Some things are just as they seem.  So when a blank canvas stretches across the imagination painted by the image of turquoise heavens blanching down on ribbons of lilacs, adobe and sagebrush, it is just what it is.

Heaven.

Canyon Road in the springtime.  Taos in December.

The quiet time at the pueblo.  Rims of windows brightly painted against the clay.  Storytellers sitting upright in shopglass.  Natives selling silver, and beaded corn, in the Plaza.  A bowl of bright posole.  Some chiles hanging near the Christmas shop.  Margaritas and milagros at Chimayo.  A stray cat.

It was under such a sky one December high in the hills outside of Santa Fe that I found a center, a nirvana, touching heaven, stilled with peace, in a pool of water, body temperature, at 8000 feet when the air was only 50 degrees Farenheit.  We'd made the trek outside the city to Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese spa in the foothills, to seek out a massage, but what we found was so much more.  East Indian Cleansing Treatments and Nightingale Facials were among the more intriguing offerings on the menu, but what caught our eye was a five-letter word.

Watsu. 

Massage in water.  Returning to the womb.  The gentle ballet of practitioner and person.   Out under that New Mexico sky, surrounded by sage, and piñon pine, and a seemingly endless supply of clean air, we took turns waiting at one end of the naturally shaped pool while the other was glided through twists and turns in the water for an hour until all tension floated away, and then were taught the magic of doing it to each other.  

A great gift.  A great healing.

Peace.

Some months later, an unexpected tumble (as most tumbles are) brought me a broken right shoulder and left hip, a tricky recovery, and a longing for the peace and tranquility and healing powers of that water.  This time, they came to me, a fortunate find of a local watsu practitioner not only in my state but within miles of my home, and three days a week for several weeks I was guide-floated for an hour in a pool until all hurts ended.

It came as no surprise then, when a year after my husband left Mayo Clinic after his complicated eight-month hospitalization, I asked him where he would like to go on our first and only vacation.

Santa Fe.

His mind had taken him also to the waters where he'd found stillness and peace and healing, and wanted to return with what was left of his body.

So we went, flight to Albuquerque, rental car to Santa Fe, to the foothills outside the city, to the high New Mexico desert sky, and the pool, and the water,

and the peace.

Last night I floated outside in a pool of water, looking up at a sky.  It was not New Mexico; it was Wisconsin.  The air was 50 degrees.  The water was still, and warm.  I stared deep into the night sky, black as black, not turquoise, and let everything go.  

And dreamt of that New Mexican sky. 

Photo of kiva ladder to the sky, New Mexico, by Kathy Riordan.