A New Kind of Radicalism

Before sunrise

The ‘right’ answer is no longer understood as one that can’t go wrong but rather as one that everyone can agree is worth trying, given the knowledge available. ‘Adaptive management’ … stresses the importance of constantly reevaluating our knowledge and assumptions … based on the results of previous action.  

- Nathan F. Sayre, Working Wilderness: The Malpai Borderlands Group and the Future of the Western Range

The ellipses I have inserted in the quote opening today’s post are not intended to slant the discussion but to broaden it. The quotation comes from a book that focuses on the Western range, and the approach of the Malpai Borderlands Group is ecological. Material omitted above is as follows: (1) “from which ecosystem management is derived” and (2) “about ecosystems.” I omitted that material because what I’m wondering is whether or not — and if so, how — the approach this group has taken, their formation of a “radical center,” might be broadened to address divisions in American society beyond ecosystem management. 

To understand my question, though, it will probably help to go back to the particular problem faced in southern Arizona and New Mexico and how the Malpai Group has sought to address it. At stake — for everyone — was protection of the land they loved. How best to protect the land and for whom and for what: the crucial ecological questions could not be addressed outside political considerations. Ranchers, understandably, wanted to continue ranching, which meant grazing their cattle on both private and public lands. Environmentalists believed, because the assumption had been enshrined in public policy for decades, that grazing degraded the environment and had to be reduced, if not stopped outright. (When a conservation group acquired land, therefore, it generally took that land out of the ranch economy entirely.) Battle lines had been drawn, therefore, with positions entrenched and parties unable to grant an inch to their opposition. 

Meetings of ranchers, land managers, wildlife officials, and environmentalists routinely degenerated into insulting tirades….

What have I left out at the end of that sentence? Here’s how it wraps up: 

… whereas the Malpai discussions and subsequent get-togethers managed to remain civil and constructive. 

With, I might add, people coming from the same kinds of groups and backgrounds as attended the disorderly, unproductive meetings marked by “insulting tirades.” What was the difference? That difference was not in the life experience of those involved or in their educations or larger political allegiances.  It was a genuine concern for a specific geographic area and the realization that without new and genuine solutions for that area’s problems, everyone involved would lose. 

Trust was not immediately granted to the group, and not everyone in the area was interested in joining. The movement that created the group was literally and metaphorically grassroots, but it did not spring full-blown into being overnight. It began with a discussion group coming together to determine points of agreement, finally culminating in an official statement:

To reverse this [existing political] polarization [between ranchers and environmentalists], which is a no-win situation for the land and everyone concerned, the ‘Malpai Meeting’ proposes that a concerned effort be made to identify the conservational common ground that unites all of us who love the land, then to create programs in which we can work together to implement the values we share.

Valuing the land itself was the bedrock common value of the group.

All [of us] who love the land agree that it should not be cashed-in or mined-out and that its health takes precedence over profits.

That “over profits” part makes for a strong statement, given that ranching families depend on making their livelihood from the land, but that livelihood depends on the land’s health, and so the ranchers have the strongest economic stake, along with a deep love often going back generations — what Wendell Berry calls “affection” for the very specific piece of the earth they call home. 

The scourge of mesquite that the Artist and I could not help noticing when we first arrived in southeast Arizona is more than an aesthetic concern. When shrubs outcompete grass, grazing suffers. On land dominated by woody plants with increasingly bare earth between shrubs, the desert’s sparse rainfall is lost more quickly to runoff, carrying with it more and more of the already thin topsoil. Without topsoil, and with shrubs having gained the upper hand, merely removing cattle from the land is no guarantee whatsoever that grasslands will regenerate. Old “wisdom” that called for maximum numbers of grazing animals per acre has proved insufficient protection for the land. Rainfall varies from season to season and year to year, and so both available water and season need to be taken into account when determining where and how many animals to graze. A universal formula (the holy grail of science) doesn’t cut it. “Averages” do not occur in nature. 

— And here I will cut to the chase and reveal that fire is a big part of the long-term solution for preserving Southwestern desert grasslands. Decades of fire suppression are what gave mesquite the upper hand over grass. The overall situation, of course, is much more complex than what I have presented here, and anyone interested is advised to look into the book from which I have drawn my information. My own point today, here, much as I have come to love southeast Arizona and care for its future, is a broader one. 

The “radical center” position created by the Malpai Borderlands Group, the author of the book explains, “was not simply centrist.

Rather than splitting the difference between two extremes, the radical center aimed to discard the polar oppositions that defined the spectrum in the first place.

I love that! This “center” is not some meaningless compromise where no one ends up satisfied. The goal of the group was nothing less than —

to unite ranching and conversation, to make them complementary and symbiotic if not synonymous … [in an] effort that would have to be public and multilateral.

Persons involved began by meeting in conversation to find common values. Their conversations were kept civil. Rejecting “expert” advice that had not worked in the past, they did not reject science but insisted on research conducted locally by scientists not wedded to specific outcomes promoted by any particular group. Members of the MBG, like the researchers on their lands, were determined to maintain open minds. 

Quick recap:

Civil conversation among open-minded people not wedded in advance to specific political outcomes but agreeing to examine empirical evidence to determine what best accomplishes their shared goals. 

That is how I see the MBG example as applicable to widely diverse economic, social, and environmental problems in other parts of our country. Can you see it, too?

Not everyone in the AZ/NM borderlands area, I’m sure, has joined the Malpai Borderlands Group. True, that’s just a guess on my part, but think about it. Even when a new approach to solving an old problem outperforms previous attempts, there are usually a few people who continue, in the face of all evidence, to clutch tightly to their previous ideologically-driven beliefs. That’s why I wouldn't be surprised if a few unconvinced extremists remain on both ends of the political continuum. But I bring that up not to cast any bad light on anyone but merely to urge those who would seek consensus and cooperation — and results — to realize that it is possible for committed individuals to join together and move forward without everyone within earshot being on board. 

No individual or group in history has ever had 100% support and devotion. It isn’t necessary. Without 100% of a population being on board, however, the more people who come to see cooperation and empirical research bringing tangible benefits to all concerned, themselves included, the more support the “radical center” will gain — provided it holds to a nonconfrontational, noncoercive, open-minded approach. 

What do you think? Worth a try in other areas of community life, in other parts of the United States? “Git ‘er done!” How about it?

Postscript, 4/10

In my eagerness to share the story of the Malpai Borderlands Group and my ideas for how what worked for them could work in other places and other situations, I may have glossed too quickly over another piece contributing to the group’s success. You see, it was not only that a civil conversation uncovered common values. It was much more. This group of property owners, environmentalists, ranchers, scientists, and government agency employees came together to address a specific problem because they shared a common goal. 

“Our goal is to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant, and animal life in our borderlands region.” 

The problem was that their regional landscape was threatened in several ways. Their mission was to find strategies to reach their shared goal (“to restore and maintain … natural processes…”) by accomplishing clear objectives embedded in the goal statement — preventing fragmentation, restoring grasslands, remediating shrub encroachment, and conserving ranching as a livelihood. 

It’s one thing for people who disagree politically to come together to try listening to one another’s views. That’s very, very hard — and maybe it isn’t even worth the time spent. On the other hand, when people in a community, who share some common core value or values, disagree over how to accomplish a shared goal — that’s when conversation is most likely to be successful, as long as political ideologies, religious differences, “how we’ve always done things,” and the like can be set aside and the question at hand approached with open minds. When there is something that people agree needs doing, their problem is no longer a matter of abstract principle but a question of what will work. Pragmatism is America’s contribution to Western philosophy, and Americans have always been noted for their ability to find ways to get things done.

An ecological community, a village, a school district, a county fair committee, even a church — all, from time to time, face specific problems requiring consensus on how the problems will be solved. Too often the necessary discussions disintegrate into unproductive, painful, “insulting tirades.” A better model is available, if we’re adult enough to adopt it.

Faraway Jewels

I bought the book Chiricahua Mountains: History and Nature, by William Ascarza (Charleston, SC: Natural History Press, 2014) over at the Southwestern Research Station near Portal, an expedition you haven't heard about yet, but only started reading it after David and I took a picnic lunch over to Faraway Ranch at the Chiricahua National Monument. The deeper one gets into Chiricahua history, the richer every visit to the place becomes. Coincidentally, we had also met a member of the Riggs family a few evenings before at a gathering here in our ghost town neighborhood. On our next drive to Chiricahua, then, we stopped at the Riggs Family Cemetery on the way. 

I did not photograph every grave in the cemetery and do not now remember the oldest person buried here, but I'm pretty sure she was 97 and born before the Civil War. My favorite headstone, though, was the one just above, a large natural rock erected on the grave of Edward Murray Riggs, son of Thomas J. and Eula Lee Riggs. Edward lived from 1885 to 1950, and I'll transcribe for you the entire text that appears on his stone, because it tells a lot about why the family is so important in this area, other than their considerable ranching history:

HE GAVE TO THE WORLD THE WONDERLAND OF ROCKS. HE ENGINEERED THE CONSTRUCTION OF ECHO TRAIL. HE WISHED THIS TO BE HIS MONUMENT. HIS CURIOSITY AND LOVE OF NATURE INSPIRED HIS DISCOVERIES. HIS ENTHUSIASM AND TACT ATTRACTED OTHERS TO HIS FIND. HIS TIRELESS EFFORTS OPENED THE AREA TO THE WORLD. WHERE HE BUILT THE FIRST TRAILS, THE TRAILS OF TODAY FOLLOW.  

HIS WAS A FAITH THAT LOOKED ACROSS THE RUGGED MOUNTAINS TO THE PLEASANT VALLEYS BEYOND; A GENTLE KINDLINESS LIKE THE WARM SUN ON A SHELTERED SPOT ON THE TRAIL; A REGARD FOR BEAUTY THAT MADE LIFE A PLEASANT VALE; A SKILL AND PERSEVERANCE THAT CONQUERED HIS WORLD. 

The Chiricahua Mountains are a most appropriate backdrop for this small jewel of a cemetery. 

Faraway Ranch itself was the homestead of Neil and Emma Erickson, Swedish immigrants who settled in Bonita Canyon in 1888. Three miles from the the Erickson ranch was that of Brannick Riggs and his wife, and it was Lillian Erickson, daughter of Neil and Emma, who married Ed Riggs, grandson of Brannick. 

Ed and Lillian operated their property, as had Lillian and her sister previous to the former’s marriage, both as a working cattle ranch (500 head) and as a guest ranch, offering horseback tours through what they called the "Wonderland of Rocks." Chiricahua National Monument was established by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, largely due to the efforts of Ed Riggs. The National Park Service acquired the Faraway Ranch property in 1979. A more beautiful -- or more remote -- setting for a home can hardly be imagined. Familiarity could never, of this I am sure, breed contempt for Faraway Ranch. Stunning mountains, sheltering trees, gracious home, dear domestic details, and lovely nearby Bonita Creek (not to be confused with the crossroads of Bonita and its creek up in Graham County) insure that every visit will increase love for this exquisite place. Completely content forty miles from Willcox, Lillian Erickson Riggs herself had no desire to live anywhere else. Here are her words, reproduced on a sign on the land she called home:

“The only sure thing, Lillian Erickson Riggs wrote in 1954, in the early days of her widowhood, “is that I love my home. And there is a feeling of safeness and security in the very walls and in the length and breadth of the spacious rooms.... Death will be far preferable to giving up my Faraway home.”

Chiricahua National Monument is less well known than other, larger federal monument and parks in the West. Before we came to Dos Cabezas in 2015, we had never heard of it. Now, however, we treasure its nearness to us -- just down the road -- and at the same time rejoice in its remoteness from urban sprawl, which exists even in parts of Arizona. A certain amount of effort is required to reach Chiricahua National Monument and Faraway Ranch — we wouldn't have it any other way. 

Wilderness Boyhood with Horses

Where Rivers Change Direction

By Mark Spragg

New York: Riverhead Books

Paper, $16

...I can step my memory onto the backs of the big boulders and hear my boots scuff against the black and rust and corn-yellow lichens that covered them.

When I was a boy ... I lived on the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the forty-eight states. 

-      Mark Spragg, Where Rivers Change Direction

As a bookseller who started out (back in 1993) exclusively with used stock, I still gravitate heavily in that serendipitous direction, ready for a previously overlooked or treasure somehow previously missed to take me by surprise. I also maintain that certain words grant magic to a book title. “Rivers” is one of those words. And so it I saw and picked up Mark Spragg’s book. Turning it over, I saw a sentence fragment, “... wrangles horses for his taciturn father,...” and had to start reading. It had me at “Hello.”

I knew that David would enjoy the setting as well as the writing, so I tried reading aloud to him from the first chapter. I didn’t get very far. He was fully attentive. The problem was that I simply could not pronounce aloud, with a steady voice, sentences that had such a powerful effect on me as these:

I knew the horses as I knew my family. ... We caught them, used them, turned them back into the kidney-warm manure cake of the corrals, into the ridden-to-dust round corral. They rolled and stood and shook and milled. When I was separated from them I felt wrong in the world. When I was separated from them I took no comfort in the sound of the creek. I felt chilled without the heat of them. ...

The ranch life is a beautiful but also hard, even brutal. Much of what might sound like “hardship” was intentional, since the family business is a dude ranch in the Yellowstone Plateau, with clients looking to “get away” from civilization. Thus --

No one ever asked why we had no television, no daily paper. They came for what my brother and I took for granted. They came to live the anachronism that we considered our normal lives.

But much larger difficulties, privations, and challenges come with the territory, unsought. At least half the chapters are what a friend of mine (who speaks of certain movies she recommends as “hard to watch”) might call “hard to read.” I winced through much of the chapter titled “Bones,” in which thirteen-year-old Mark accompanies one of the older ranch hands, John, on an overnight hunting expedition for winter meat, looking for an elk to kill. They find and kill the elk, but early in the butchering process John’s hand is badly cut. The description is graphic enough that I won’t quote it but will just say that for most of the chapter that mutilated hand hangs in the balance. And that’s early on, with much more to come.

A gentler chapter is “Wapiti School.” The school is named for the valley, green only two months of the year, the valley where, scattered far from one another, some two dozen ranching households form a kind of extended family.

America was not yet rich enough for the coastal populations to buy up the hinterland and subdivide it into a patchwork of second homes. The Wapiti ranchers worked their land; they did not sell it. It was a life that lined the face, leaned the body, and satisfied. We knew our neighbors.

School days bring the author to his first shy boyhood venturings into the agonizing mysteries of love. He strives to tame his cowlicks and buys his first gift for a girl, but how to declare his feelings?

Then there is my favorite chapter, “Greybull,” the story of the boy’s first trip to the livestock auction, an hour beyond Cody, outside Greybull (population: 12), a trip made with his father in their old truck with the busted radio.

The parking lot is gravel, rutted from a recent rain, grown up at the edges in tire-broken weeds. The pickups are mud splattered, most of them hitched to trailers, their grills and windshields uneven fields of smeared insect body. There is a row of stock trucks. A semi is backed to a loading chute.

In one of the pens, a horse catches the boy’s eye,

... a single dun gelding. His mane and tail, muzzle, and stockings darkened as deeply brown as wet earth. So is the line that dissects his back, from his mane to the base of his tail. His ears are pricked. His face alive with intelligence. He’s well muscled and put together like a cutter.

The boy has eighty-nine dollars in his pocket, a fat, damp roll mostly of one-dollar bills. Reading this chapter, the reader fears not that someone or something might die, only that the boy might not be able to buy the horse.

(“Only”? Did I say “only”? I was in a fever of excitement reading this chapter, excitement similar to my grandfather’s, so long ago, as he read for himself, at my urging, one of my favorite books, The Black Stallion’s Filly, by Walter Farley. When he reached the chapter of the Kentucky Derby chapter, my grandfather gripped the book more tightly and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead.)

With Spragg’s book in hand, we know the young boy in the stories will grow up to be a writer and that he will be living back in Wyoming when this book is published. But that road away from the ranch and into the future was not an easy ride. A winter of mountain isolation following college was easier for me to understand than a later sojourn in town, both measured against the backdrop of a wilderness boyhood. His parents’ divorce, reported without explanation, struck me as unutterably sad, and his mother’s death was wrenching. But more than that -- the young boy’s openness to the world and everything in it, his early life with horses, hard and sometimes brutal as that wilderness life could be -- I wanted to turn back time.

In the end, Spragg writes that he fears having lived “a careless life.” I read those words and wonder – asking myself -- does he have horses now? Is it possible to – can anyone -- live a “careless life” with horses?

I claim no objectivity whatsoever for my post today. “When I was separated from [horses] I felt wrong in the world.” I am riveted by that sentence. Since I have been separated from horses all my life, except for whatever stolen hours I could find to be near them, seeking them out, I can’t help wondering how I would have felt in the world if my girlhood horse dream had come true or if, later, I hadn’t allowed myself to be sidetracked away from horses, again and again, by other shiny, glittery objects along the way.

But I should clarify: It is not necessary to be “horse-crazy” to appreciate Where Rivers Change Direction. Don’t expect a series of pretty postcards, that’s all: nature’s power would be cruel if not so completely indifferent. But if you can’t get yourself out to Yellowstone, read this book and you will be well rewarded, seeing things in your reading mind’s eye that you would never see out your car windows. If you’ve been to the wilderness, Yellowstone or any other, you’ll enjoy reliving the freedom of these open spaces.

Spragg’s writing is mesmerizing. The wilderness he experienced half a century ago, beautiful and brutal, makes for a compelling story, and the author's shortest, simplest sentences carry emotion and poetry. I highly recommend this unusual, startling, and vivid memoir. I have copies in stock. Come see me soon.

Horses shown today were photographed in Cochise County, Arizona, in early 2015.

Read more about Mark Spragg here. 

A Star in the Western Tradition

Railroad Street, Willcox, Arizona

I vowed not to leave the Willcox, Arizona, area without paying a visit to the Rex Allen Museum, and now I can highly recommend it! Here’s how to get there:

To reach old historic Willcox from I-10, take the middle of three available exits and you’ll find yourself on Rex Allen Drive. Follow that to Haskell and turn right. (On Haskell you’ll pass the Motel 8, which occupies the site of the old house where Rex Allen was born, contrary to what you might read in Wikipedia about his being born 40 miles to the north where, it’s true, his parents did live before moving to Willcox.) At the intersection of Haskell and Maley, turn left, then turn left again at Railroad Street, and you’re right there, with a couple of museums and wine-tasting rooms on your left in the Old Town buildings and a beautiful park on your right. (Across the railroad tracks are yet more wine-tasting rooms. Willcox wineries outnumber those of Sonoita.) In the park is a bronze sculpture of Rex Allen himself.

Those approaching from Chiricahua National Monument on Hwy 186 have only to cross the railroad tracks and turn right, and there you are.

Intersection of Willcox and Railroad streets

 Before we came to Willcox, David and I were not familiar with the name Rex Allen, but since the name is everywhere in town, with “Rex Allen Days” the well-publicized high point of the summer season, we asked one of the first residents we spoke with and were told that he was one of the mid-century singing cowboys, along with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Well, those names we knew, but the name Rex Allen still didn’t ring a bell with us.

Admission to the Rex Allen Museum, which also includes the Cowboy Hall of Fame, is only two dollars. I want to emphasize this: it only costs two dollars to tour this museum! And so, friends and other readers, if you’re traveling west to Tucson, take the time to get off the expressway and detour through the old town of Willcox, because you are in for a big surprise!

When Roy and Gene read the writing on the wall and saw that television was the up-and-coming entertainment venue, they started making their own TV shows, the ones I grew up with in the 1950s. Who else remembers? Besides Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans and Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger were favorites of mine. Who else am I forgetting? My point here is that when Roy Rogers stopped making films, an opening was created, and it was Rex Allen who filled it. Between 1950 and 1954 he made 19 feature films, all with cowboy themes. The advantage to the studio was that no one had to teach him how to ride. 

his first guitar

He was not an actor needing cowboy lessons. Starting out from Willcox after high school graduation (“Willcox, Home of the Cowboys”), he went to Tucson with dreams of being a rodeo bull rider. He’d worked cows before. His first ride on a Brahma bull, however, persuaded him to concentrate on his music instead. That’s another thing. Rex Allen wrote the “Arizona Waltz” when he was only 14 years old, and his recording of “Crying in the Chapel,” long before Elvis touched the song, went gold. He recorded “Frankie and Johnny.” He had his own long-running regular radio show on WLS in Chicago. His recording career with Decca spanned 35 years!

And as for the movies, even after Western films faded away Rex Allen kept working in the film world. Have you seen “Charlotte’s Web”? That narrator’s voice is Rex Allen’s. He also narrated “The Incredible Journey” and many other Disney nature documentaries. “So,” as the volunteer museum host for the day put it, “even if you’ve never heard of Rex Allen, you’ve heard Rex Allen.”

David wasn’t sure he needed the Rex Allen Museum experience, so he strolled around in the park across the street, admiring the sculpture and looking it over carefully while I went in to begin my tour. But there in the museum I found a different, smaller, limited edition sculpture David just had to see ... an exhibit on the making of the large outdoor sculpture ... and then, capping it all, a photograph with accompanying note to Rex Allen from the Lucchese boot people! “Oh, my god!” escaped me at that last one. David could not miss this museum!

(David's boots, not Rex's)

Lucky for me, too, that I got David into the museum, or I might have missed, in my hurrying to rejoin him outside, the Cowboy Hall of Fame. 

In the parlance of baja Arizona, a “cowboy” isn’t only a lariat-slingin’ vaquero (although he can be that): he’s any horse-riding, cow-working rancher or ranch employee. Naturally, I am especially interested in the women ranchers, and in the book of “cowboy” mini-biographies, the only one I was in its entirety, with pleasure, was of a “cowgirl.” The guys and gals pictured here in the Hall of Fame are all the real deal.

When Rex Allen’s horse died, Koko’s ashes were buried in the park in Willcox. Rex himself, with failing health, spent his last days in Tucson, but he never forgot his hometown. “He’s the reason we have a hospital,” the museum volunteer told us. While still alive, Mr. Allen often came to sit in the front window of the museum bearing his name and chat with visitors.

I didn’t get the name of that volunteer at the museum, but he and his spiel were memorable. Born in Tucson himself, he came to Willcox and taught for 28 years in the public school, and when he retired, he stayed, because, “Where am I gonna go?” Small town life and higher elevation climate had spoiled him for city life. When I told him where we had spent the winter, he told me a personal story, about singing for a burial at the cemetery in Dos Cabezas. His speaking voice was gorgeous, and I can only imagine how thrilling his singing voice would have been, out there under the open sky. Here is a rendition by Vince Gill of “Go Rest High on That Mountain” to give you a taste of the goosebumps I felt hearing the story.

Even when you feel very much at home somewhere, it's worth taking a day to play tourist. I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

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....