morning sun is still mixing with shadows over Apodaca Hill when
Tomas Arrey dons a pair of faded overalls, slides heavy black
gloves over his weathered hands, and lights a pitch-and-kindling
fire in his hilltop workshop. Cold hangs in the air from the
winter just past, but before long, Arrey has perspiration
dripping from beneath the blackened brim of his well-worn hat.
"If you can't stand the heat," he says with a smirk, "get out of
the fragua." in Arrey's fiery fragua--a massive coal-fueled
forge--is a scorching 2,000 degrees. It's the ideal temperature,
Arrey says, for bending iron into material goods. It's also the
tool through which Arrey is breathing new life into the age-old
art of blacksmithing. Arrey, a stocky sharp-witted man,grew up
on Apodaca Hill. As a boy, he often passed time with the
neighborhood blacksmith, Manuel Apodaca. Apodaca, who created
ironwork in the Spanish Colonial tradition of his ancestors, was
one of many Hispanic blacksmiths working in Santa Fe at the
time. Watching Apodaca sha