Dip Your Toe in the Water!

Two beautiful and exciting new books this season for readers from ‘tweens through adult in age (and heart) come from northern Michigan writers. 

Newbery author Lynne-Rae Perkins, with her characteristic gentle but offbeat humor, introduces her young characters and readers to the ocean in Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea, capturing once again the wonder of first-time experience, as she does so well. Secret Sisters is a “chapter book” that also includes charming black-and-white illustrations by the author.

Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen, for their part, decided that freshwater should have mermaids as well as saltwater, adding illustrator Meredith Ridl to their team, with most delightful results. The Lake Michigan Mermaid: A Tale in Poems offers a complex story in compelling verse and images and a wonderful souvenir of Up North vacation.

Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea, by Lynne-Rae Perkins. Greenwillow Books, hardcover with dust jacket, $16.99

The Lake Michigan Mermaid: A Tale in Poems, by Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen. Wayne State University Press, hardcover with illustrated boards, $16.99

Typical Day in This Bookseller’s Life

I am up before sunrise for a first cup of coffee with Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, this month’s selection for our little reading circle, but a long, leisurely morning of reading is not in the cards and will not be for many months to come. First order of business, i.e., work, is the straw bale garden to be fertilized and watered, Day 8 of its 10-day conditioning before planting can occur. Ten days takes us up to the holiday weekend, and I never plant tender vegetables before Memorial Day, so the timing works out well. Sarah comes outside with me, and I supervise her first morning sortie. Happy to be back home and off the leash, she is listening and obeying and wagging her tail.

While I water the bales, a mockingbird sings to me from the trees at the edge of the meadow, reminding me of a morning companion in Dos Cabezas, the mockingbird in the wash. How different the places, how similar the delights of the songbirds! I notice sweet, long-stemmed yellow violets in tall grass, blooming near china-blue forget-me-nots — some pink ones, as well — and I fetch a cream pitcher from the house to hold a small bouquet. When I come home at the end of the day, while I might forget to look in the tall grass, little flowers on the porch table will add to the enjoyment of our evening meal.

Soon there will be a coffee shop interlude, offering me a chance to download and answer the day’s e-mail and check into Facebook. (Doing those online chores only once a day keeps me sane, I like to think.) Later, at the bookstore, I can work on a flier for my June TEA guests. That’s “Thursday Evening Authors,” this year’s guest writer series at the bookstore. I have two lined up for late June, the 21st and 28th, with three slots already filled for July.

My first author, Rachel May, wrote the other book I’m reading these days (besides Henry James), An American Quilt. Since May grew up in New England and went to college in the South, I was surprised and pleased to learn that she is now on the faculty of Northern Michigan University in Marquette. Rachel May fell in love with a 200-year-old quilt, an unfinished piece — a quilt top, really — with old paper backing pieces still (since the quilt was never completed) in place except where brittle pieces of the old paper hexagon patterns had fallen away. The backing pieces held random bits of writing, some a child’s, another from the hand of an adult with business interests, many with dates, and these bits of writing, together with 1830s-era fabrics of the hexagonal pieces, constituted for the author “a treasure trove, an unfolding, every-expanding story with hints buried like a crooked trail to follow….” Then a box of letters emerged from archives to enrich the emerging story, and writer, quilter, researcher, historian, and material culture devotee May gradually assembled the story not only of a family and the enslaved people who served them but also a story of the United States that seldom sees the light — a North made wealthy by trade connections with slavery in the South. You don’t need to be a quilter (I’m not) to find Rachel May’s story fascinating!

There are connections everywhere in the world, if we but look for them. I note that a character in the James novel, 

…was the proprietor of certain well-known cottonmills in Massachusetts—a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. 

Caspar, that is, was a Northerner whose wealth had been assured by cheap cotton from the South, produced by the slave plantation system as it existed before the Civil war. James says nothing about slavery and next to nothing about the Civil War, certainly nothing about the reasons for it. He only tells us this about Caspar:

He keenly regretted that the Civil War should have terminated just as he had grown old enough to wear shoulder-straps, and was sure that if something of the same kind would only occur again, he would make a display of striking military talent. 

Well, if today is anything like yesterday in Northport, there will be a long walk to the post office, long because the street and sidewalks are still torn up in that block of Nagonaba Street, making any trip to post office or bank — and these are daily village errands, whether on foot or in car — a lengthy detour around along block. (There will probably be time also for a walk with Sarah down by the creek, another place forget-me-nots are blooming in profusion, along with sweet little English daisies in the grass.) But I don’t want to miss the UPS man’s bookstore stop, as I did yesterday! Over the years, I have grown to expect him in the early afternoons. Well, yesterday he must have seen me out on the sidewalk earlier, because he left a note on the door between 10 and 10:30. Darn! It’s my first new book order of the season, and I am impatient for those boxes! It isn’t that I am not working before 11 o’clock, only that there is work outside the bookstore that needs to be done before opening!

Once the OPEN flag was out yesterday, there were visits from old friends, and visitors to town streamed in, as well. Quite shy of the holiday weekend as we still are, there were only a few minutes in the last half-hour of the day that Sarah and I were alone in the store. Northport is certainly livelier than it was a decade ago! But who specifically may come in, and what topics of conversation we may cover, and what particular book treasures my visitors will find on any given day — all that is never the same from one day to the next, so today, like all bookstore days, will doubtless be one of surprises. 

Finally it will be time to come home to start supper and water plants in pots and boardwalk garden and relax on the porch for half an hour on the front porch before another evening of mowing. In May and June, the grass grows almost faster than it can be mowed, so work often continues as long as the sun shines. The evening before last, however, having accomplished a difficult and heroic task of physical work directed by the genius of the Artist in residence, we drove to another village in Leelanau County for the evening meal, taking in beautiful scenery along the way. Oh, the smell of horses! — And now this morning, the perfume of blossoming cherry trees, and once again, I feel a vague frustration at not being able to include aromas in this blog, which reminds me of a frequent exclamation when people first walk in the door of Dog Ears Books: “Oh, I love the smell of books!”

The smell, the feel, the sight of books … and the worlds they contain, worlds within worlds. This is my life. Books and bookstore and garden and meadow and the fields and orchards around us,  woods and back roads, horses (other people’s), dog (my own), wildflowers (nature’s gifts to all) …. I am at work before the sun is up (often in summer, though not this morning, hanging laundry on my backyard lines) and fortunate to be, while no Superwoman, healthy and strong enough still to do what needs to be done.

Dear Friends, Nearby and Faraway

Moist, misty, marvelous

Saturday morning is here, overcast, softly rainy, still, and with this rain, my freshly mown grass will need mowing again in a couple of days. It might have needed mowing that soon, anyway, of course, since spring is when grass grows most wildly after its long winter sleep, but at least I am saved by the weather from trying to mow this morning the last areas we haven’t gotten to yet. I can use a little break. I am trusting the rain to soak my straw bales this morning, too (on days two, four, and six of their conditioning cycle, they don’t get fertilizer, only water), so that’s another chore not needing to be addressed immediately.

Some of Thursday's progress

The other day at a local coffee shop, the barista asked in the course of our conversation, after I’d admitted having spent the winter in Arizona, “So you come here for the summer?” Come here for the summer? Like a summer person? “No, we live here,” I  said gently, “but some winters we go away.” The way I figure, it’s about one in three winters we’ve been gone, two winters out of three we’ve toughed it out in the farmhouse. One way we rationalized going away is that we generally save money by living somewhere else when the snow is flying in Michigan. One January plow bill of $1,000, added to heating costs, convinced of that. But I will admit that, much as I have loved winters for most of my life, much as I longed for years to go all the way to the Arctic — Michigan winter in those years was not challenging enough to my soul, despite paralyzing blizzards — I’ve reached a point in life where I love being warm. And not just any kind of warm, either: I love being in the sun.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll turn into a wrinkled old tortoise,” the Artist cautioned me. “And what about skin cancer?” he added, to strengthen his case. 

I told him I would be indoors, in the bookstore, all summer while “everyone else” (a slight exaggeration) would be at the beach, and those April days in the high desert were my substitute for summer days at the beach. No water, of course. No waves. No fresh-fishy smell of the Great Lakes. (I love that fresh-fishy smell!) But over the winter I grew to love the smell of dust and cows and was not pining to be anywhere but where I was. 

Home now in Michigan, outdoors yesterday morning, mowing and gardening, I thought at ten o’clock how warm the day would already be back in Cochise County, Arizona. It would be time, if not to seek shade, at least to stop working hard in the sun. One woman who grew up on a ranch told us she and her siblings had been rousted out of bed at three a.m. in the summer. Three o’clock was breakfast time, so they could get their work with the cows done before the heat of the summer day. There are ways around the limitations of climate, adaptations, and not all of them involve fuel oil or electricity. Rather than simply dash between heated houses and heated cars, winter in Michigan makes more sense with a lot of warm clothes, from good boots to earmuffs and mufflers, layers that make outdoor exercise possible. Enjoyable. Exciting! As for the desert, I have never been a fan (really — really, no pun intended!) of air conditioning, and there’s no air conditioning the range! So getting up in the dark to work and napping through the early afternoon makes sense to me. 

I won’t be doing a lot of napping this summer in Michigan. It’s the 25th anniversary year of my little Up North bookstore, and I’ll be focused on business and working every day. Since retirement is not an option for me, I’m fortunate to be still in good health and also to have the kind of work that, like farming, lets me be my own boss, even if “my boss” sometimes works me harder than I would like!

And so, the plan: I’d promised to be open by Memorial Day weekend, “if not sooner,” and so I will be, but I’m also going to have the bookshop open today, Saturday, May 19, with a — here’s the surprise — big one-day sale of everything in stock. I’ve got my flowers planted out front and made my first pass through the shop with broom and dustpan, and it’s too wet a day for you locals to stay home and mow your grass and plant your gardens, so come on down and see me on Waukazoo Street. Everything in stock, including all new books, will be 25% off today!

Thanks for the sidewalk comment, Erika!

One of the challenges of a bookstore, whether the business deals in new books or used or a combination of the two, is inventory control. Dear Prudy Meade of Leelanau Books told me that years ago, when I was just starting out, and I think of her often when I’m pruning my stock. Books have to go out to make way for other books to come in. Hence the periodic purging, and hence today’s sale. 

Faraway friends, I know you won’t be able to drop by in Northport today, but I appreciate having you drop by Books in Northport. It’s important for me to keep in contact with you, too. I live in Michigan. Michigan is my home. But Arizona, where we own no property and have no family, has somehow become my second home, a second heart home, and I miss all of you out there. So welcome to Michigan! You’ll get a good dose of it here on my blog, along with book and bookstore happenings. 

Another cup of coffee. Helen, thank you for the mug with first lines of well-known works of literature! It will keep you in my thoughts every morning!

Reminder to local Leelanau friends: Today only, Saturday, May 19, all books in stock, new and used, 25% off. Rainy days are excellent reading days!

From one bookseller to another: Good morning, Helen!

Back Home and Back tto Work

Michigan — lush, verdant, overflowing! Has there ever been a greener spring? To be fair, Missouri and Illinois greeted us with spring vistas on our way home, and earlier, even before leaving the southeast Arizona ghost town cabin where we spent the winter, hadn’t we been thrilled to see the mesquite sprout green leaves and to see — at last —and to smell — a chinaberry tree in bloom, a treat that had been eluding me, teasingly, for years? 

If only you could smell the blossoms, too!

Taking our leave of Willcox, Arizona, we followed Fort Grant Road, one last time, up to Bonita, turning onto that beautiful, beloved mountain road through the Stockton Pass to where it joins the highway to Safford, and to my delight, near the end of the twenty-mile stretch, staghorn cholla were blossoming. I didn’t dare look for wildflowers on the much more challenging mountain road between Globe and Apache Junction, because I was at the wheel, but before the day was over, we had reached Carefree, north of Phoenix, where towering saguaro was in flower. And then somehow, in what seemed no time at all, though we had stayed two nights with my friend in Carefree and cruised slowly and wonderingly through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, and though we whiled time away pleasantly in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and McLean, Texas, as if we had nothing but time and would never come to its end — somehow we found ourselves in Oklahoma, with green-leaved trees and choruses of singing birds greeting us at the state line. We have returned more than once to Santa Rosa and now have added to our list of “towns in which to spend more time in on future trips” Globe, Arizona, and Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

From Osage County courthouse steps lead downtown.

Missouri was beautiful. North from Cuba on narrow, winding, charming little state road 19, blossoming tree dogwood and spreading green colonies of mayapples along the way invited us to linger, but dogwood was delicately lovely in Springfield, Illinois, too. We had crossed the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers, and now came the Vermilion and the Kankakee as we made our way north through Illinois (staying four nights with family) to southern Michigan, where the dogwood was not fully open but already lovely and redbud clearly queen of the spring. Maybe once before in my life I’ve seen so many spectacular redbuds, but that was long ago. The St. Joseph River, our own little Paw Paw River, the still-beautiful Kalamazoo, despite what it has suffered: our way home to northern Michigan is always marked by rivers, and we cross each bridge as we come to it.

Northern Michigan does not have the dogwood of the southern woods of our state, and redbud trees Up North are few and far between, only one planted as a landscape accent, not clouds of them growing wild, so north of Grand Rapids that role was taken by pin cherry’s flowering branches. Mayapple colonies persisted as far north Newaygo County. As we drove north, it was as if we were traveling back in time to the beginning of spring, finding the season less advanced the nearer we approached home, as if held back for our return. We stopped along the Pine River to stretch our legs and delight in the warm, sunny day, to walk along flowing water — our feet releasing a heady, familiar perfume from pine needles underfoot — and to take deep, happy breaths of Michigan air.

This historical marker is worth reading.

 And finally came, of course, welcome glimpses of trillium in the grass at the edges of second- and third-growth woodland.

Home at last, having imagined knee-high grass in the yard, we were pleasantly surprised to find it not yet terribly out of control … to find daffodils blooming … to realize we had not missed cherry and apple blossom time, after all. One neighbor’s apricot tree, the first to flower on the highway between our place and Northport, held its pretty flowers against the blue sky, but most of the orchards at our northern end of Leelanau County had yet to blossom and are only just now coming into their brief seasonal glory.

The last book we had been reading aloud at bedtime, John Hildebrand’s Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, had brought us from Arizona back to Michigan: the story ends in springtime, with plans to put in crops for another year. We came home to find the straw bales for the modest garden I’ll have this year ready to be wrestled into place, and I got them positioned the very next day, because even without livestock or field crops, our country life and village businesses make heavy demands on available time and energy, especially as the latter quantity seems to decrease significantly each year. 

But we are home again and back to work after a winter of leisure, and Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner, and there is much to do between now and then — planning, mowing, planning, cleaning. In Northport I’ll be weeding out storage areas and ordering new books for the shop. Expect many announcements in the weeks ahead, the first of which you’ll find here. Just don’t expect a new post every day, because even my to-do list, as I told a friend yesterday, has to-do lists of its own right now, and when it’s too dark to mow grass, I’ll be reading Rachel May’s An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery until my eyes cannot remain open one more minute.

The bookstore will definitely be open Memorial Day weekend. If I can get enough done by this Saturday, I'll put out the OPEN flag. Time will tell....

Traveling Around Home — Any Takers?

They do things a little differently in other places

My sister handed me a book the other day that she thought I might enjoy and/or add to my used inventory at Dog Ears Books. The title is Bucket List Adventures: 10 Incredible Journeys to Experience Before You Die (I always think that’s the best time to do things, don’t you?), and while as I turned pages, I realized that author Annette White’s idea of travel adventures was much more ambitious than my own — Tokyo, Costa Rica, Jordan, etc. — some of her ideas on how to travel struck a chord with me. For instance, this section heading, “Immerse Yourself in the Culture.” 

When many arrive to a foreign destination they make the mistake of visiting without ever really leaving their own world. They choose the route of being a tourist looking from the outside in. … They are spectators…. 

… The deepest travel happens when you integrate into a community by actively participating, opening yourself to interact with the locals, and understanding the way they live. This can be as easy as actively participating in their rituals, eating traditional dishes from the region, or learning the history that makes the city [sic] what it is today. 

White has much more to say on the subject, but that was enough to get me thinking. I thought about eating octopus seviche in the Yucatan, trying cheese on my grits in Savannah, cheering the junior rodeo contestants in Willcox, AZ, and walking in the washes of Dos Cabezas with a ghost town neighbor. If you’ve followed Books in Northport this past winter, you know we made many good friends in Dos Cabezas, but even three years ago, as strangers, we made it a point of to explore the whole of Cochise County and to learn about its history and natural history, as well as attending public events from art shows to rodeos.

Letting down personal barriers, going beyond one’s own cultural comfort zone, meeting strangers on their own ground and on their own terms, listening and learning and looking to understand — it doesn't have to be as big a deal as crossing a swinging rope bridge over a yawning chasm.

Let me address the simple grits with cheese in Savannah. How much simpler can travel get? The outdoor restaurant was busy that late morning, and our server had probably been running ragged for hours. He was formal and attentive but distant, just doing his job. He asked if I wanted cheese on my grits. Automatically I said no, then stopped and said, “Wait! Is it good that way? Do you recommend it?” He said yes, and so I said I’d try my grits with cheese. Such a small "adventure," hardly meriting the name, wouldn’t you say? As it turned out, I did enjoy grits with cheese. But the food was secondary to my happiness when I thanked the waiter for his recommendation and saw his face break into a smile for the first time. We had broken through to each other and, for a moment, connected. Even if I had hated cheese on my grits, I would have be glad to order my breakfast that way for the sake of the waiter’s smile.

During our ghost town winter, we met people who live very differently from the way we live in northern Michigan — those who carry guns on their hips (only one neighbor but a nice man), those who hunt (as do some of our Michigan friends, though we don’t), and those who are happy, for one reason or another, with the political direction our country is taking these days (which we, I admit, are not). I will emphasize that there is no more unanimity among Arizonans than there is among Michiganians. Nevertheless, we were on Arizona turf and not looking for arguments. We were the aliens, the strangers, visiting and trying to get to know another (diverse) culture. 

So now, looking back at the Southwest from the familiar Midwest, I wonder how it would be if more of us approached each other at home as if we were travelers in a new land, listening rather than arguing, trying to understand, extending a hand in goodwill rather than standing back with arms crossed tight against our chests. 

One of my winter projects in Arizona was studying Spanish, and for weeks I made good progress. Then an unexpected, though brief, hospitalization threw a monkey wrench into my routine, and I never did get back into it with the same discipline. No matter. I really did have enough of the language to order my Sonoran hot dog in Spanish. Only timidity held me back. Why? Why so timid, self? I was disappointed in myself. Finally, however, at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, a nice man stopped to admire Sarah and began speaking to her in Spanish. My opportunity! “Se llama Sarita,” I told him. His daughter’s name was Sarah. I admitted that ‘Sarah’ was my dog’s name, too. 

It was only a moment, like the waiter’s smile, but that moment made my day. Could we do more at home to make each other’s day? I’m going to try to keep that in mind over the season ahead. 

Dare to cross the bridge?

Stops and Thoughts Along Life's Roads

When our pack is on the road, obviously we don’t stop in every single little town along the way. That would be impossible even when if we always eschewed interstate routes and took nothing but two-lane highways, because what if there were a little town every 20 or 30 miles? It would take forever to travel just from Northport to Grand Rapids! But you know I am a big fan of both two-lane roads and small towns, and we’ve seen quite a few of them in the past several days.

From Arizona to Missouri (and beyond, but we’re only as far as Missouri at present), many towns bypassed by interstate highways and left to die on the vine beat the drum for old Route 66. After all, if they were on that old road, they’ve at least got that to spin, though it won’t bring enough business to revitalize all the boarded-up restaurants and abandoned, derelict motels once so lively with families on the move. Because the interstate wasn’t the only element of “progress” working against the little towns. Cars became faster and covered more miles a day. Motor homes became popular. When one era segues into another, changes don’t occur singly. Instead, each one brings on others, resulting in a landslide effect.

Willcox, Arizona, was passed by when I-10 came along, and the passenger train that roars through doesn't stop at Willcox any more, either. Most people never see more of Willcox than the gas stations and fast food joints at the interstate exchange. One of my friends from Tucson said that’s all she had ever seen, and I told her she must take Rex Allen Drive, old Hwy 186, to the “old town” across from Railway Park. There are four wineries with tasting rooms within walking distance of the park. There is a movie theatre. There are new shops this year that weren’t there three years ago. The Rex Allen Museum is worth a visit even if you’re not a fan of Western movies and draw a blank when someone says the name “Rex Allen” to you. And anyway (my ace), Willcox is, after all, the gateway to the Chiricahua National Monument! So slow down, stop, stay a while!

Then there is Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I’ve written about Santa Rosa before, too, so I won’t repeat everything I’ve written before. You can follow the link to read my take on Santa Rosa and/or go to the town’s website to see what they find noteworthy about themselves. 

While I don’t want to repeat myself too much, however, I have to say again (now that I’ve brought it up) how utterly charming I find Santa Rosa, and I’m pleased to report that this time around, to my great satisfaction, the Artist felt the magic, too. We drove around town, as we have developed the habit of doing (this is our third or fourth visit), admiring stone walls and adobe brick homes -- driving by one of my favorite little houses again, too -- and speculating on that. I commented that Santa Rosa, though obviously struggling economically, has all kinds of potential and a lot of already actualized lovely features. Besides its Route 66 history (which is, after all, hardly unique to Santa Rosa) and beautiful old civic buildings, the little town is naturally blessed with the Pecos River, El Rito Creek, spring-fed Park Lake, and the famous Blue Hole, an artesian well popular with serious divers and fun-loving families alike.

On this particular trip, we came through Santa Rosa on a warm, sunny day and found both Park Lake and the Blue Hole swarming with happy people. Both places were such a pleasant scenes, it was hard to tear ourselves away, and we have still never made it north of town to the Santa Rosa State Park, where the really big lake is. If we hadn’t been making our way east in a window of clear weather, following tornadoes the week before, the Artist said he would have liked to stay and spend a couple of days in Santa Rosa. “We’ll have to come back,” we said to each other. The next time I’ll have a bathing suit with me, for sure! And I hope we're there when the corner cafe on courthouse square will be open, because the old business was closed on our first visit, on our second time through (in January) we were a few days too early for the new Grand Opening, and this time we were there on the wrong day. But Santa Rosa, we shall return!

Back on the Big Road (sigh!), we made it all the way to McLean, Texas, by the end of our driving day. When we arrived there were no cars in the parking lot and a sign on the door telling us what phone number to call. "What if they don't take dogs?" I asked, then answered my own question: "They'd be fools to turn us away!" 

As it turned out, however, we got the last available room! A wedding party had booked the rest and would arrive after the reception. David asked if it would be a raucous evening but was told no, they were a religious family. And indeed, we had a calm, tranquil stay. 

What a sweet little place! The room was huge, towels enormous and soft and thick, and the in-room coffee pot made twelve full cups! We sat outside in the last light of the day and felt perfectly content. “This is perfect,” we agreed. 

In the morning we made our way downtown for breakfast, and we did find a restaurant open and started our day with a hearty meal. There was also another little combination cafe/store, a regular grocery store, one gas station, and a museum (not open on Sunday morning).

But oh, the empty storefronts! What a heartbreak! I remember Northport’s dark days and how woebegone everyone was, and it was nothing like this!

Before leaving, we bought gas in McLean, as we had in Santa Rosa, although we knew it would probably be cheaper at a big interstate exchange, because we wanted to do our part, and as we made our way down the road, we brainstormed ideas for revitalizing small towns across America. We had some good ideas, too. But I wonder. Are we dreaming of a past that will never live again, an America our grandchildren will never know? A place with vibrant small town life from coast to coast and border to border? I have a lot more to say and write on this subject, but now it's morning and time to get back on the road again.

So, So, SO Much to See!

My eyes were wide open from the day's start, when Sarah and I took a walk around Carefree, and I took note of blooming saguaro. Then my friend wanted to take us on a tour of Stagecoach Pass, where the houses are built right into the rocky side of Black Mountain. Holy cow! It’s as if people set about building houses in Cochise County’s Texas Canyon! The architects and builders must really know what they’re doing to do these jobs that look, on the surface, close to impossible. When we said good-bye to my dear friend (our lovely hostess), we left on the Carefree Highway west and then north on expressway in the direction of Flagstaff. 

Although on I-17 we found ourselves at elevations of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet above sea level -- a little scary -- we elected to stay on that road rather than leave it for Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. The latter is a beautiful drive, but we had already enjoyed it three years ago. Also, it’s so popular that there’s almost nowhere to slow down, let alone stop, on the winding two-lane road. And anyway, the views along the faster road were still spectacular, in a different way, in every direction. 

One thing we’d forgotten was snow-covered mountains north of Flagstaff, so when they appeared in front of us, we were as amazed as if we’d never seen them before. 

Flagstaff is at over 6,000 feet in elevation, and the San Francisco Peaks to the north top 12,000 feet.We were so mentally exhausted from the drive and the eye-popping views that it didn’t seem at all crazy to stop and get a motel at 2 p.m., and the view from our very reasonably priced motel room, as it turned out, was dramatic, too. 

After a little rest break, we set out to explore, because downtown Flagstaff is fascinating, too, with stunning old buildings and lively sidewalks and alleys.

 We peeked into galleries, perused restaurant menus posted on windows, and then --

Bingo! Old books! And the door (left) was open!

Proprietor Hugh Fogel, whose business card calls him 'Creative Director,' has owned Starrlight books only since September. (I didn't ask and haven't investigated but wonder if the former owner was named Starr) He has been told that summertime is "the season" in Flagstaff, but now in early May, Flagstaff is like Northport, Michigan, with chilly air wafting through fragrant pines and junipers, a time of anticipation for tourist town small business. Well I know that feeling!

Our book ardor, however, had not been cooled by the weather. The cool, high-altitude air was stimulating -- as I say, it felt like Michigan -- and we were stimulated as well by shelves and shelves of old books, with a few new ones mixed in. I bought half a dozen volumes, and the Artist and I will definitely return to Starrlight whenever we are back in Flagstaff. Which inspires me to inaugurate something I should have done in this blog years ago. Here it is:

Booklovers' Travel Tip: Starrlight Books, 14 N. Leroux St., Flagstaff, AZ

Hugh & Carrie -- tell them Dog Ears Books sent you!