1983: The Unknown Season

It was June of 1982. Our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was converting to co-op apartments. Our fifth-floor walk-up was suddenly the perfect pied-a-terre, with its wooden floors, exposed brick walls and exclusive roof rights. But what to do with our windfall once we flipped the apartment? We were eating breakfast when Coo passed me a copy of Smithsonian Magazine. "Look, Doc, isn't Santa Fe beautiful?" That was it.

The decision to move there was made over bagels and cream chee...