One of the joys of living in my new home in Santa Fe, NM is being able to walk out of my house and walk right into the Santa Fe National Forest and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I grew up hiking and climbing in the furry forests of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. What I discovered in my early hikes in this high desert forest, is that it has a very different character than my Adirondacks, and certainly nothing like my recent experience in the Redwoods of northern California (post: Forest Interiors, pt. 1.) Unlike the Redwoods, where it felt like I was in the interior of an Egyptian hypostyle hall, where the trees, as “columns”, dominate the experience. In northern New Mexico, it was more like being inside of the Pantheon in Rome, where stunted, sparse trees are like tall grass in comparison to the huge volume of the dome. In other words, the volume dominates the content. So again, I felt inspired to employ my “Forest Interior” way of thinking, but this time respecting an entirely different scale.
