I flew out to Santa Fe for a quick visit and to support my friend Liz as she shot her black & white bicycle ballet, Giselle. It was wonderful to be 7000 ft. above sea level breathing in the sage, pinon and desert air.
Liz picked me up at the airport and promptly took me to a little trail head outside of town that led up a ridge and to some cool petroglyphs that decorated the volcanic rock strewn about. From whence did this volcanic rock come from? My question exactly. Some geologically savvy hikers we met on the trail informed us that the Valles Caldera, a ancient volcano now preserved in the Jemez Mountains, was the source.
The Valles was 30 miles north of where we hiked hinting at the power of that historic volcano. Yowza. The petroglyphs, meanwhile, are attributable to Anasazi and Pueblo Indians and some were thought to date back as far back as 900 AD. After contemplating all that deep time, we were hungry, so we got dinner at another venerable, albeit more modern, Santa Fe institution: Cafe Pasquals. Stuffed acorn squash and pupusas, a bustling community table set us up for a fun shoot the next day, a bit of song-writing, trick-or-treating and another hike outside of Tesuque. Ole!
Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.
Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.
Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.
