September 9, 2001

 

SANTA FE IS AFLUTTER OVER THESE TINY WONDERS – by Bud Collins

 

SANTA FE - Feverishly fluttering . . . flapping so furiously fast that focusing on it is a problem for the human eye . . . The winged wanderer pauses for an "In your face!" pose, just halts in midair, as though clinging to an invisible trapeze. Looks you square in the eye, this stop-action show-off - then is gone with its buddies.

 

Michael Jordan's hang-time is small-time stuff to this creature that could use one of Michael's toenails as a landing strip. With room to spare.

 

   High-voltage high-fliers, moaning like high-tension wires . . . except . . . how can they make that sound, that electronic throb, while simultaneously peep-peep-peeping like the birds they are? How can anything so tiny exude so much power in unceasing stop-and-go bursts across this flowering Santa Fe garden's air space all the livelong day?

 

How tiny is tiny in the ornithological kingdom? Imagine half a golf ball with wings, nosing around with a whittled-down tee for a beak, and you have the hummingbird, teeniest of birds. Endlessly mesmerizing avian midgets, they whiz and freeze, dart and park. Parking motionlessly on a nonexistent shelf for an instant or two, they abruptly, briskly take off - backward . . . forward . . . up . . . down . . . cutting angles that would drive a helicopter off its rotor.

 

All the while giving off their haunting, constantly repeated "Ummmmmm"! Could it be a Buddhist chant? However, it comes not from the throat but the furious beating of the perpetually hyperactive wings, a mad blur of 500 to 1,200 BPM (beats per minute). Of course, it's the hum that has given the bird its buzz - and name.

 

Mudville - a.k.a. Santa Fe - an appealing adobe habitat, is humming, too, at the end of the summer season. Attracting throngs of bipedaled tourists, it is also a destination for the annual influx of hummingbirds. They relish a layover in their long-distance travels, preferring gardens such as this splendid one that belongs to a brilliantly protean artist named Ford Ruthling.

 

"Amazing birds," says the burly, ashen-haired Ruthling, a native Santa Fean. He caters to them not only with his enticing flowers but also by hanging feeding stations where they beak up to the bar and chug-a-lug sweet, beneficial liquids they need to maintain their energy levels. "These are the thimbleweight champions of the world, gram for gram as powerful as eagles," he says.As a tenant of one of Ruthling's rental guesthouses for a few days, I've been invited to breakfast in the three-tiered garden amid a melee of colors: roses, nasturtiums, dahlias, delphinia, cosmos, and trees hung up with peaches, plums, pears, and apricots.

 

But the noshing guests of honor are the hovering hummers. They zip in and out of necklaces of grapes, and eye Ford's home-concocted apricot jam on our toast, seeming to dig the Russian dressing of a melody flowing from a CD, the "Classical" symphony (No. 1 in D major) of Sergei Prokofiev, the host's favorite composer.

 

If it's not Prokofiev, any Russian will do, says he. "Say, Stravinsky." He remembers the days when Igor himself was in town, the 1950s and '60s, directing at the opera and generously conducting free concerts of his works at St. Francis Cathedral in the center of town.

 

"But Prokofiev's my guy," says Ruthling, smiling. "I wish they'd put on his 'Love for Three Oranges' at the local opera. Maybe one day. But it's been a fine season under Richard Gaddes, the new director."

 

Santa Feans are crowing - or is it tenoring? - justifiably, about their summer opera company, ever a delight, the amphitheater open to the stars and shadowy Jemez Mountains. Richard Strauss's "Helen in Egypt" was a handsomely staged delight. My friend Aurelio came away gloomy but enchanted by Alban Berg's tragic "Wozzeck."

 

Ruthling's peaceful enclave, only a few blocks from the town's core, the Plaza, is familiar to those who have made it a stopover on tours with Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian, or a variety of other haunts of gallery mavens. His century-old house, in the stone-and-brick Spanish territorial style - a lost soul among regiments of adobe - is a compelling museum in itself.

 

An eclectic array of objets d'art abound. Large and bloody wooden crucifixes, some by unknown New Mexicans, two by Jose Benito Ortega. Painted on tin, gangs of tormented souls broiling in purgatory, await the up-or-down judgment. Reliquaries. Santos. Though not formally religious, Ruthling is undoubtedly attracted by spiritual trappings.

 

Drawings and oil paintings adorn the walls along with eye-catching landscape photos by a local, Robert Mason.

 

Ruthling's own work is prominent: imaginative, brightly-hued paintings ranging from humorous (four-and-twenty blackbirds fleeing the pie), to wistful (a rocking horse that he and his twin brother yearned for but never got); to somber (a hulking, threatening raven worthy of scaring Poe). Also delicately crafted tinwork and huge, vividly decorated harvest bowls that he designs here and are made in Mexico.

 

Santa Fe is a walking and gawking town, dominated by boutiques and galleries. If you can get away without buying a piece of sculpture or Indian jewelry, you aren't genuinely trying. There's enough handmade jewelry in the shops and with the sidewalk merchants - check out prize-winning silversmith Cippy Crazyhorse from Cochiti Pueblo - to silver-plate the nearby Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and construct a couple more peaks of turquoise, coral, jet, mother of pearl, and spiny oyster shell.

 

Indians were here first, then the Spaniards showed up. Though the culture is supposedly an Anglo-Indian-Hispanic mix, it is really shopadelic. Buy-till-you-cry is the suggestion to visitors, and they usually comply.

 

"Here's the local adage," says Ruthling. "Texans buy without looking and Californians look without buying." The chamber of commerce is trying to ban Californians.

 

This is the Year of the Painted Pony, similar to Boston's Year of the Cod in 2000. Artists from across the state are gussying up fiberglass ponies to be auctioned off at charity benefits. New Mexico has a history of wild horses, but none wilder than these psychedelically painted steeds that you see everywhere. The only way they could attract more attention would be saddling them with Lady Godivas.

 

"Better to paint a horse than to paint the town," says Aurelio, who claims never to have entertained a hangover. Ruthling's hoofed masterpiece, called "Starry Night," is navy blue, embellished with a saddle blanket, stars, and a crescent moon of silver tin.

 

"I'd like to ride this horse," says Aurelio. "Can it be motorized?"

 

Ruthling responds, "You'd probably fall off. But that might be a beneficial experience, giving you the effect of a hangover without paying a bar bill. However, don't try to take 'Starry Night' to the Guadalupe Cafe, because I can tell you that the boss, Isabel, doesn't feed horses - just people who eat like them."

 

He feels one great advantage of his location is that the Guadalupe Cafe is within a five-minute walk. Another, I would say, is the proximity of the workshop of the clever cobbler Sara McIntosh. She has been so kind to my feet with her shoes that I'm sure Imelda Marcos would pay Sara millions for a couple of dozen pairs.

 

The Guadalupe, an unpretentious place in a city of numerous fine and fancy restaurants (my favorite for lunch: Santa Cafe), is a citadel of New Mex Mess, an addiction gripping Ford and Aurelio - which I have been able to avoid.

 

"It's not Tex-Mex or Mexican," insists Aurelio, who grew up outside of town with chilis so hot they heated the house. "It's a distinctive New Mexican cuisine, featuring blue corn tortillas, posole, sopapillas, New Mexico-grown red and green chilies."

 

I can handle the sopapillas, lightly fried cushions of dough to which honey can be added. But the chilies would give a carnival fire-eater heartburn.

 

"Better than heartache," says Aurelio.

 

Kindly Isabel Koomoa, the owner-chef, and Diana Strever, who runs the dining room, take pity and sneak a chicken salad discreetly to me without affronting the New Mex Messers.