Things to Do in Santa Fe

Brent Kliewer harnesses his film-programming experience and passion for filmmaking for his curatorial duties at The Screen, a theater founded in 1999 at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. A former critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican and critical-studies professor in the university’s Moving Image Arts department, Brent relies on his encyclopedic knowledge of world and contemporary cinema to choose each week’s selection. Brent’s picks are projected in 35mm or digital format on a high-definition curved screen that boasts a 16-speaker Dolby Digital surround-sound system built within an old soundstage. In addition to an array of lauded celluloid, The Screen has hosted visits and screenings with numerous Hollywood stars and insiders, including Robert Redford, Tommy Lee Jones, Brokeback Mountain screenwriter Larry McMurtry, and an extra from Raiders of the Lost Ark who almost got to hug Harrison Ford.

A cinematheque, gallery, and educational center all in one, the Center for Contemporary Arts champions a diverse range of art forms, from digital media and performance art to independent and animated films, as well as Oscar-nominated documentaries. Culled from various artistic backgrounds, the art center's staff gained experience in various aesthetics by studying fine art, producing films for Sundance, and trying to calm down the guy from Edvard Munch's The Scream. Using their acquired knowledge, staff members educate guests during art exhibitions, movie screenings, and lectures.

Roger Alink has never owned a television. As a kid, he was too busy with the pigs and cattle that roamed his 160-acre home, and this love of animals and the outdoors only grew over time. In the early '90s, Alink decided to share this love with others, so he and a team of volunteers spent 30,000 hours establishing Wildlife West Nature Park.

In addition to the wild creatures, migratory birds, and GPS-lacking manatees who settle at the park, representatives of the region's indigenous animals and plants live and grow on its 122 scenic acres, much of which hasn’t been altered since the park's inception. Elsewhere, 30 wildlife exhibits mimic the natural habitats of the black bears, wolverines, deer, pronghorn antelopes, and birds of prey that inhabit them. Two miles of trail connect each habitat, and each enclosure is specially designed for the particular needs of its residents. The same custom care goes into feeding the animals: to keep the beasts psychologically spry, staff members provide challenges that echo the animals' instinctual eating habits, placing meals up in treetops, burying snacks that need to be sniffed out, and arranging candlelit dinners for mountain lions who forgot their wives’ birthdays.

Sustainable practices such as recycling, organic farming, and water harvesting turn the park into an educational example of eco-friendliness. Facilities such as the amphitheater and the heated, enclosed Bean Barn also welcome special events ranging from music festivals and bird-handling workshops to the kite-spangled Wind Festival and the ursine Bear Fair.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, visitors would stop to rest at the historic El Rancho de las Golondrinas as they began or ended their long journeys along the royal road that stretched between Santa Fe and Mexico City. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Matt Damon, Salma Hayek, Val Kilmer, and the cast and crew of some 30 films used the ranch's 200 scenic acres and 34 historic structures as backdrops to their movies and personalized birthday cards. With preserved and restored villages dating back to the early 1700s sloping through a rural farming valley, the grounds collapse time, bringing the past to the present and the present to the past. Today, guests wander this living history museum to explore how colonial and frontier life was lived the Southwest. During a self-guided tour, visitors pick up or download a map of the ranch before weaving through a snapshot of history brought to life by villagers clothed in the styles of the time. Feet patter past a molasses mill, a blacksmith shop, and defensive towers where guards kept watch on the horizon and coordinated messages for passing UFOs. With a reservation, docents will lead you through the trails that cut through a landscape dotted with goats, sheep, burros, and horses, fostering an understanding of the culture and arts of historic New Mexico.

Body pampers and tones physiques with spa services and fitness training and tends to wee ones with childcare services and sating hungers at an organic café. Aestheticians buff visages with organic, Ecocert-certified Naturopathica products during custom facials and tighten sagging skin until it's smooth enough to host a microscopic roller derby with microdermabrasion, microcurrents, and derma-rollers. Yoga and dance classes invite limbs to bend and shake, working up an appetite sated by the café’s menu, which pleases raw and vegan palates as well as source-conscious carnivores. After a massage or personal-training session, clients pick up eco-friendly fashions at an on-site boutique, where sustainable, fair-trade garments give patrons something to wear to a dinner party at Mother Nature's house.