Pendaries -- Sometimes its the Destination and the Journey

Pendaries New Mexico is a small, mountain golf resort in the Sangre de Cristo mountains about an hour north of Santa Fe.  Marty’s parents had a house there and her father, Arty, loved going there to play golf.  We loved going there to escape the Texas heat, the working for a living stress and it was a great place to use as a base for snow skiing.

It is a long way to Pendaries but worth every mile Skip and I drove.  We even got a bit of bonus as we drop up to the Clovis New Mexico city limits sign and Marty said, lay down some ash here, where she was born.  So, bold as you please, we stopped and made a new memory.

This place was fantastic.  It was cool in the summer and close enough to Angel Fire and Sipapu to be a great launching point for several family ski trips.  Marty loved it up here.  She painted dozens of rocks, walked and drove the narrow dirt roads, saw a bear and got too close, saw an owl we named Doc Al after the Vet in Dalhart, played games and thought thoughts.  It was great for that…thinking thoughts.

This is where Marty put together a Christmas Eve service one year.  It was intended for our whole family who was in Pendaries for Christmas.  Marty took on an old First Presby bulletin and built a short service because she was missing her favorite church service in Waco.  By the time all was said and done the little chapel, lit by kerosene lamps was full, not just with family, but by residents of the golf community.  Word had gotten out and we had a crowd. 

It may have been my favorite church service ever.

Being in Pendaries was always special, but more than that, the epic road trips up there with the kids and friends were legendary  We listened to music, played the ABCs of birth control and body parts (don’t ask), made the kids listen to our music, ate at Dairy Queens, let Matt drive in the snow (Marty was so much better at that than me), convinced Matt that Peter, Paul and Marty were actually okay, found out more about our kids and the other kids we loved to love, including spotting a tongue ring at a Pizza Hut in Clarendon Tx, had a family revolt in Amarillo over a dodgy motel, The Amarillo Seven and argued about having to stop every three hours (good grief let’s move people).

Pendaries became a part of our family and our family’s lore and folk tales.  We would go to Santa Fe and walk the Plaza and eat at La Fonda del Sol.  Matt had rattlesnake and goat cheese quesadillas there…..he was maybe pre-teen when he did that, already a cultured palate.

Marty loved the square, the people, the plaza.  Mostly she loved Jack-a-Lopes, a huge novelty, folky, junky, funky merchandise purveyor.  The billed themselves as Jack-a-Lopes, folk art by the truck load if that tells you anything.

Skip and I scattered some of Marty’s ashes at the Pendaries Chapel.  I paused, took some deep breathes, and let the moment sink in, remembering all the enjoyment we had experienced there.  I thought about that service, I thought about Marty and it was a pretty perfect kind of moment.  I smiled and had a bit of a tear at the same time.  You can do that you know.

Skip and I played a round of golf the next day.  It was about 30 degrees when we teed off and 65 when we finished.  

 

We played past the back of the house and later played a par 3 hole that is straight down.  It’s short but the green is about 100 feet below the tee box.  Running parallel to this hole is steep road/cart path that Arty Watkins, Marty’s father, at the age of, let’s say 70, sat down on a paper-thin plastic sled with his grandson, Bill, and rode that little puppy down the steep, snow covered road.  I mean really, top 10 great memories.

That was Pendaries.  We are on to Moab Utah to experience some of God’s great work.