On the way out of town I made another stop, at a consignment store specializing in outdoor gear owned and managed by a very nice but slightly off-putting, rangy older gentleman who insists on giving every single visitor a tour of the entire crazily messy shop every time they visit. It has a quality shared by many New Mexico businesses (shops, restaurants, hotels, even gas stations), and I say this with great affection, of being run by people who have never actually been to such a place but somehow became aware of them, maybe by an explanation given by a seatmate on a long Greyhound ride, and thereafter become fiercely determined to make a go of it. Unusually for New Mexico, this owner's idiosyncratic and patently irrational business practices had worked right on out, seemingly beyond his wildest reckoning. In the few years I'd been his customer he had moved locations twice, each time expanding to a larger chaotically full warehouse in a different desolate Albuquerque industrial park. 

This strange man's insistent, long-winded, totally irrelevant tour, which I had heard verbatim at least three times before, nevertheless stoked within me a violent lust for synthetic waterproof fibers mechanically woven before the turn of the millennium. I left with a mint condition mid-90s Aztec Blue North Face Steep Tech jacket sized 2XL that I have never worn since. My only regret is not buying more. 

I drove the road to Santa Fe against an orange sherbert sunset, flecked with dazzling flourishes of white golden light reflected on scattershot clouds. After checking into a room with centenarian wood floors at the Hotel Saint Francis, I made my way to dinner at a traditional New Mexican place in the oldest part of the Old City, even more legendary than Frontier, and with a better reputation for great food. I had enjoyed several first class brunches there on their lovely patio, sipping a prickly pear marg and getting as full as I've ever been from massive plates of blue corn tamales smothered in ladles of a red chile I remembered as quite dank. This evening I was inside, under unfortunate lighting, and somehow the low ceiling and dingy yellow walls brought forth the more pedestrian aspects of the red chile on my plate. It was revealed to be merely fine, adequate, at best a fair approximation of some far greater, more powerful ideal. Rats! I had the jeans and the jacket, sure, but the True Object of my Quest continued to elude me.

That night, unsatisfied but wobbly from the margs and a few too many sopapillas, I walked past the entrance to a used bookstore, improbably open at this late hour, and didn't hesitate to wobble right in. There are few pleasures in this world greater than browsing in a used bookstore after nightfall, and the inadequacies of my earlier meal faded as I spent a happy hour going back and forth through the little warren of shelves. 

I made two purchases. A Near Mint+ first edition 1991 copy of Acid Jazz: Collection One on compact disc, and a glossy 90s perfect bound coffee table book about New Mexico Chile. I promptly lost both of them beneath the ever growing heap of vintage clothing I spent the next day acquiring, more or less forgetting about my red chile quest apart from enjoying a wonderful but not life-changing breakfast burrito purchased out of a takeout service window charmingly located around the corner from the front door of Santa Fe treasure Cafe Pasqual's, which was made with green chile anyway. When packing up my haul the next afternoon, before my late check out and trip back down to the Sunport, I rediscovered both the CD and the book. Lacking any means to play a CD, like most people on earth in the year 2022, I immediately pulled up Dread Flimstone & The Modern Tone Age Family - From The Ghetto on YouTube and played it on full volume on my phone, laying among my stuffed baggage, and fell into an Acid Jazz trance, reading every word of the book.

I learned amazing things. The mysteries that were the original impetus for my trip began to unfold themselves before my mind’s eye. The secret doctrine of the legendary New Mexico Chile was revealed to me. The New Mexico Chile most outsiders know, including the famous Hatch Chile, was in fact the product of an early 20th century agronomic research project designed to breed a bigger, heartier, disease resistant Chile to grow in the vast irrigated farms of the southern part of the state. But the original genetic material came from the North, the True Source of New Mexico Chile. Each of the villages of Northern New Mexico in fact had their own landrace Chile varietals, nurtured by many generations to slowly adapt to a specific microclimate. These were the Heirloom Chiles of the North, and were spoken of in hushed tones by Chile aficionados and the authors of coffee table books. Chimayo. Escondido. Nambe. I knew then that my quest must continue into these legendary villages, to see these rare and otherworldly Chiles growing out of the soil that had been their only home for centuries, irrigated if at all by ancient acequias, the flavor of their fruiting bodies so concentrated and profound as to make a Hatch Chile seem the equivalent of a Ralph’s conventional chicken breast, plumped up and picturesque but without flavor or soul. 

But I had a flight to catch. The True North would have to wait. I furiously googled for any shops in Santa Fe that might carry heirloom Chile powder. A promising shop was directly around the corner from the Saint Francis, but it closed in exactly five minutes. I threw on my Steep Tech and ran. Among the dozens of packaged dried Chile products and powders on offer there was only one for me. “Native Nambe.” I recognized the name of Nambe Pueblo from my book. Two stickers alerted me that the small package was “Extra Hot!” and not safe for consumption unless heated above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. I bought as many as I could fit in my Personal Item. 

On the sidewalk outside, in the fading light of a winter’s day, I threw caution to the cold wind and ignored each sticker’s warning, licked my pinky, dipped it into the sparkling, deeply red-orange powder, and brought it to my lips. My life has never been the same.