We Really “Go to Town!”

A rare cloudy day in southeast Arizona

And it’s a rare day that we don’t go to town -- “town” for us, Willcox, only fourteen official miles from our winter ghost town digs in Dos Cabezas, though I think of it as fifteen miles, since we don’t do a lot on the outskirts. Well, other than stop at “the ponds,”  as we call them (Twin Lakes is the official name), to look for sandhill cranes or take the unpaved back road in to look for horses or stop at the animal shelter, where I hope to be volunteering when my background check is completed. 

 

Sometimes we even take a much longer detour, just for the pleasure of the wilder scenery closer to the mountains. 

But either way, the 14-15 miles to town are never boring. Every day, every hour of the day, the scene is different, light and clouds making magic in the sky. It occurs to me that perhaps the clouds are so captivating here in the West not only because the sky is wide and uninterrupted by either forests or skyscrapers but also because the clouds look so soft, in contrast to the dry desert full of prickly plants and the sharp rocks of the mountains. 

Hawks are a daily sight on the way to town, as are cattle. We don’t see horses every time (although I look for them every single time), and it’s exciting to sight a deer or coyote or javelina. The little deer below stood stock-still in the middle of the highway after its companion bounded across, and we stopped, also, gazing into its eyes before it wisely moved off the road. 

Another day, after a good night’s rain, we saw a young javelina drinking rainwater from the indentations of the rumble strip on the edge of the highway. 

 

The outskirts of Willcox are not, I’m happy to tell you, miles of malls and fast food joints. In fact, I usually refer to the area outside the city limits on the Dos Cabezas side affectionately as “man’s world.” There are well drilling businesses, body shops, sand and gravel and fertilizer dealers, stock watering tanks for sale, etc. To me, all this says that Willcox is a real place, where people work real jobs. One has a very different impression coming into town from one of the expressway exits (though only one of those has a couple of fast food outlets), and I feel sorry for and a bit impatient with people who think they have “seen Willcox” because they’ve stopped for gas just off the expressway. My particular favorite stop before we cross the railroad tracks from the Dos Cabezas side is the feed store. The eastmost expressway exit would bring you into town past the Willcox Livestock Auction, though, and that’s wonderful, also.

 

There are two feed stores and two grocery stores, two drugstores (one in the larger grocery store) and two barber shops, and a couple of thrift shops. There are maybe three banks, plus a credit union, although the bank I use (because it’s also in Traverse City,  Michigan) no longer has an open lobby but only an ATM. (For service from live human beings, it’s necessary to drive north to Safford in Graham County.) There are a couple of bars, but we haven’t been in either of them. Several wine-tasting rooms, but again, we have not imbibed. We have been to the Rex Allen Museum, and I recommend it highly! Naturally, there are motels, restaurants, and gas stations, as well as RV parks, but since we are not simply passing through but living here, more important to us are the laundromat, the library, and the post office.

"Cowboy starch" a regional specialty

There are a couple of large, well-stocked hardware stores and a little local hospital with ambulance or, if necessary, helicopter service to Tucson.

 

Last year there was an important addition to the town (and to our town visits) in the form of a new coffee house. On sunny, warm days we enjoy sitting out on the wide front porch, and when the wind turns cools it’s cozy inside. People meet to play chess, and there are shelves of books (to which we have contributed), where “Take one, leave one” is the policy. There is a little fish tank and, at present, a Christmas tree. Some very elaborate coffee drinks are available, though I get no fancier than a latte (just the flavor of coffee, thanks, no syrup added) or a double espresso, and there are cupcakes, “apple bites," and what I can’t help calling (in my mind, if nowhere else) pain au chocolat. –which reminds me that there is also a new bakery in town, and I need to try that soon!

Willcox has a movie theatre, and we’ve seen some great shows there in past years. Right now I’m watching the marquee on a daily basis, eager for an evening show that would let us out into the magic of holiday lights strung on the trees of Railroad Park.

In short, the town of Willcox is a lot like Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery in the fictional Lake Woebegone: if they don’t have what you want, you probably didn’t need it in the first place. Because believe me, I've left out quite a bit.

 

Books Read Since Last Listed

 

164. King, Thomas. A Matter of Malice: A DreadfulWater Mystery (fiction)

165. Thody, Philip & Howard Read. Introducing Sartre (nonfiction)

166. Samuels, Solomon K. A Life in Three Acts: My Journey From Wartime Burma to America (nonfiction)

167. Zweig, Stefan. The World of Yesterday (nonfiction)

168. Taylor, Rosemary. Ghost Town Bonanza (fiction)

 

To write an autobiography, it helps to have had an interesting life. Whatever the events of your life, however, telling your story in an interesting, readable manner is essential, and while bogus autobiographies and memoirs appear from time to time, the best are the stories honestly told by writers modest about their successes and not afraid to reveal their weaknesses. 

Is it more than coincidence that a good friend’s husband, Solomon K. Samuels, and a famous 20^th-century author, Stefan Zweig, both saw their lives as divided into three parts? Samuels calls his book A Life in Three Acts, and Zweig’s working title for the story of his life, published posthumously, was Three Lives. In both cases, I thought it would take me a long time to get through these life stories, but in both cases, again, I sped through the chapters, thoroughly engrossed. There are personal achievements, as well as the horrors of war, in both books. The resolutions are very different. But both books are well worth reading, and I recommend them highly.

 

 

Peasy Tales (Briefly)

 

The dog without a tail, the dog with issues, our little Peasy, continues to enjoy life in Cochise County, Arizona, with his seasonally retired human folks and his neighborhood pack friends. 

Please Mind Your Manners in the Lake District

Sheepdog in her dreams

The farms and the flocks endure, bigger than the life of a single person. We are born, live our working lives, and die, passing like the oak leaves that blow across our land in the winter. We are each tiny parts of something enduring, something that feels solid, real, and true. Our farming way of life has roots deeper than five thousand years into the soil of this landscape. - James Rebanks, The Shepherd’s Life (NY: Flatiron Books, 2015)

The Shepherd’s Life tells about sheep-farming in the Lake District of England season by season. The reader encounters details and arcane terminology for sheep that are a thousand or more years old. Dogs, too, as should go without saying – smart little border collies, dogs that can make all the difference between a farmer’s success and failure when it comes to gathering the sheep from the fells.

Think you’re not interested in farming? Read on.

Rebanks the farmer and shepherd is a beautiful writer, and whatever subject such a writer chooses is worth reading. My farmer friends (and those, like me, with an inner farmer) will learn from and love this book, but so will my poet friends, world-traveler friends, and anyone curious about the world who appreciates good stories well told. 

Those of us who live, as the author does, in a vacation paradise can draw more particular lessons from the book, because what Rebanks lays before the reader is an entire way of life. This part of England, he tells us, was unknown to the outside world until “discovered” by poets and hikers and made famous by Wordsworth, Thomas West, Beatrix Potter, and Alfred Wainwright. After these people came and fell in love with the region, they told others about it. The Lake District became a famous holiday destination. Outsiders came to buy vacation homes, and these outsiders loved the Lake District in their own way and wanted to “preserve” its wild areas but did not always appreciate livestock on the commons.

Sound familiar?

As a farm boy who had never thought of his home territory “as a place of books or for leisure,” Rebanks one day sat high on a fell neighboring his own family’s land with a Wainwright guide in his hands,

...looking down at the landscape farmed by my father’s friends, and cross-checking it against the guide. It struck me powerfully that there was scarcely a trace of any of the things we cared about in what Wainwright had written. Apart from the odd dot on the map for a farm or a wall, none of our world was in those pages. I am wondering whether the people on that mountain see the working side of that landscape, and whether it matters. In my bones I feel it does matter. That seeing, understanding, and respecting people in their own landscape is crucial to their culture and way of life being valued and sustained. What you don’t see, you don’t care about. 

 It is a curious thing to slowly discover that your landscape is beloved of other people. It is even more curious, and a little unsettling, when you discover by stages that you as a native are not really part of the story and meaning they attach to that place. There are never any tourists here when it is raining sideways or showing in winter, so it is tempting to see it as a fair-weather love. Our relationship with the landscape is about being there through it all. To me the difference is like the distinction between what you felt for a pretty girl you knew in your youth, and the love you feel for your wife after many years of marriage. Most unsettling was the discovery that the people who thought about this place in this way outnumbered us by many hundreds to one. I found that threatening to our very existence....

That’s a lengthy quotation, but I didn’t feel I could cut it any shorter, because it speaks of the shepherd’s life in all its aspects: the farm families, their committed attachment to the place and way of life, the invisibility of that way of life to holiday-makers, and the feeling that the newer kind of love threatens the survival of the older.

Readying Leelanau fields

I am not a farmer, as you know. (Farming is yet another youthful dream path, like music, that my life did not take.) People say, in the Lake District, that it takes three generations to make someone a local. Well, at that rate, I can hardly even call myself American. One of my grandfathers was born in Ireland! My mother was born in California, father in Ohio, and I was born South Dakota, growing up (insofar as I ever did) in Illinois, coming to make a home Michigan only in 1967.

A recent meeting of the village planning commission grew tense when an audience member pointed accusingly to “newcomer” faces on the board, prompting several of those “newcomers” to defend themselves with statements of how many years they’d been “coming up here” (i.e., on vacation or for summers) and how many years they had now lived in Northport fulltime. Native American people make wry faces over such discussions, as well as the common statement, “In America, we’re all immigrants.” I had a customer once in my bookstore looking for a book about “local Indians” but not, she specified, modern-day Indians. She wanted anthropology, history, legend, not current real life.

Who counts? Who is visible? Whose lives and ways of life matter? 

More than a few locals here in Leelanau County sport bumper stickers that read, “My home is your vacation.” (I think that’s how it goes. I always felt it would be punchier as “Your vacation is my home,” but we all get the point.) I remember a t-shirt from a couple decades back that warned, “Don’t mess with me – I’m a local!”

Bees at work in Leelanau orchard

I live here, but there have been a few winters (we can’t afford to do it every year) when my husband and I have fled to an easier clime. A couple of my farmer friends themselves (one a fourth-generation local) are world travelers. And here’s what I want to say. If we travel  at all – any of us -- wherever we travel (unless it’s to Antarctica, the only continent on earth home to no historical or traditional human culture) we will be visiting someone else’s home. And if we move to make a home in a new place, we’re going to live where other people had lives before we got there.

When the irate local at the meeting called newcomers on the commission “an invasive species, like star thistle,” I touched him gently on the arm (he’s a friend) and said, “That’s me, too. I didn’t grow up here.” “No,” he said earnestly, “you can be a transplant without being an invasive species.” His distinction, as I understand it, is between newcomers who try to fit in and those who try to take over. Like the shepherd in the Lake District, he feels his existence threatened. But those he perceives as a threat felt threatened by his anger and became defensive in their turn. They feel they are helping the local community -- bringing it "up to speed," into the modern world.

Must everyone, everywhere, be goaded into a faster and faster way of life – everything high-tech, “branded,” and magazine-slick in appearance – or shoved off to the side of the road?

It’s a touchy subject.

Not only in England’s Lake District, but in our own country, from Hawaii to Alaska and in all the forty-eight contiguous continental states, everyone’s vacation – or new home – or chosen retirement community – was already someone else’s home. Those who can afford periods (or lives) of leisure bump up against those working for a living. Because wherever you go, there will be people working, or life there would not be possible!

“Respect people in their own landscape.”

That sounds to me like nothing more than a particular application of the Golden Rule. If we think of it that way, it’s pretty easy to understand, isn’t it?

Beech buds in Leelanau woods

Well, I’ve barely touched on the wealth to be found in The Shepherd’s Life -- have only focused here on one of its many topics. Fathers and sons is another major theme. Economic vicissitudes and cycles. Livestock breeding. Schooling as preparation for life – or not. Oxford University. Town, gown, and farm. There’s plenty here for every reader’s interests. After all, the best memoirs present life much as do the best novels – in its particularity and its universality, through personalities never before encountered and yet familiar in many aspects, showing a way of life not experienced by the reader but shared by the writer. And this is one of those best.

I do want to say, lest you be put off by a shepherd’s resentment of invading writers, that James Rebanks came to an appreciation of Wordsworth and others, the more he learned of their appreciation for his way of life. His favorite, not surprisingly, was Mrs. Heelis, who also bred and showed sheep from her Lake District farms. You know Mrs. Heelis by her other name: Beatrix Potter.

Cowgirl-in-My-Dreams Getaway Rating System

Cow at foot of driveway, morning light

Someone long ago – so long, long ago that who it was no longer matters – introduced me to a rating system for Caribbean resorts that took me quite by surprise. When this person said he would never stay in a hotel with less than a 4T rating, a T being the system’s equivalent to a star, I was curious and, thinking about the old lumberjack hotel my husband and I love in the U.P., where we have stayed for so many years, I asked what sort of primitive accommodations one might expect with a single T. “For instance, would you have to share a bathroom? Would you not have air conditioning or TV?”

He looked at me as if I had suddenly gone insane and then, realizing my questions were serious, stated emphatically (with a still-scandalized expression) that all of the T resorts had private bathrooms, color TV, air conditioning, etc.

“So what do you get with more T’s?” I asked, lack of experience with Caribbean resort hotels severely limiting my imagination.

He rolled his eyes and sighed patiently as he began to tick off desirable amenities. “Private beach. Golf on the premises. Shopping on the premises. Gambling on the premises.”

Indeed! It was an entirely new concept to me, and, I admit, one I did not find appealing – that of flying to a foreign country and spending an entire vacation in a commercial compound, never exploring the country or mixing with the indigenous population, seeing nothing outside of the hotel property. Realizing that people do this – and enjoy it -- was a startling revelation to me, but chacun à son gout, as the old lady said when she kissed the pig. To each his own. Just so I don’t have to do it.

Sabbatical involves work, while vacation leaves work behind, but change of scenery is key to both, along with getting away from routine, freedom from daily job or business and social commitments, and luxuriating in unstructured time, all of which I have found this winter in Dos Cabezas, Arizona. I could not have asked for more.

Morning over the mountains

Thursday morning, a calm, quiet, sunny, beautiful morning, when I ventured outdoors, there were cows down by the road, cows in the side yard, and more cows wandering peacefully through the dry wash behind the cabin. Their presence made me very happy. “How many places could we have gone this winter,” I asked David with a blissful sigh, “where cows would come right up to the house?” He pointed out that most people would not put “cows in the yard” (much less cow pies in the yard, which charm both of us) on their list of priorities for a seasonal rental, that most people would be more likely to look for a golf course or swimming pool. But I know what I like, and this is it!

So here, presented for the first time ever, is the Cowgirl-in-my-Dreams (CD) getaway rating system, applicable to sabbatical or vacation. The lowest number is a minimal amenity, with each successively higher number including and building on lower numbers by offering greater pleasure and satisfaction. My priorities would not be everyone’s, but I offer them from a full and grateful heart, happy to have found such peace and beauty here in the high desert.

Willcox across the railroad tracks

CD1: Friendly nearby town with basic necessities – post office, groceries, hardware, mechanic, library, etc. Don’t need or want to be necessarily in the town, but having it within daily reach is good. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s better if it isn’t fancy.

Field of blue toadflax

CD2: Open range or (in a different climate and habitat) otherwise open, undeveloped space where the CD and her dog can enjoy walks in a natural setting, i.e., “Nature in Abundance” (to steal the motto of Grand Marais, Michigan).

Last light of afternoon, Philadelphia Wash

CD3: Hardworking, unpretentious, friendly but unintrusive neighbors within walking distance and not too close for comfort. Handyman? Check! Mechanic? Check! Sources of neighborhood and historical information? Check! Happy, happy, happy!

CD4: Working ranch or farm environment, with cattle and horses part of everyday life – the closer, the better. Cows in the yard a definite plus. Horses in the yard would be a cup-overfloweth situation, but even seeing them at a distance from the back porch is pretty darn good, and having more down the road in either direction is very good, too.

CD5: Absence of Internet or cell phone signal to reinforce solitude and peace. Love it!!!

I could make a longer list, but those are my ghost town basics, and you get the picture.

Now that we have made exploratory day trips throughout most of Cochise County and forays up into Graham County (Safford) and over to Santa Cruz County (Patagonia), David and I find ourselves, as “the days dwindle down to a precious few,” spending more and more time sitting quietly in the shade behind the cabin, looking back at our “home” mountains, drinking iced tea, reading and writing, and watching cattle and wildlife. One little lizard entertained us for many hours. The lizard comes out to sun itself every afternoon; the rock squirrel was a fun surprise. “Do you think we’re finally settling in?” my darling asked with a smile.

Having begun again at the beginning with my novel-in-progress, I am no longer counting words written and have cast off that horrid Big Bird fussiness of overworked transitions (“He went here and he went there and he walked and he walked and he walked”), concentrating instead on key scenes in my characters’ development. “What are they up to now, these people you hang out with?” David asks after I’ve been writing for two or three hours in the morning. I am “hanging out” with them. They are always on my mind, wherever we go, in foreground or background, and the hardest part about going home is knowing that they will be pushed more and more to the background as normal working life makes incessant demands. But I have had this time, and I am immensely, deeply grateful for it.

More and more green comes to the high desert every day. There are so many things we will not be around to see, since we leave in a week, and so my desire to identify what is happening now grows more urgent with each passing day. Two small former botanical mysteries gave up their secrets recently, thanks to a beautiful book David bought for me, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Western Region, my camera, and clues from the plants themselves. I can now say with confidence that the white flower from Patagonia Lake (my photograph of it more artistic portrait than clear representative of the species) was desert chicory, and that the charming tiny flowers in the yard here in Dos Cabezas (the fruits were my clue) are Dove’s Foot Geranium, a close relative of crane’s bill.

desert chicory

dove's-foot geranium

I cannot say why this knowledge is important to me; I only know that it is.

No, wait. Maybe it’s this:

I did not simply pass through this place. I did not just touch down and bounce away again. I was here. I was really here. And David was right beside me.

Click here for more new photographs of neighborhood horses.

Reading the Western News

No doubt it is possible to buy The New York Times in Tucson or Phoenix, but no one sells it here – and by “here” I mean Willcox, our nearest real town, not little ghost town Dos Cabezas, where there has been no store of any kind for many years. One can read the Times online at the library, but I say, why bother? “The News Hour” with Gwen Ifill gives me as much national and world news as I can handle. And besides, I’m keeping my online time to a minimum, averaging well under 30 minutes a day on the Internet, most of which time is spent downloading and reading e-mail, updating one or two of my blogs, and briefly checking Facebook to make sure I’m not missing an important message from anyone (though I’ve tried to get across to friends that e-mail is my preferred contact).

Anyway, in general, I like to be where I am. By that I mean that for me the point of being somewhere other than home is immersing myself in that different place. And so, here in southeasternmost Arizona for the winter, it is Cochise County news that really captures my attention. The big Arizona newspaper comes, of course, from Phoenix, but news of where we are is most thoroughly covered by the Arizona Range News, published in Willcox, Arizona, since 1882. The office on Haskell Avenue isn't in a fancy building, and it may look at first like there's not much happening there, but sit and watch a while, and you'll see people coming and going. And every week the paper comes out.

The Range News (like our own Leelanau Enterprise back home) is a weekly newspaper, generally two sections, and it covers news in the communities of Willcox, San Simon, Sunsites, Bowie, Cochise, and Dragoon, which is pretty much the whole Sulphur Springs Valley. There are feature news articles, obituaries, columns, editorials and letters, public announcements, and advertisements. When we first arrived in the area, I couldn’t get enough of the obituaries and loved the one about a woman who was a lifetime rancher and whose favorite activities were knitting, quilting, and “working cows.” Reading a local newspaper is a good way to begin getting acquainted with a community.

Is this week’s Range News particularly interesting, or am I just paying closer and closer attention, the longer we’re here? The following stories pulled me in:

1) Feeding the hungry: “Distribution center to help area hungry,” reads the headline of the story of a $1.2 million donation from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for what will be called the Willcox Food Distribution Center and will serve Cochise, Graham and Greenlee Counties: The HGB Foundation, I learned from this article, advocates for those who are “food insecure,” not only in third-world countries but right here at home. Howard Buffett (son of Warren Buffett) was born in Illinois, and his foundation owns farmland in Illinois, Nebraska, and Arizona – most interestingly to me, this winter, a research farm right down the pike from us on the Kansas Settlement Road – and his foundation’s threefold mission is to improve lives worldwide through food security, water security, and conflict resolution. I am most interested to learn more about HGB projects, especially as they are being tested so close to Dos Cabezas.

2) Gould’s wild turkey: Have you ever heard of it? I had not, until now, but a long piece in the Range News informs me that a wildlife project in the nearby Pinaleño Mountains (north of Cochise County, in Graham County) has received national awards for habitat restoration and re-establishment of Gould’s wild turkey, the largest wild turkey in the U.S., and found only in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and Mexico. A partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Wild Turkey Federation is “part of a broader effort to restore habitat for Gould’s Wild Turkeys in southeastern Arizona’s ‘Sky Islands,’ 12 mountain ranges primarily managed by the Coronado National Forest.” The article calls the birds “spectacular” and their comeback “incredible,” their population in SE Arizona now standing at an estimated 15,000 birds.

3) Copper mining: The brief boom that brought Dos Cabezos into its most populous era was based on copper, and it was copper and iron that fueled the mining industry in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so of course a headline reading “Opposition organizes for copper mine” would get my attention. I also know from what I’ve read of mining in the Dakotas (SD my birthplace) that modern mining leaves more than holes in the ground. The news is that Excelsior Mining, having “recently completed a drilling program” in the Dragoon area, is now preparing applications for permits “to inject sulfuric acid deep underground to release copper and pump the pregnant solution back out to retrieve the copper....” Concerns are about “the use of groundwater in an area where supplies are limited” and possible contamination of groundwater. Like fracking, this process bears close scrutiny and “faces a long period of review,” according to the paper. Present-day alchemists take note: there are plenty of metals besides gold and silver much needed by modern technology! Being able to manufacture (rather than mine) copper or a good substitute could solve a lot of world problems and make the successful inventor very, very rich!

4) Auctioneer recognized: Hooray for Paul Ramirez of Tucson, auctioneer extraordinaire of the Willcox Livestock Auction Market! At the Greater Midwest Livestock Auctioneers Championship in Motley, Minnesota, Ramirez carried off the Reserve Championship. We have seen and heard him at work and were very impressed, so we’re happy to see that he holds his own in competition. Good work!

5) Film Festival: This is the next big event coming to the Willcox Historic Theatre, the same little movie house where we were fortunate and privileged to see the Paris Opera not long ago. It’s only the second year of the festival, but it looks like great fun, with 20 regional independent films in competition. Expect to hear more of this in the near future.

6) Junior Rodeo: Expect to hear more of this, too! Admission is free for the two-day junior rodeo, with food concessions operated by the 4-H. “Don’t expect much,” David warned, and I told him, “Don’t expect to keep me away!” Will there be calf roping? Barrel racing? I can hardly wait to find out!

There was more in this week’s newspaper – a community service award for the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative; results of the spelling bee in San Simon District; Willcox Middle School Honor Roll; a call to host an exchange student; local team sports news; the usual (but always unique and fascinating) obituaries and letters; and ads, display and classified, just one of which I’ll share. Under HELP WANTED is this notice:

TEMPORARY Open Range Livestock workers needed for Legacy Land & Livestock, Roswell, NM, from 2/15/15 – 11/15/15. Workers will be required to be “On Call 24/7,” perform a variety of duties related to the production of cattle and sheep; feed and water livestock; herd livestock to pasture for grazing and into corrals and stalls; distribute feed to animals; assist with calving, lambing and shearing....

Well, I can’t go on. Yes, there is castration and branding and spraying with insecticide involved, as well as cleaning stalls and pens (not as bad as castration and insecticide and branding). Oh, no, I can’t stop yet. How about this?

Must be able to find and maintain bearings to grazing areas. [Check!] Must be willing and able to occasionally live and work independently or in small groups of workers in isolated areas for extended periods of time. [Check!] Worker must be able to lift and carry items weighing up to 100 pounds. ...

Uh, okay, that’s enough. Hard outdoor work. Much as I love to work outdoors, sadly I think I’m past my cowgirlin’ prime.

Well Within Reach

Why is Sarah so excited?

Dog and Cats: A friend from Michigan is traveling the West with two cats. When Karen turned up in our yard, Sarah, who loves company, was very happy. Realizing quickly that there was at least one cat aboard (the other stayed out of sight), Sarah was fascinated. But since the cats go everywhere Karen goes, when she and I took off the next day to see the cranes, Sarah had to stay home. A dog and two cats in the vehicle? No, thank you!

Sheep: On our way to Whitewater Draw, we stopped to sheep, the first I’d seen on that road. Did they only arrive within the last couple of days? At the sheep stop, we could hear cranes overhead and were finally able to spot them in formation but flying much too high to be visible as cranes. I could only identify them by their calls.

Cranes: We were not disappointed at the Draw, our day’s #1 objective. There were fewer people than when David and I visited in January and, thankfully, not the fierce wind we’d experienced there. Cranes were gathered in two major areas, one near the parking area and another group out far beyond the paths and water. We went all the way out to the end of the farthest path to see the latter group, highly satisfied despite the fact that no flocks wheeled overhead.

Douglas – and Lunch: Next, the restaurant I’d promised Karen along the way having been closed on Wednesdays, we agreed to drive on to Douglas, a new destination for me, an American town on the Mexican border. Douglas turned out to be quite a lovely town, full of beautiful architecture and palm trees and many houses with that hipped style of roof I so loved years ago in Georgia. There was also a street parallel to the border with small, old-looking adobe buildings that I want to take David back to see. That street looked like the 19^th-century beginnings of a town that did not become a ghost town but grew “inland.”

We found a beautiful restaurant, and lunch was inexpensive and delicious. One of the taco plates, called “cabeza,” featured chopped onion and cabbage, so of course I had to order dos tacos cabezas, in honor or my winter digs – but then forgot, in my hunger and eagerness, to photograph them for the blog. Rats!

Karen wanted to walk across the border to buy a bottle of tequila, her #2 objective of the day. Initially I’d said I’d wait for her in the vehicle, with the cats. I had my passport with me but was a little nervous about going across. Then at the last minute I changed my mind. Lots of people were walking across, including plenty of kids, and my friend, a retired airline attendant, is one of the most experienced travelers I know. So why not?

Mexico: The first building that caught our eye was this one. Is it a nightclub? Wow! Talk about an eye-popping façade!

“But this is nothing like Nogales,” Karen said on the other side as we looked up and down the street for a liquor store, not seeing one anywhere in sight. “In Nogales, it’s liquor store, dentist office, eyeglasses, liquor store, dentist office, eyeglasses.” No, Agua Prieta – at least, as much of it as we saw -- is nothing like that. There were several pharmacies just inside the border, which I pointed out as likely destinations for medical tourists (I only photographed this old, closed pharmacy; others looked bright and lively), but other than that, most places looked run-down and faded. We had to watch our steps carefully, too, for changes in sidewalk elevation and crumbling curbs. There were no hordes of tourists in t-shirts, for sure -- maybe no tourists at all? I was the only person I saw carrying a camera -- and no rows of stalls selling tourist items. This was a poor border town, spritzing itself up here and there (one very pretty hotel; another big building going up a block or two away) and struggling along everywhere else.

Note: Others were open, but I couldn't resist photographing this wall

Karen kept apologizing. “It’s too bad this is your first experience of Mexico. You’d really like Nogales. It’s nothing like this.”

Okay, I’m sure it isn’t. On the other hand, having expected a completely tourist experience, I didn’t mind at all seeing an ordinary, more work-a-day town. “It feels more like a real place,” I told her. “I’m not disappointed at all.” And I wasn’t – not in the town or what I was seeing there. The only thing that disappointed me was my own memory! I felt tongue-tied, and my distracted brain kept fluttering with excitement and going into spins as I tried to remember my most rudimentary Spanish. My friend Laurie would have been very disappointed in me, I’m afraid! What, for example, is the verb for ‘to buy’? Karen doesn’t speak Spanish, and I would have liked to be able to say “My friend wants to buy tequila.” No could do.

Two men in a little party store (looking like any little U.S. party store, by the way) spoke English, however, and gave us directions to a liquor store. A block that way, another block that way. Okay, we did it. Then, tequila purchased and in the bag, we were ready to start back north.

Colorful tiles greeted us on the American side of the customs desk, and a fascinating, surprising picture greeted our eyes as we drove away from the border area: dozens of school children, loaded down with bags and backpacks, were streaming towards Mexico. They were born in the U.S., Karen explained to me, so they have the right to attend school here, but they live with their families in Mexico.

Pirtleville: The day included one more surprise, a colorful Arizona cemetery that looked as if it could easily have been in Mexico. We stopped, and I walked around with my camera but could not feel satisfied with the results. Like the desert and the mountains, it is the overall vista that is so impressive, and there was no way I could get my images close enough, far enough, wide enough, and big enough – all at once – to convey the impression of the reality.

Cows: On the way back to Dos Cabezas, we stopped to see some pretty-faced cattle in a feed lot. Sweet though their faces were, I was not moved to outrage by their plight. Why not? Am I becoming insensitive to animals, the more attention I pay to the challenges of farming and ranching, or was it the scenes of poverty in Mexico and those children crossing the border every day in hopes of a better life that had my mind more focused on human struggle?

Coyotes and Deer: It seemed that the excitement of the day was behind us as we reached the north end of the Kansas Settlement Road and turned onto Hwy. 186 toward Dos Cabezas. Then Karen exclaimed, “What’s that?” Something had run across in front of us, up ahead. Then another one! By the time the third one was crossing, we were close enough to see clearly that it was a coyote. No one behind us, so Karen stopped, and we could see all three there beyond the road, looking back at us. They look smaller and brighter in color than our Michigan coyotes. But did they wait for us to pull out our cameras and focus? They did not! Well, anyway, we saw them. “That was great!” David and I have heard coyotes here many nights, but these were the first I’d seen, and I was pleased to be able to add three coyotes to my list of six roadrunners, two mule deer, two javelinas (dead), and many Southwest birds. Then, “Look!” To our left, running along the base of a low mountain, parallel to the road, like animals in a safari film, were a herd of half-a-dozen deer. Mule deer? Whitetail? We were past them, and they were out of sight before I could be sure.

Home and Cat and Dog: David had spent most of the day at home, reading and drawing and painting, enjoying a rare day of solitude but eager to hear about our adventures. Karen and I put together a big taco spread for supper and told him all about it.

Frankie

Sarah stuck to my side like a burr all evening. “She missed you,” David said. I missed her, too. I kept thinking she was in the van with us and then remembering we had only Karen’s cats with us. (Friendly little part-Siamese Frankie was in and out of my lap all day.) But here’s a question: did Sarah simply want to be close to me that evening or to Frankie’s tantalizing scent, as well?

P.S. Look here for the weather we had on Tuesday evening....