Notorious and Fascinating?

Today I'll  talk a bit about another semi-hero/mentor and inspiration from long ago. Going through my humongous photo archive to attempt organizing--for it is a mess on several different media!--I came across a few pictures and that reminded me.

Back in the day, a major part of the last century, say 1920-1960 or so, guest (or 'dude')  ranches were a big deal here in the southwest. People came from all over the world to enjoy the southwestern sunshine, dabble in cowboy activities and sometimes have more active and even extreme adventures. Different facilities offered everything from lounging by the pool with a chuck wagon 'cowboy' dinner to going on actual hunting or photography expeditions. I used this setting for one of my Deirdre O'Dare explicit novellas, Dude Ranch Nights, which takes place in the 1950s. At that point, "dude" was a slightly derogatory descriptive term for an easterner or one not learned in the western ways that cowboys and other western folks used.

By the time I was old enough to be observing and
interested, this trend was losing steam but a good bit of

Leo and lion hounds

romance and cachet clung to the phenomenon. In the Verde Valley there was at least one such place, one of the more active and adventurous type. Spring Creek Ranch, off highway 89A between Cottonwood and Sedona,  mainly offered rough expeditions into the wilderness areas often with a lion hunt involved. The proprietor was a chap called Leo Greenough. Mr Greenough was the scion of a well known Montana family who had gained fame and fortune with mining and ranching interests. Apparently he chose to go his own way rather than continue with family enterprises as Spring Creek was at least the second guest ranch he had created and both in Arizona.

After a hunt

At that time my father was immersing himself in the western and outdoor scene, writing and photographing on trips with a range of characters he'd collected. Of course he started going on some treks with Leo. I began to hear the tales he came home with and soon was old enough to also start hearing some of the gossip about this notorious chap who was apparently quite the ladies' man and held in both awe and sometimes disdain by various sources around the area. As an impressionable 'tween, I was very much taken by all this. Here was a living person to fit into my imagined thrilling adult world built from novels and operetta lyrics! It was not quite a crush perhaps, since he was then over 60 to my 12-14 but I was certainly fascinated.

By odd chance, one of my best girlfriends at that time had an older sister who had been working at Spring Creek for several years. We speculated whether or not she was a girlfriend or mistress of the notorious and much older gentleman. I never really knew and now do not care but we were impressionable and curious. I am sure I was far from subtle in my interest and borderline stalking of the "Dude Rancher." I expect he was mildly amused.  Anyway, I always had an ear out for any tattle that might be going around. By that time I was sure I should and would write a saga type novel setting forth my version of this very unusual character and his exploits, kind of a John Jakes and James Michner type of work! I still may; I have a big folder of partial chapters and vignettes and such, most going back a very long time.

I never actually visited the ranch until the early 1960s at which time Leo was no longer well. I think he had cancer surgery and passed away a couple of years later. At any rate, dad and then I had learned a lot about using mules for wilderness expeditions, actually hunting lions with hounds and other matters that we wove into our 1960s business of training and selling trail mules and some suitable horses, taking people out on trips etc. So, in a much more subtle but perhaps as influential way, Leo Greenough was a mentor as was Charley Bryant of whom I have written in the past. Although almost total opposites, they were basically contemporaries and both had actually lived the later part of the real Wild West times. May they both rest in peace and perhaps now share coffee and tales with a bunch of horses, mules and dogs clustered around them in "Fiddler's Green." Thanks to them for being who and what they were.

Stock truck and camp van

Leo, Shirley and George Rice, a guest

The Wheel of the Year

As most of you know, I tend to follow the ancient calendar of my Celtic ancestors as far as seasons and holidays go. The Celts were very fond of dividing things into twos, then fours, then eights... So besides the "light' and "dark" halves of the solar year, there are the quarters, marked by the equinoxes which are major festivals as are the two solstices. Then we cut each of those 90 day blocks in half and get Imbolc, Beltain, Lughnasa and Samhain. Two of those are more noted in modern times--as "May Day" and Halloween.

I have two favorite blocks of those eight, the one from Imbolc to the Spring Equinox and the one from Lughnasa  until the Fall Equinox or Mabon. To me Imbolc is the start of spring. Yes, at first only a hint off and on and a shy peak around the trailing cloak of winter but those glimpses are encouraging. Here in the sun belt, we do get nice days--highs in the 70s and a rare 80 and few to no hard frost mornings. Life begins to stir with the early weeds and birds hunting for nest sites and beginning their courtship rituals.

On my daily walks I am seeing flowers now. This morning I spied a few orange-gold blooms. I think

they may be the Arizona version of California poppies. They were in some dirt pushed up into rows where someone had bladed off sand that ran into the road in some of our rains so they were a bit crumpled and half buried! At times the hills over to the east around Wilcox and up toward Safford and down to Duncan, the last place my parents lived, are covered with the blazing carpet of  'sun drops' to where they simply glow fire-gold. I am not sure if this will be a good spring flower year in the desert or not. Much depends on the exact timing of winter rains. They were spread out fairly well this season so I am sure at least some areas will be gorgeous.

Around here the ubiquitous mustard weed is in bloom, small unobtrusive yellow flowers but the bees find and enjoy them. We also have the filaree, an early weed that spreads deep green 'doilies' of fern like leaves and then sends up small purple or lavender blooms. It's too early for the mesquites to start leafing out but the bumpy pre-leaf buds are  beginning to appear.  You would never recognize them if you were not familiar with them since they do not resemble new green at all. So for me, it is spring. The desert, even the high desert, is said to only have two seasons, summer and not-summer but there is both spring and fall. You just have to be alert and look for their signs!

Of course the Lughnasa to Mabon period is the gradual phase down of summer and edge into fall which h as always been my most favorite time of the year. The next block from Mabon to Samhain is a favorite too but when I lived in Colorado and dreaded the coming of real winter with zero temps and s**w and all that, I was already seeing signs of its approach and felt the beginning of that dread and SAD creeping up. Here not so much as fall often lingers into November--another great benefit of the sun belt high desert, so I'd call that the sub-favorite!

So for 2020, Imbolc has come and gone and the Equinox approaches in a few more weeks, less than half of that 45 day block. By then it will be spring although we will have wind and possibly even a storm or two but it will be time for planting and enjoying the outdoors. This new home is a perfect place for that as we will see early green in the valley to the north and watch our local flora don its spring finery. Yuccas will shoot up their stalks to fill with the lily-white blooms, mesquites will spread their spring-green leaves and then their fuzzy yellow 'cat tail' blooms and grass and weeds will spring up everywhere. "Spring up"--isn't that a neat double meaning sort of description? Autumn may fall but spring does spring out/up in a burst of enthusiasm! Of course I love it!

Most of these pix were from NM but the plants are much the same here; I have just not been able to capture them yet!

Filaree

Mesquite budding

Mesquite in bloom

Yucca in bloom

Ocotillo in bloom

Desert Willow--there is
one in my courtyard

Circling Around to Home Again

I posted on Facebook a week ago about a trip I had taken, just a day trip  around the county where I toured basically all the places I have lived in the area since I arrived on July 18, 1970 straight from Flagstaff and completion of my graduate studies at NAU. (Northern Arizona University--there are a couple of other institutions that use that name I have found.) I even shared photos so I will put them up here too and add more to the brief comments I made on FB. This post will be both a spin off and a partial continuation of my home and houses thread.

On a Saturday morning, July 18,  I loaded a Ryder Ford Econoline van and headed south to my new job at Fort Huachuca, AZ. I think my sponsor had already arranged an apartment for me for at least a temporary landing pad. My Flagstaff roomie went with me and she drove the van back to Flag since I had done a local rental.

My residence in the Cortez apartments was a one bedroom on the second floor. On the basis of my standards and experiences at the time it seemed pretty ritzy! I did some decorating and the curtains in the window along with the stickers there were part of that effort. There was even a big collage of Marlboro men clipped from magazines and glued on a sheet of brown wrapping paper hung over my bed! I had a living room with a dining area, a small kitchen, a good sized bedroom with a closet and a full bath all to myself! I think I actually stayed there until late September when I had to move to more economical digs. In the interim I acquired my very first automobile. Payments for it were taking a large bite out of my salary.

Cold reality set in and I knew I had to live cheaper. The next brief home was in El Corral Trailer Park. I think it was on Seventh Street but I am no longer sure. The town was much smaller then and a great deal has changed. I cannot even find where it was now since so many houses and apartments have been built in nearly fifty years! Oddly when the park was closed a decade or so late, my parents were at Duncan and had gotten a disaster FEMA mobile after one of the area's drastic floods. They needed more room and bought a trailer from the park which was very similar to the one I'd rented but a three bedroom plan instead of two.

Late in November I decided on yet another move and my roommate, a former pen pal who had just come over from California, went with me to hunt places in Bisbee. We found a quaint spot in the old Warren district and rented it for $30 a month! That move proved very significant as I have probably said before. This unit had two bedrooms, a living room, an eat-in kitchen and a bath. Not as spiffy as the Sierra Vista one but the fact it looked outwardly like a set from a Spaghetti Western got my attention. We moved in over the Thanksgiving weekend. I took a photo of it as it is today last week.  It's right below for contrast.
You can see it has not changed a lot. The second door is gone and there is new plaster color but otherwise, same-o same-o!

Anyway by late spring I got acquainted with my next door neighbor, now a single dad who was a sergeant on the Bisbee Police Department and had a six year old daughter I'd already met since she came to greet Judy and me wearing her cat as we were moving in.  He and I started keeping company that summer and decided it was practical to combine forces and stop paying double rent. The move was easy, simply across a single car space been the apartment row and the similar detached house. Over a week or so boxes were transferred, some stored in the basement area underneath the house and the vows and a ring happened to make it legal. That was the last time I moved by myself--Judy had gone to other quarters--and the last time with virtually no furniture to be concerned with. By the time we left this home in the fall of 1973 when we moved to Colorado, I had meshed into a very different life as a wife and mother, albeit a 'wicked' step mother!

Civil service gypsies for a bit,  we lived in Falcon, CO--the little house on the prairie . Olivehurst, CA--at the edge of the rice fields. a brief stop on Sylvosa Street in Tucson and finally back to almost the start, Whetstone, AZ at the crossroads of highways 90 and 82 in the spring of 1984.


 We lived on Old Church Rd and our house was the old church which had never been sanctified and was eventually made into a rather unique home. These photos show it as we looked before buying and as some change happened over the next twenty plus years. To date I  have never lived anyplace longer.

I had planted roses and such wherever I lived and of course each time left them. I really planned to stay on Old Church Road 'forever' but sometimes fate intervenes. I left much I work had done there when I moved out in August 2008 and was semi-homeless for awhile.

My old adobe hacienda has greatly changed since then and I no longer identify with it at all. The spirit of my home may still be in there somewhere but I cannot see it now. The old saying "you can't go  home again," surely holds true there. I am so thankful I have a new and easy-to-love home just up the highway about 30 miles that I was able to come home to after my trip down memory lane.  As spring comes new roses and other pretties will be planted and it already feels like a true home.