Golden Valleys

 

Back in Michigan, not all that long ago, we had a beautiful, mild autumn, with September stretching through October and leaves remaining on trees into November. Here in southeast Arizona now in early December, fall lingers in a similar way. There are no flaming red and orange maples here, none of the purples of green ash, but there is gold in abundance. I think of prospectors violating the mountains for metal, while all around them nature clothed the valleys in bright leaves. 

This past weekend the Dos Cabezas Mountain Gallery resumed its annual holiday show and sale, interrupted last year by COVID-19. It was my privilege and joy earlier in the week to help set up the “tree” on the porch – and then to see the entire house transformed by unimaginable hours of work by the local artists and craftspeople. 

On Saturday a basket maker from Pearce demonstrated his craft in the sun-warm side yard, while indoors visitors shopped for Christmas in a mellow, festive atmosphere of happy conversations, sparkling lights, bright colors, and soft music. When Carol on her autoharp and her brother Walter on his harmonica gave their rendition of “Red River Valley,” the favorite song of one of my grandfathers, I had that exquisite feeling of a perfect moment and knew there was nowhere else I’d rather be. The Christmas spirit came to me at last, as it has in the past in Northport at concerts of the Leelanau Children’s Choir or the downtown tree lighting on a snowy evening.  Added knowledge here is that Walter was born in this same little house where we all were gathered, next door to what used to be the town post office.

Next door...

Look closely to see the building's identification.

The husband of my long-time friend Juleen (we worked together in Kalamazoo back in the 1970s) has written his autobiography, A Life in Three Acts: My Journey from Wartime Burma to America, by Solomon K. Samuels, and that book is my current reading. As was true of the World War II experience of families in eastern Europe (Unbreakable revealed a Czechoslovakian family story to me; see book report section of this previous post), what people in Burma suffered during and after the war is largely unknown to Westerners. Sam’s youth in British-ruled Rangoon as the son of an Indian civil servant was a comfortable middle-class existence before the war, but then came food shortages, bombings, Japanese occupation, flight from the city, return, his father’s death, and years of hardship. Maps aid the author in his developing the story of the wartime troop movements. He also details the history of political divisions and strife among Burmese revolutionaries and failure of so many to prepare for a future of independence. 

 

But I am struck, as well, by small, personal notes. The family, hiding during dark evenings from bombing raids, often kept their spirits up by singing. As Christians, many of the songs they sang were traditional hymns, such as “Abide with Me” and “Nearer My God To Thee,” but they also sang American “cowboy songs,” and when Samuels notes one particular favorite, “Red River Valley,” he cites its lyrics as particularly poignant to his family. That same song my grandfather loved (my mother's stepfather, he was, a north Florida "cracker"), the same song sister and brother Carol and Walter played so beautifully on Saturday here in Dos Cabezas.

 

All of this – the gallery scene, tales of wartime decades ago, my surroundings here in the ghost town – bring to my mind thoughts of mountains and valleys. As human beings, we know numerous metaphorical valleys in our lives, some of despair, others of delight, and we also know metaphorical mountains. A mountain can push us to our limits, sometimes even threaten death, while others – or maybe the very same, those of arduous climb! – are exhilarating in the effort required and the clarity of the air, the summit’s view its own reward.

Are these my "golden years"? Here in the mountains, looking down into the valley, I only know that today I feel at home and as fortunate to be here, now, as I am to be at home in Leelanau when I am there -- these two little places filled with loving-hearted friends.

Peasy Tales: Dog of the High Desert

 

Peasy (in back) with Molly (left) & Buddy (right)

Peasy report

To say that Peasy is happy in his morning adventures with our neighborhood desert dog pack (me, Therese, Peasy, Molly, Buddy) would be understating the case. He is delirious! He is also a supremely calm and contented animal when his dog parents invite him up on the bed for a little pack time before we all go to sleep (dog on the floor). He has a good life, that little sweet Pea! He loves having a family! Staff at the Graham County animal control pound would doubtless be amazed to see this “unadoptable” dog still alive and thriving.

Another lovely morning!

It must have been confusing and unbelievable to him at first here in Dos Cabezas, after being in "prison" for so long and, before that, a homeless stray. Then, a few months after getting used to our winter desert cabin came a week of cross-country car travel to another strange new home in Michigan, where he spent long days home alone while his dog folks worked to bring home his dinner (and theirs). And just when he’s settled in there, back across the country again to Arizona! I wonder if the little guy  half-expected to be abandoned along the road (again) any day. We never considered abandonment, but there were certainly times in the past year when his future with us hung in the balance…. 

 

How is he here and now? We have not seen his Mr. Hyde personality for quite a while now. (Maybe his anti-anxiety meds are starting to kick in. Maybe, too, time has been working its slow magic in what is now almost a year since he came to be our dog, even if it was two steps forward and one step back for what seemed forever.) Clearly, he remembered the cabin, and he certainly remembered our neighbor, Therese, and her dogs, greeting all three with trust and enthusiasm and readiness for fun! The only other neighbor he met last year was Cheryl, and I'm pretty sure he remembered her, too, because when she drove up to the cabin, he didn’t bark. A very big deal! He also let her come inside and took treats from her hand -- a little nervously, but immediately and without the slightest hostility – and when he had had enough treats (all she’d brought!), and I told him to lie down on his rug and stay, he did it! Good dog!

Treasures outdoors on the range!

(He is on-leash in the above photo because we were out before sunrise so I could get to a social gathering in town, i.e., Willcox, by 8 a.m.) 

We don’t have outdoor pack fun every single morning but it happens many mornings, and Peasy and Molly have learned to look for each other. Molly is definitely boss dog. When she doesn’t want to be messed with, she makes it known. I wouldn’t mess with her, would you? Anyway, I think it’s good for little Pea to play second fiddle to Molly, too. Keeps him toeing the mark.

Molly lays down the law!

 

Book report

Unbreakable, by Richard Askwith, is the story of a Czechoslovakian countess but decidedly not – at all! – a tale of extreme riches, international travel and intrigue, flamboyant affairs, or social status games. Lata Brandisová’s family was pretty much on the bottom rung of the nobility and, for nobility (and unlike their wealthier relatives), lived a fairly simple farm life. Lata did grow up with horses, however, and that was the making of her. 

 

Steeplechase is probably horse racing’s most brutally dangerous form, for humans and horses alike, and the Velka Pardubická quickly became famous, right from the first, as the world’s most brutally dangerous steeplechase, intentionally designed to be so by hell-raising Count Oktavian Kinský, Lata’s great-uncle. Small wonder that women were barred from competition until Lata Brandisová broke that barrier. On her first attempt, she managed to complete the course – in itself, a triumph in a race that ended many lives, human and equine, over the years. One year not a single horse and rider finished. Falls, pile-ups, broken necks were an expected part of every annual event.

 

The story of Lata Brandisová involves politics almost as much as horses, and her 1937 win of the Velka Pardubická, following a year in which German Nazi officers swept the top places, made the formerly unwelcome and at first publicly ridiculed female jockey, briefly, a national heroine of Czechoslovakia. Friend of neither her country’s Nazi occupiers, however, nor their successors, the Russian Communist regime, Lata found her fame short-lived. For that one day, everyone in her country had loved her, but soon she was an “enemy of the people,” too dangerous to befriend closely.

 

The thing about Lata, though, as her biographer describes her, is that while she loved freedom and hated injustice, nothing was more important to her than God and horses.

 

Anyone interested in how the succession of shifting 20^th-century political regimes affected life in rural central Europe find these aspects of Lata's story fascinating. Readers who love horses will be on the edges of their seats, as one exciting race after another is told. Feminists will find a new and inspiring model in this intrepid horsewoman. I loved the book for all these reasons and only hope that the author’s attempt to bring Lata Brandisová out of obscurity with this biography will be successful. 

 

Because life is not all about dogs. It’s about horses, too. And commitment. And staying the course.

Falling in love again --

What am I to do?

Read since last post:

Askwith, Richard. Unbreakable: The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race. NY: Pegasus Books, 2019.

Who Lives Here? And How?

Who lives here? Or lived here?

My high desert day usually begins in the dark, 5:30 a.m. on average. I like making coffee before first light and watching dawn break a while later over the low mountains to the east. Nights now are in the 30-degree range, so some mornings there is a thin skin of ice on the birdbath. The birds know when a sunny day is coming and are out calling and singing by the time the sun comes over the horizon. But that comes later. 

With almost a full year’s experience under his nonexistent belt, Peasy knows we won’t be rushing outdoors at first light or even sunrise, and he waits patiently (mostly) while I drink my coffee and read or write a letter or journal entry or catch up online with distant friends. But he is certainly ready for adventure and exploration the minute he senses that I am! The Artist will be ready, too, by the time Pease and I get back from our morning rambles, usually about an hour later.

Ready to go!

But Mom needs to bundle up first.

The sun is bright, but the air is cold when we first go out in the morning, and I bundle up accordingly. A jacket I found in a Traverse City, Michigan, Goodwill store in 2015, on the $1 sale rack because of a tear at the end of one sleeve, still works for me perfectly in Dos Cabezas, the rough leather brushing off thorns the way an umbrella sheds rain. Old dog-chewed shoes work, too (Peasy did that, not Sarah), as does a terribly unflattering wide-brimmed hat. Here one must protect against both cold and sun on early mornings -- go out without a brim in the morning, and walking east is walking blind.

A wash tells the story of summer rains, or monsoons, as some here call them. During a monsoon, washes turn from dry, sandy beds to torrential rivers in minutes. “Do not enter when flooded,” say signs along the roads, and even now, many weeks later, ghostly images of currents remain to show paths taken by relentless, rapidly flowing water.

The color green also tells of plenteous summer rains. So much green still, in November!

But there is red, also, and I need to learn the name of this ground-hugging plant, which can also be found along the edges of the highway, breaking through the pavement. 

And here is Peasy again. Because you never tire of Peasy pictures, do you? Isn't he a pretty boy?

 

As the desert day continues, it will often include a trip into our nearby town of Willcox, but I’ll save Willcox for another day and tell you now about evening and night in the high desert. In late afternoon, an insect chorus starts up and continues into dusk. Are the singers crickets or cicadas or a blended choir of both? Whatever they are, they settle down as darkness falls. Everything goes quiet then unless a dog barks in the distance. It is then that stars take ownership of the desert – stars, jets high overhead, too far away to hear, and maybe a silent satellite zipping and blinking by. Once in a while coyotes yip, that familiar sound that reminded me of our Michigan home the first winter we spent here in the ghost town.

Morning, afternoon, evening -- I feel very peaceful here. No doubt part of my contentment is the freedom of seasonal retirement: no schedule to keep, no daily obligations except to care for my little family. I haven't yet finished the exciting book about the steeplechase riding woman in Czechoslovakia. So many possibilities present themselves every hour, it's hard to settle down! 

Who lives here in this ghost town, delighting in open space and in friendly neighbors? For now, the Artist and I and our special needs dog are right at home. I'll tell you more about desert dog's behavior here in my next post. Or the one after that, maybe. Because who knows what the future holds?

The sandhill cranes have come for the winter, too.

Our Long, Long Trail, Part II

Steins

Steins again

As we near and finally cross the state line from New Mexico into Arizona, I feel my smile will crack my face. When we pass the first little Arizona ghost town, Steins, one we have ever only seen from I-10, the sight of it makes me want to laugh out loud. The peaks of Dos Cabezas are visible from the edge of New Mexico, too, if you know where to look. Happy sight! Though the naked eye's spotting of them would not mean much in a phone or camera image.

 

Arriving at the cabin midday on Tuesday (five days after leaving our Michigan home), the Artist immediately set about the mundane tasks of reactivating electricity and water while I carried bags and boxes in from the car. Peasy watched our every move intently. Did he experience the same comfortable familiarity I felt? Everywhere I looked were dear little pockets, such as the little desk holding my field guides, watched over by a 2021 horse calendar whose pages I eagerly turned from May to November. Of course, there was sweeping and dusting to do, but it was a pleasure, part of making myself at home again in the cabin. 

One small part of the happiness of unpacking was finding my camera, which I was certain I had brought along but hadn’t been able to find on the trip itself, reliant on phone alone for images along the long, long trail west. And so, unaccustomed to carrying the camera, I neglected to take it out with me on Wednesday morning, when Peasy and I met our friends, Therese and her dogs, for a long-awaited reunion, but here is a phone image from Friday’s get-together that we can pretend was from Wednesday.

Friends! Reunion!

And then the rains came! First sprinkles, as I was working in the backyard to clear it of four-foot-high weeds that had grown up into a forest during the summer. Then a downpour! And then a text came from Therese: “Rainbow alert!” I found it the most spectacular rainbow I have ever seen (though it’s possible that rainbows fade in memory and that others in the past have been equally spectacular), stretching full and bright from one end to the other, with a fainter second rainbow arching above the first. Oh, for a wide angle lens! As it was, Therese captured by far the better image from her house.

Therese gets the rainbow prize!

Thursday. Thanksgiving! Before going to dinner with our neighbors, I began a list of things I was thankful for, and with each item added I thought of five more. As my friend Juleen and I have often agreed, each of us can say truly, I am a lucky woman! I was that day and still am supremely grateful that the Artist and I and our little special needs dog are all still alive and together and here for another winter in Dos Cabezas, seasonal retirement for the Artist and me, homecoming for our wild desert dog. And I must say that Peasy clearly remembered not only Therese’s dogs but Therese herself and showed not a shred of nervousness when he approached her fearlessly for a treat from her hand! Like a normal dog!

Dinner with neighbors on Thanksgiving was lovely, the beautiful holiday table overlooked by a piece of art over the mantel by our hostess, her COVID project. Feathers and birds are souls we lost, winging their way to heaven by way of the peaks of Dos Cabezas.

Again on Friday, this time without a planned rendez-vous, Peasy and I encountered our friends once more down in the wash -- that is to say, Peasy and Molly found each other on the range, which always means a lot more exercise for both of them -- and thanks to that chance encounter, also, I was invited to help set up the Christmas “tree” in the little cabin down the road that will be the scene of a holiday arts and crafts sale this coming weekend. 

 

Pine trees do grow at higher elevations in Cochise County, Arizona, but down here on the high desert floor the favored plant for a Christmas tree is the dry stalk of a century plant, Agave americana, which you’ll remember is a member of the asparagus family. First we measured the space between floor and ceiling and sawed the bottom of the stalk to accommodate the space. Then we set up sawhorses on the porch to string the lights – a new experience for me (I’ve only seen the finished product until now) but one my friend Therese has done many times before. A bucket weighted down with rocks and sand holds the “tree” in place, and it will look even more beautiful decorated with ornaments. 

I did very little reading on the road west, but here are the last books I finished reading in Michigan before we set out on our cross-country trek:

159. Pride, Christine & Jo Piazza. We Are Not Like Them (fiction)

160. Gubbins, John. Profound River (fiction)

161. Roy, Anuradha. An Atlas of Impossible Longing (fiction)

162. Damrosch, Phoebe. Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter (nonfiction)

The book I began reading on the road and now find myself halfway through, reading voraciously, is titled Unbreakable, its author Richard Askwith. It is the story of a woman "who defied the Nazis in the world's most dangerous horse race," an unbelievable brutal steeplechase in Czechoslovakia, but her story begins well before World War II, and her love of horses, matched by her feminism, makes this a gripping story, to say the least. 

Meanwhile we are here. Enjoying reunions. Settling in. Acclimating to the altitude. Recovering from our long, long journey.

Our Long, Long Trail, Part I

It was Sunday morning in Tucumcari, New Mexico, when that old song started playing in my head. I think it was Sunday morning, anyway. The days tend to jumble together at times on the road. 

 

We don’t try to make a lot of miles on our first two days, because on Day 1 and Day 2 we have family destinations, and once we reach those towns, we go no farther. Arriving in midafternoon daylight, we settle into our temporary digs at leisure and meet family in the evenings.

Day 3, however, is different. And as the Artist wanted to cross the Mississippi at St. Louis (ugh!) rather than Hannibal this time, so that we could grab an expressway (ugh!) angling southwest, it was not my favorite day of the trip. All I can say is that if you mustcross at St. Louis, where the tangled knot of criss-crossing high-speed roads makes going around Chicago look like child’s play, doing so early on a weekend morning (Saturday, in our case) is probably as good as it can get, and it would also be much more difficult if the driver were alone and had no navigator. The rolling pastures of Missouri are beautiful, but my eye was drawn continually to the old road paralleling the expressway. On expressway, I always feel as if I’m on a conveyor belt: there is no slowing down or stopping to, for instance, photograph an interesting sight. Of course, that is the whole point of expressways. Keep rolling nonstop!

 

Here is a further thought I had about expressways. They are, in the best designs, thoroughly rational. Logical and rational from an engineering point of view, that is, which is another part of the problem (for me), related to but distinct from their nonstop nature. Threading the convoluted knot of St. Louis, for instance, one loses any sense of direction. Where is east, and where is west? North, south? These interchanges did not grow organically from earlier roads that took the place of footpaths that developed along animal trails, and the gap between the organic and the rational is enormous, a difference of kind rather than degree. They are really two different worlds, one we follow with our body’s animal senses, the other a system our minds must bend and twist to follow, ignoring those same animal senses.

 

I am a book person. Life in the slow lane is my preferred mode. The trail from Michigan to Arizona is a long one, however, and we were not traveling as tourists. In Illinois there was no time to visit the shrine (as I think of it) to the memory of Mother Jones or to explore the Cahokia Mounds, and speeding through Missouri the whole point was to reach Tulsa by nightfall. As I say, it was the most difficult day on the road for me.

Our view of Tulsa

Day 4 arrived. We departed Tulsa. By the time we reached western Oklahoma, the land began to open out to wide, long horizons, and my heart began to lighten and lift and expand. Forget about right and left brains. For me it is my heart that has at least two different homelands, Michigan Great Lakes and Western rangeland and mountains. There in western Oklahoma and on into and across the Texas panhandle, we were on the high plains. I always think of a friend who lived for years in South America and shared with me her romantic notion of the altiplano. Shoulders straighten, eyes search the horizon, lungs expand and take in great gulps of air. 

Despite the Artist’s dedication to expressway speed, he was happy to detour off the road so we could revisit Vega, Texas. Years before we had had a pleasant lunch at the little bakery café across from the courthouse square, where the rancher husband was filling in for his baker wife, who was off on a catering job elsewhere. Then the stop got lost in memory’s shuffle, and search the map as we might, we could never remember the name of the town or find it again on our travels. But that was because we had developed a different route, one that took us through Kansas and down through only the smallest slivers of the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. But this time, on the road first taken, we found Vega again. It was Sunday evening, so not surprising that the café was not open, but it was satisfying to see the little town again and remember our earlier encounter and a walk with Sarah after that lunch. Memories don’t have to be spectacular and full of fireworks to be important.

Night found us in Tucumcari, New Mexico, with the moon rising huge and burnt orange as we ventured out for a bite of supper. 

 

Day 5. The burnt orange moon of the night before was pale white in the morning. “It’s a long, long trail a winding,” sang my heart. We were not yet in Arizona, but my heart felt it had reached its Southwestern home, and the Artist too was relaxed now and felt we could afford time to look around a little before pushing on. I asked only that we find the train station, since my only photograph of it the year before had not satisfied me at all. I also spotted an intriguing building that the Artist turned back cheerfully for me to photograph, agreeing that it was worth taking time to see. Those scenes are here.

 

Mesalands! Need I say more?

Then breakfast in Santa Rosa – dear little Santa Rosa! I am always happy in that little town. There are still many sad relics from the vanished glory of Route 66, but I was thrilled to see the movie theatre on the courthouse square showing films and looking all spruced up and lovely. The grocery store, too, seemed to boast a new and cleaner look. “You see? It’s coming back!” The Artist finds me “something else” in my love for Santa Rosa. 

 

And by the way, should you happen on an onsite notice that the Santa Fe Grill in Santa Rosa is “permanently closed,” please note that it is NOT. The owner died, and the restaurant was closed for a time, but heirs have now re-opened for business. Good news for travelers and locals alike!

And oh, from Santa Rosa – no more expressway but the old, long road (one white-knuckled experience was enough to teach us to fill the gas tank before taking the road south) through beautiful open country dotted with dark green one-seed juniper and dusty cholla. Through Vaughn and Corona and Duran. On our last pass through Duran, we explored one side of the highway, promising ourselves to explore the other the next time. And it turns out there is much more to Duran than we had realized. We explored all the way back to the three cemeteries (two ranch families each have cemeteries of their own), and I searched on my phone for some of the history of Duran -- very interesting! 

 

Tularosa, Alamagordo, through the mountain pass, and on through Las Cruces and Mesilla. Had we not lingered to poke around in Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and Duran, we might have completed the trip on Day 5, but the slower pace was rewarding, our fifth day a happy day of relaxed driving, and it felt fine to stop for the night in Deming, knowing we would arrive in Dos Cabezas with plenty of daylight for our settling in.