you are thinking about it

Come in a month that is not July. See the town in February or April, when the tourists are gone and the wind is up. Walk a neighborhood on a weekday. Then call us. We will tell you what the house is really like, because we have probably been inside it.