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Fayetteville and artistic Eureka

Springs into a single vibrant community, this new “Fayettesprings” has a kindred city only a day’s drive west along Interstate 40.

That’s what I found when traveling from Fayetteville to Santa Fe, N.M., after leaving that state of red mesas, towering deep blue mountains and stunningly beautiful vistas way back as a college student in 1969.

So much has changed over 43 years when then-sleepy Santa Fe’s population was 35,000 and Hollywood money had yet to discover its enchantments.

Santa Fe with a population of 68,000 is far older than either Fayetteville or Eureka Springs. Today it’s the oldest state capital in the modern United States, after European colonists established it in 1610 as “The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi.”

County seat Fayetteville, population 75,000, is home to the state’s flagship University of Arkansas campus.

Age aside, I find many similarities amid the differences between these communities I’ve known since my teenage years.

Fayetteville has its charming and historic square. Santa Fe has its magnificent historic plaza. Each reminds me of the other, although the stores and shops around the Santa Fe Plaza are stocked with very expensive jewelry, clothing and Western boots that can cost more than $5,000. Fayetteville’s square has its pizza parlor, banks and law firms, along with clothing and home-furnishing shops. Both cities have flourishing farmers markets with homegrown produce and offerings.

Santa Fe calls itself “The City Different.” Fayettevillians strive to “Keep Fayetteville Funky.” Eureka Springs is a unique mountain village of artists and artisans where supposedly “the misfits fit.”

Nicknames aside, the two major cities share common qualities, including well-landscaped national veterans cemeteries and each having been named over the years as among the nation’s best places to live. Both regularly display spectacular hot-pink sunsets. Santa Fe has chili rellenos, huevos rancheros and delicious New Mexican cuisine topped with its red and green chilies. Fayetteville has Southern crunchy catfish, hush puppies, biscuits and gravy, barbecue and tasty chicken-fried steaks.

Fayetteville is part of a new 34-milelong regional greenways hiking and biking trail; Santa Fe has a similar 30-mile trail system as well as an affordable passenger train called the Rail Runner that regularly streaks between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Santa Fe has colorful mariachi bands while Fayetteville has guitars and banjos along Dickson Street.

A definite spiritual presence underlies each of these communities. Santa Fe and surrounding towns have many cathedrals, chapels, missions, and the stunning Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine. Fayetteville has an equalnumber of Protestant churches, an impressive white cross on Mount Sequoyah above Fayetteville and the enormous Christ of the Ozarks overlooking Eureka Springs.

Fayetteville and Eureka have accomplished artists with studios and galleries such as several of my favorites, Susan Morrison, Jane Garrison, Hank Kaminsky, Donald Roller Wilson and Larry Mansker. Santa Fe (among the nation’s largest markets for art sales) has more favorites the likes of John Oteri, Roger Williams and Buck McCain. Canyon Road, with over 100 galleries and studios along a winding street near downtown Santa Fe, is renowned in the art world, as are the city’s four world-class museums. Thirty miles north of Fayetteville is the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, perhaps the finest of its kind in the world today.

The Ozarks provide an embracing ambience for Fayetteville and Eureka Springs. The pervasive forests and water bodies create a comforting feel, one reason many call the region “God’s Country.” Fayetteville is built around nine tree-covered hills, which is why some call it the “Athens of the Ozarks.” Santa Fe lies in the shadows of the massive Sangre De Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains that tower protectively against its eastern border. For much of the year their guardian peaks are capped with snow. To the west lie the Jemez Mountains and Los Alamos; to the south, the Sandia Mountains.

I enjoy traveling back to New Mexico and Santa Fe for many of the same reasons Fayetteville friend and Hiland Dairy manager Brant Croxdale and his wife vacation there each year. “Santa Fe’s like no place I’ve ever been,” he told me. “We enjoy everything about it from the culture to the food and all the galleries, museums, shops and its history. We never get tired of going.”

The poet D.H. Lawrence rightly wrote: “Touch the country [of New Mexico], and you will never be the same again.” I understand him. Even the daily air here carries a mysterious stillness that a body feels to its core, as if validating the human need to simply “be still, and know that I am God.”

I’d only add: Touch the magnificence of the verdant Ozarks with its unique charm, and your heart and spirit will feel forever at home.Both similar yet very different places can rightfully be compared to two remarkably beautiful sisters sharing God’s Country.

Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.