Wherever They Are to Be Found

 

“We’re always buying books,” the Artist used to tell people who wondered what we did all winter. We felt it as a big loss when all three bookstores in Benson closed (one because of death, one due to retirement, and one when the owner moved out of the area). The only independent bookstore I know of in Cochise County now is down in Bisbee, and getting to Bisbee always seemed to take a lot of planning, so much so that we hadn’t been there since spring of 2021. And why would I go without my husband, who loved to read the New York Times at the library in Bisbee (only library in the county to carry it) and to enjoy a generous bowl of pho at the little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant? 

at Bisbee library

Awaiting lunch in Bisbee

As for where to find used books, there are still thrift shops and little shops run by various Friends of the Library groups in Cochise County. The Friendly Bookstore in Willcox even has an outdoor 10-cent book table, which the Artist and I have perused for years on a regular basis. (That reminds me of someone who came in my bookstore in Northport to ask where my 10-cent books were. Nowhere, sorry! I am working for a living, not on salary or pension!) Books on the table remain outdoors night and day, in all kinds of weather, enduring baking sun and punishing dust, and in the event of rain (a rare occurrence), soaked volumes are hauled off to the waste transfer station down the road and the table refilled with a “new” lot of used books. But on my own in recent weeks, I haven’t been doing much book shopping. It isn’t the same by myself, we have plenty already in the cabin, and I can borrow books from the library. 

 

The other day, however, a shady parking spot was available across the street (shade for puppy), so I stopped, and a glance through the 10-cent books turned up a little paperback I figured had to be worth gambling a thin dime. Author Stephen Levine’s book, Meetings at the Edge, had a subtitle that began Dialogues with the Grieving and the Dying…. Now, I do not think (or feel that) “the Universe” put that book out there for me to find. On the other hand, the subtitle did speak to my situation. 

 

Each chapter begins with someone calling “the Dying Project,” a free telephone consultation service provided by Stephen and his wife Ondrea (1979-82) for the “terminally ill and those working closely with a death.” Some callers had cancer, while others had family members who had received a terminal diagnosis or were already near death. One woman’s daughter had been murdered. There were occasional professionals who worked with dying patients and had a crisis of their own at the same time.

 

A family member wrote to me recently that “when we open ourselves to love, we open ourselves to pain,” and reading that it occurred to me that the briefest way I can describe the lessons in Meetings at the Edge is that the author gradually brings his callers to see that they – and that is, we, all human beings-- must be open to pain and loss and even to death in order to be fully open to love and to be truly alive, because if we fight against what is, we cannot be fully alive in the world as it is.

 

Disclosure: I am not a Buddhist. (In fact, I am so not-Zen!) And this book is saturated with Zen metaphysics. But just as I find the way people treat other people much more important than anything they say they believe, so as I read this book I set the metaphysics to one side and focus on the practice, which is not a turning away from or attempting to cover over grief but a sitting with it, acknowledging it, with all its pain, in order to get beyond pain to a core of – Levine calls it “undifferentiated,” “eternal,” or “universal,” -- I’ll call it undying love.

 

In my last post, I quoted myself as follows: “There is no shortcut to a long relationship.” Similarly, there is no shortcut through grief. There is no spiritual pain pill, no bromide, no set of magic words to clear away the clouds of bereavement once and for all. 

 

I have written about the deep gratitude I feel for my years with the Artist, for our rich life together, along with gratitude I have for the support and love of family and friends, attentive neighbors, and even a very demanding puppy that gets me out of bed one morning after another. And all that is true and real, and the sun is shining here in Arizona (even as it snows again in Michigan), and I realize I am a very fortunate woman in many, many ways . But if anyone thinks my heart is not often heavy, that my throat does not ache and that my eyes don’t fill with tears as I drive down the highway, then I have painted a very, very misleading picture. 

 

How to wrap up this post? Perhaps I won’t even try. It is early yet in my journey….

 

Summer morning light, northern Michigan

My World, So Tiny and Limitless

Bird of Paradise in bloom and giant agave in Benson, AZ

The other day we drove over to Benson to visit the Friends of the Library bookstore, one of our favorite destinations, and I came home with half a dozen or more used books new to me – a bit excessive, perhaps, as we will be returning to Michigan within the month, and it seemed all the more hoggish as the Artist, on that trip, uncharacteristically contented himself with three magazines. But one of the books I bought was as much for him as for me (The Psychology of Everyday Things, and he said, yes, he’d heard about it, and it did sound fascinating, and he would like to read it), and another was for a friend, and a third something I know I’ll re-donate as soon as I read it, so all in all I did not feel sinfully greedy or guilty. 

 

Benson is only 52 miles from Dos Cabezas (unfortunately, there is no way to get there by back roads, and we have to take I-10 from Willcox), and it is still in Cochise County. Our parking lot picnic after shopping for books was an apple and cheese stick apiece and a shared bottle of cold water from the car cooler, following which we drove back to Willcox and shared a brownie along with our usual drinks at the coffee house. Not a huge adventure, no new places, no exploring off the trail, and many of our days are like that, passed within a small, familiar world we know very well. But don’t let mileage fool you --.

Before even paying for my day’s selections, I had read the first page of one of the books I’d found, and I couldn’t wait to dig in further. “Couldn’t” wait – but had to. Peasy needed his regular afternoon run when we got home, and a start had to be made on our supper -- both my responsibilities. Once the dog had had his exercise and a beautiful pasta salad was cooling in the fridge, however, I sat myself down with a cold beer and Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, the story of an American couple who move to the celebrated town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, where the husband, the book’s author, soon finds himself working (“anarchistically,” he says!) for none other than bookseller Richard Booth (d. 2019), the eccentric man who remade the little Welsh town into a literary heaven on earth. 

The town we found that first day was filled with stores stuffed to the rafters with old books, massive ancient shelf breakers like a Pilgrim's Progress the weight and color of a manhole cover, a heavy bit of allegory indeed; and a slim and beautiful copy of Eve's Diary -- a curiously innocent work, lush with languid Beardsley-like drawings on every page, almost unrecognizable as being by Mark Twain, of all people -- we spent hundreds of pounds just shipping them all back home.

- Paul Collins, Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

“This alone was worth the drive to Benson!” I tell the Artist happily, as I emerge from the Welsh countryside and back into my seasonal southern Arizona life. 

 

Hay is a town of 1500 inhabitants, and at the time Paul Collins and his wife moved there with their toddler son from San Francisco, Hay boasted 40 bookshops! The boast now has shrunk to “over 20,” still more than a decent number (apparently several former bookshops are now antique shops), and there is a huge annual book festival, too. Reading of Hay, I recalled the summer I tried to persuade young Paul Stebleton (he is my son’s age, so, young to me), bookseller-owner of Traverse City’s Landmark Books (formerly Book-o-rama), to move his shop to Northport so the two of us could be pioneers in founding a northern Michigan version of Hay-on-Wye. He demurred – and is now in beautiful digs in the old state hospital in Traverse City – but it was a pleasant fantasy for me while I entertained it.

 

Back to the present – that is, the very recent past: After our pasta salad supper, I read a little further in my book and then set it aside to read aloud an article on Van Gogh from the new issue of New York Review of Books, trading my solo Welsh armchair travels for an armchair trip to France with the Artist. We paused once to return to Cochise County, Arizona, to make popcorn, and we then had Peasy’s full attention as we humans continued exploring Van Gogh’s world, rewarding little Pea’s good manners with the occasional popped kernel. For now, the three of us are still together, and it was a happy evening for me.

 

Much earlier in the day, shortly after sunrise, Peasy and I had fortuitously encountered friends out on the range, where Therese and I caught up on news and laid plans for the following day while our dogs enjoyed each other company, Peasy and Molly in their usual rambunctious way (Molly loves to chase Pea, and he loves being chased by her), old Buddy more sedately. That was a lovely interlude, too.

At day’s end the Artist and I watched, on the recommendation of both my sisters, the first few episodes of “The Kominsky Method,” which we loved. (Alan Arkin! It doesn’t matter to me how old he gets: to me, he is always sexy and appealing.) The show is set in Los Angeles but felt, to me, not so much like travel to an exotic place (my mother was born in L.A., but I’ve never been to California)  as being in the familiar country we now inhabit daily, that of the declining years of life. Not in a terrible way, either, for the most part. After all, the “small world” feeling of doing ordinary things together is very sweet, as we had experienced in Benson, in Willcox, in Dos Cabezas. We don’t have to be in Wales or France to be happy. (Good thing, too, eh? We still work at least half the year. We are not checking out yet!) And before we went to sleep we visited Peru! Yes, as I read aloud from Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, the Artist and I were two young Argentine doctors, hitch-hiking around South America!

 

This happiness thing – it comes and goes. Reading aloud to David, watching him share popcorn with my dog, I was perfectly content in my little world. Such a tiny world! Just the two of us in the car that afternoon without the dog, too, and then sitting in the coffee house together. My time outdoors with Therese and our dogs. A geographically and socially restricted world it is of partner, neighbors, dogs, birds, and cows, but it feels quite expansive, since there are also letters from faraway friends and books and movies to transport me over miles and across oceans.

 

The truth is, I wake almost every morning (and usually during the night, as well) to free-floating feelings of angst and dread, and it takes coffee and writing to put my world back into perspective and fill me with gratitude for the life I have had and the life I still have, and this return to perspective I have to accomplish over and over. (Like housework, like showering, it's never done!) But it works, so I will do it again tomorrow.

 

How I’m Coping Without My Bookstore

 

My old girl, Sarah, in her younger days

“It’s only temporary!” Loretta (played by Cher) yells at her father when he asks to see her engagement ring and she shows him (as he points out) what is obviously a pinkie ring. 

 

“Everything is temporary”! he yells back.

 

“Moonstruck” is one of my favorite movies, one of those rare films with nary a clinker. Every scene and line is perfect. I think of it as I write this post today because, as you know, my bookstore in northern Michigan is closed while I take my annual seasonal (winter) retirement.

 

The daily “Shelf Awareness” newsletter has had a regularly occurring feature since sometime in 2020, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, called “How Bookstores Are Coping.” The feature tells stories from all over the United States about how supportive customers have been, online orders being received on store websites, tales of curbside delivery; etc. And every day when I read those stories, I feel like a deserter from the front lines, although Dog Ears Books is not closed for the winter because of the pandemic, but only so this aged bookseller can have a respite before taking a deep breath and plunging into another busy season as one of the “working aged” (as another of my still-working friends informs me we are identified). 

Resting on her laurels in old age

Open for business only four months last year when stay-at-home restrictions were eased, I was full of trepidation beforehand, but after another still-working friend helped me out with a professional deep cleaning and I got all my pandemic precautions in place, things went fine. In four months, only two people complained about. having to wear masks (one of them told how to wear it correctly, up over his nose, made a fast exit, and that was okay, too -- his choice). Everyone else was cheerful, and more than one person thanked me for requiring masks and hand sanitizing at the door. 

Sarah with me for her last bookstore season

 

Bookstore people! They are the best!

 

Out here in Arizona in the early winter of 2019-2020, I was happy to arrange a couple of very parttime volunteer gigs for myself. On Monday mornings, at the Friendly Bookstore in Willcox, a venture of the Friends of the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library, and on Wednesday mornings in a program that paired older volunteers with at-risk children in early grades at the local public school, reading with them and having them write stories. I loved that git – the first volunteer job of my life! The children were darling, and naturally I felt right at home in a bookstore. 

 

Then came the stay-at-home order, and everything came to a sliding stop – which is much faster than it sounds. No more reading with little kids at school. No more selling books and honey. No socializing with neighbors, either. 

 

Well, you all know. We were “all in it together,” we were told over and over. Now, almost a year later, we hope the end is in sight, but life is still not back to normal, and the stories of “coping” continue.

 

The first winter the Artist and I came out West, there were three independent bookstores in Benson, just 30-odd miles down the pike from Willcox. The one we frequented most often and always found stacks of books to buy closed when the bookseller decided 25 years in business was long enough. The second, which we belatedly discovered on a back street, was gone without explanation last year. And the owner of the third, way out in the country, on a ranch with donkeys (and yes, a little dog, too), died in late 2020 at the age of 90, after 46 years as a bookseller. 

 

From three indies to none in five years. 

 

So now, unless we want to drive down to Bisbee or all the way to Tucson (where I had discovered the wonderful Book Stop not long before shelter-in-place order hit), neither of which we’ve done so far this season, we’re thrown back on the pot luck of thrift shops and FOL bookstores, which are better than nothing -- and some very nice and friendly and COVID-aware -- but nothing like the curated collection of an indie. And the FOL place in Benson has been closed since the first of the year. 

 

I miss the indies and supporting my fellow indie booksellers, my colleagues. Who knows? Maybe before we leave for Michigan this spring we’ll make it back over to the Book Stop neighborhood in Tucson or down to Meridian Books in Bisbee. I hope so. Because I have not yet abandoned the front lines myself, and it’s important to me to support with my purchases – support that really counts -- others who are out there in this always-risky, always changing business called bookselling. 

 

We indie booksellers all need to make money to stay in business, but we didn’t go into this particular business to get rich. You know why we do it! You wouldn’t be reading “Books in Northport” if you didn’t love books!

Not there now, but I shall return!

Postscript Update, 3/13/2021: The Friends of the Library bookstore in Benson, closed January and February, re-opened March 3, and we made our first visit of the year on March 12. I was delighted to find the volunteer in charge none other than Lenore, retired from the the former Benson bookstore we visited so many times. She was able to tell us that Mary Ann, another of Benson’s booksellers, moved her shop to Apache Junction to be nearer her son. (Mary Ann's and Lenore's former Benson bookshops appear in this old post.) Also, that the heirs of the late Win Bundy, bookseller at Singing Winds bookstore (the one with the donkeys), are trying to figure out how they might re-open. That would be fantastic, as Win's inventory of books on the Southwest was nothing short of mind-boggling.

 

Larry McMurtry and Me -- No, We've Never Met

The last book I read in 2019, finishing the last 50 pages or so aloud, in bed, reading to the Artist as we waited for the midnight hour to strike, was Larry McMurtry’s Books: A Memoir. McMurtry is a big-time player in the trade, as well as a very successful writer who has seen many of his novels turned into movies, but there are always areas of commonality in the lives and thoughts of reader/booksellers. Here are a few that struck me, and then a look ahead at bookish aspects of my Arizona winter.

On reading:

I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support—reading—is itself an eccentricity…. One could argue that Dickens and other popular, serially published nineteenth-century novelists started this…. But the silicon chip has accelerated the process of interruption beyond all reckoning…. 

Still, it’s at least possible that these toys will someday lose their freshness and an old-fashioned thing, the book, will come to hold some interest for the masses again.  

Then again, maybe not. Reading itself may have already become a mandarin pursuit…. 

- Larry McMurtry, Books: A Memoir

On bookselling:

By the time Internet book selling became first possible, Marcia and I thought the matter over and decided we did not want to put our stock online. We were in-shop, off-the-shelf booksellers and that was that. We don’t even like to catalogue: in thirty-five years we’ve issued two. We put attractive books on the shelves and hope that someone will recognize this and walk in, peruse, and purchase.

“That’s you!” the Artist exclaimed when I read him the passage above. As for Larry’s way of doing business, an “able shop manager” now at the Archer City, TX, began putting Booked Up’s titles online, and the partners, Larry and Marcia, have been happy to leave that aspect of the business to her.

At the bottom of our resistance to Internet book selling is our history. We always wanted not just books but a shop. Many of our customers have become friends. Like us they enjoy seeing and touching the books. Our stock represents our taste. What fun is there in clicking, compared to the pleasure of handling a fine copy of a rare book?

—Or any physical book, I would say.

We understand that we’re privileged, but so are many booksellers, so if we’re going to do this at all, we might as well do it our way. 

McMurtry is not privileged in the way of people who inherit great wealth. He has made his own privilege, as it were, working both as a writer and as a bookman, and from the start he earned his shop, his bookman identity, and his reputation as a writer. I think I understand, though, his idea of privilege, because I too feel it is great good fortune, in this often cruel world, to be able to pursue work that one loves and to make even a modest living from that work. I doubt I will ever fly to England on a buying trip, but I’ve made my primary living in bookselling for 26 years, and now, by frugal practice and careful planning, am able to enjoy a seasonal retirement in winter and return to my bookshop in spring. “You’ve got the best of both worlds,” a friend observed. Indeed!

Bookseller at Dog Ears Books, Northport, Michigan

On reading again:

Book selling will never quite expire unless reading expires first. The secondhand book business, both as a trade and as a subculture, has existed for centuries because people want to read, and the assumption book dealers work on is that people will always want to read. 

But will they? Seeing the changes that have occurred in the last few years, I sometimes wonder.  

Civilization can probably adjust to the loss of the secondhand book trade, though I don’t think it’s really likely to have to.  

Can it, though, survive the loss of reading?

The question, you see, is not whether human life on earth can survive but whether or not civilization can survive. What do you think?

Bookselling and reading in the high desert:

This is me now, not Larry McMurtry, reporting first on reading in my little winter ghost town and then on my new year’s gig coming up.

While I was back in Michigan last summer, a book club was formed among the women here in Dos Cabezas. I recall that one of the first books they read was My Name Is Ove and that I thought of reading it myself in Michigan so I would feel somewhat connected to my Arizona friends, but then a customer in my bookstore saw the book on my desk and wanted to buy it, and I said bye-bye. Another time, perhaps. After all….

Ghost town book club members decided that, for January, each would read a John Grisham book of their choosing, and since I will be joining the book club for discussion in January, I hope to get my hands on the particular Grisham one of the members highly recommended to me. I have never read a book by John Grisham. — Oh, that’s not true! I remember now that I read Skipping Christmas, or some such, in preparation for a talk I’d been invited to give the Northport Women’s Club on Christmas books. But I have never read what I take to be a more typical Grisham book, so this is an opportunity for me to fill a hole in my knowledge of contemporary book culture.

One friend here in the ghost town indulges herself by devouring books when her husband travels (which reminds me of the way I used to indulge —many years ago! — in the cheap grocery store pastries called cream horns when the Artist was on the road). This neighbor loves physical books, as do I. Another two women, sisters, also love books and bookstores, and they have me salivating to get to Bookmans in Tucson. (One of the men almost always downloads “books” onto his electronic device and only buys a physical book when there is no other option, but I have to cut him some slack, as the most recent physical book he bought was one of my all-time favorites, Bruce Catton’s Waiting for the Morning Train.) I know a couple of other women in the group but don’t know them yet as readers, don’t know their reading tastes and preferences, so it will be interesting to get together in a group to talk about books and reading. I’m really looking forward to this get-together.

(These neighbors don't read, but I love them, anyway.)

Besides joining the neighborhood book group, another winter book activity of mine (outside of reading in and adding to my own private library in the cabin) will be — ta-da! — working as a volunteer one morning a week in the little bookshop in Willcox! Wait until Bruce, my volunteer back in Northport, hears about this! 

Friendly Bookstore, Willcox, Arizona

The Friendly Bookstore is the only bookstore in Willcox. Run by the local Friends of the Library group, its stock consists of donations, library discards, and and a few new books by local authors. (They also sell local honey and jam.) My weekly stint will only be three hours, long enough to be fun and far too short to be anything approaching onerous (if that were even possible). I look forward to getting to know more local residents and to meeting strangers passing through from all over the world.

I don’t know if Willcox has ever supported a for-profit bookstore. Benson, west of Willcox on I-10, had three the first winter we were here, but the two shops dealing in secondhand books have since vanished. (One bookseller retired, I know, but I have no idea what happened to the other, who was a much older woman.) Singing Wind, north of Benson on a ranch and selling new books exclusively, is still in business. Benson also has a nice FOL bookstore on the corner behind their public library.

This Benson, AZ, bookseller retired.

We don't know the story of this Benson bookstore's closing.

Singing Wind is still in business ... 

... selling all new books and specializing in the Southwest.

But Willcox is my town, not Benson, the Sulphur Springs Valley, not San Pedro, my winter home ground. So there are times when I can’t help daydreaming of a bookstore in Willcox, flights of fancy encouraged by ghost town neighbors. When I realized the other day that the FOR SALE sign had disappeared from the most appealing potential bookshop property in town, however, the Artist exclaimed, “Thank God! That was a close call!” 

Oh, not really! Note that this blog, inaugurated in the fall of 2007, is called “Bocks in Northport,” regardless of where my winter peregrinations take me. I have no plans to leave Waukazoo Street! I’m just pleased for now that I’ll have a small part in the life of downtown Willcox, Arizona, and that my role will be that of bookseller, albeit for only three hours a week.

Also, Sarah (in background here) has her Northport fans!

On ne peut pas tout planifier

I don’t remember the context, but the observation was made to me years ago, with a Gallic shrug, by my friend Hélène: “One cannot plan everything.” So true, isn’t it? And while sometimes we chafe against life’s surprises, other times they are nothing but delightful and can even “save the day” once in a while.

We had two objectives on Saturday when we made a trip down to Tombstone with a visiting friend. The first was stymied — rather, we were in accomplishing it — precisely because it was Saturday. Also, apparently, because it was Saturday the streets of Tombstone were thronged with tourist families, despite a biting wind. None of the three of us had ever seen such dense crowds in the Old West town before, so we had not expected to find so many full parking lots or such lines waiting for restaurant tables. Doubtless the visitors were having a wonderful time. At least, I hope they were. We three, however, had had a quieter day in mind and decided against achieving our second objective, possible though it was. Instead we made a beeline for an open door we had spotted while circling blocks looking for a place to park. 

A little “book nook” called our names. It turned out to be another Friends of Library bookstore, and not even really a store, because, as the volunteer at the desk explained, “We don’t sell books. You just leave a donation.” So we did, all three of us, and our otherwise pointless trip enlarged our personal libraries.

Is a last-minute idea a plan or something else? Cold and hungry, we took refuge in Benson at the Horse Shoe Cafe. Stopping in Benson also gave us the opportunity to introduce our visiting northern Michigan friend to the work of a Southwestern artist acquaintance, mural painter Doug Quarles.

On Sunday, we started out with a sketchy plan, but a plan nonetheless. Only a few miles from our winter cabin is the road leading to Apache Pass and what is left of old Fort Bowie. Twice I had been thwarted in attempts on this road: the first time, my friend Clare and I wanted to hike the trail to the fort ruins, but a flat tire on the road in put the kibosh on that plan. When the tire was finally changed, I couldn’t blame Clare for not wanting to tempt another on that road. Then last year the Artist and I turned in but went less than half a mile before the washboard surface determined him to turn around. The Artist hates washboard! But knowing I have had a yen to explore Apache Pass Road, the Artist suggest we give it another try. And hallelujah! There were only hints of washboard now and again!

And oh, what a wonderful surprise! I hadn’t thought it through, I guess, because I’d pictured a continuation of the straight road — not minding that, because of beautiful grassland, grazing cattle, and mountain views — until we got to a parking lot. It was so much more than that! 

Signs warned in words and with icons of “curves” and “mountain grades” as we proceeded. I thought of travel with my parents and sisters in Kentucky and South Dakota and how we girls loved signs promising winding road ahead. 

Ocotillo and prickly pear cactus near trailhead parking lot

We stopped at trailhead and read information on the kiosks and picked up an informational brochure with map. Sarah would have been happy to take the mile-and-a-half trail to the old fort, but it isn’t that much fun having a dog on a leash on a trail. Also, the wind was very cold! And the Artist wasn’t really up for the hike, anyway, though I explored a few steps to find small yellow flowers in bloom, which of course only whetted my appetite for more of the trail.

(Readers, could this be comb draba, Draba oligosperma, a member of the mustard family, even though Audubon’s Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Western Region, does not include Arizona in comb draba’s region and gives its flowering time as May through July? If it isn’t comb draba, what is it? The flower definitely has four petals, and the leaves are leafless and hairy. Arizona people, can you help out here?)

Our Michigan visitor and I went down the trail just far enough to cross the creek (I can never resist the sight of running water) and inspect the stone ruins of an old miner’s cabin before our whole party continued by car on the exciting road — which, after a while, much to our surprise, turned into paved road. It was then we remembered that we could stay on this road clear to the other side of the expressway to the town of Bowie on our way back to Dos Cabezas. 

But first, old Fort Bowie —

Construction began on the fort in July of 1862, and it was closed in 1894, eight years after the “Apache Wars” ended, i.e., after Cochise (hereditary chief) and Geronimo (public spokesperson) surrendered to the United States government. Fort Bowie was established as a national historic site in July 1972.

(I was baffled for a long time by the local pronunciation of Bowie. “Boo-ie,” people around here say. The explanation, it turns out, is that the fort was named for regimental commander George Washington Bowie, who pronounced his name with the ooh sound in the first syllable, unlike James Bowie, who claimed to have designed the first Bowie knife.)

The fort ruins and visitors center, like Apache Pass Road, were much more than we expected — ruins more extensive, visitors center more welcoming and informative. 

If I am interpreting the site correctly in light of the historic map recreation, the remnants of stone wall, set apart from adobe remnants, originally housed the fort’s powder magazine and gun shed. Corrals and stables were to the left in my photographs, barracks and quarters to the right. 

Naturally, I could not leave the visitors center without a book. Here is the one I chose — this time — but I will be reading about Cochise and his son, Naiche, for a long time to come. 

Fort Bowie merits more than a single visit, and I am resolved to hike the trail before this year’s Arizona season comes to a close. Leaving to continue north to the town of Bowie, and from there to I-10 back to Willcox, we circled back southeast at last, having made a complete circuit around my beloved Dos Cabezas Mountains. Much more of an expedition than we’d set out on, but definitely worth the extra effort and a slight departure from the original sketchy plan.