Day 1: Culture Day in Santa Fe

Mitra Mirpour & Ivan Hurtado

The day before we left for our ASB we began to feel the weight of what we were about to undertake. The anticipation of driving for 13 hours, meeting the people we’ve been talking to for months, budgeting, and knowing that something will inevitably go wrong and knowing that we can’t possibly prepare for it was, to say the least, stressful. Yesterday, we met at the RMC at 5:45 am. It was an early morning, but the mix of stress and excitement was propelling us forward. We stopped for lunch and dinner, the first real opportunities for all of the participants to bond, and it was really heartening to see them laugh together and get along so quickly. That being said, we would not recommend ever driving 13 hours after only getting 4 hours of sleep.

Having finally arrived after our long journey, we were excited to wake up today to get our first real glimpse of Santa Fe. Our first day in Santa Fe was “Culture Day,” where we planned on learning about the city to have a better social context for water justice in the area. We started off the day with a hike on the Dale Ball trails near the church we are staying at. The uphill journey was extremely tiring, but arriving at a peak and seeing Santa Fe below us was surreal. The participants were bonding through taking photos and praising how amazing it was that we hiked so much despite the fact that we had hiked less than a mile. Allegedly, the air is "thinner there." We then went to the beautiful Santa Fe Railyards where we brought a picnic for lunch. We witnessed a protest pass by the park which we learned was a protest supporting Religious Freedom in Tibet. Although we had only been out in Santa Fe for a few hours, this protest and its visibility showed us just how different Santa Fe’s cultural landscape is from anything any of us had encountered before. After lunch, we went to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Although it felt a little touristy, we really enjoyed admiring the building’s architecture and history. Finally, we walked to a coffee shop close by and stayed until closing time at 5 pm. After dinner, we lead group reflection focused on the main takeaways from cultural day and feelings regarding the rest of the week. The participants shared a lot of common anxieties and excitements for the week. The honest, open dialogue was very natural and engaging. Ivan and I are excited to watch the development of the thoughts and opinions of our participants as the week progresses.

Trying to understand Santa Fe in one day is a difficult task, and we definitely missed out on a ton of what the city has to offer. What really stuck with us, though, is just how truly different the city is from anything we had expected. The geography, architecture, and clear pride in history and tradition were in stark contrast to our experiences in Houston. While we still aren’t entirely sure what to expect from Santa Fe moving forward, we know that Santa Fe’s rich history and culture will likely play an integral role in contextualizing water issues and organizing here in ways that our Houston perspective can’t yet understand.

We are still a little shocked that this is all happening. We are extremely excited to meet with community partners tomorrow and get into the heart of why we wanted to lead this trip. We hope that the organizations we are meeting with will help us understand their own perspectives on water justice as well as helping us develop our own individual interests within this huge issue.