Memoir Monday-- Absolutely Arizona

Absolutely Arizona--Watching Lightning

New Mexico has the slogan “New Mexico True” which they use widely. Arizona has a similar one, perhaps newer and not quite as established, “Absolutely Arizona.” KGUN 9 TV has a feature every week about some local place, edifice or tradition which they describe as Absolutely Arizona. I like the idea. I'll be using it in what I hope will be weekly posts for awhile on "Memoir Monday."

I call myself a ‘born again Arizona native’ since this state is the first place I can remember as home. My parents arrived with me in tow in February 1946 when I was about seventy days shy of three years old. If John Denver could do it for Colorado at a much great age, why not?  I plan to go back into my memories and highlight things which I feel are absolutely Arizona. One of those is watching lightning in our vivid summer thunderstorms.

I cannot recall doing this in Jerome but it was high on the hills and above much of the show. In addition I was very rarely out at night after dark before age ten. Thus my lightning watching days began about my twelfth summer after we had settled in Clarkdale. The town was near the western edge of the Verde Valley, snug against the Black Hills Range which included Woodchute, Mingus and more named mountains to the south.  Across the valley, the Mogollon Rim dominated the horizon with several named and known landmarks, the Sedona Red Rocks just not quite in sight. The view to the east was limited a bit by the rugged limestone hills that edged the river on the east side but the clouds rose far above that visual limit.

Summer nights usually found me outside, often sitting on one of the trucks in the alley. Sometimes the whole family was there, Mom and Dad and Alex, after he came along, but often it was just Charlie and me or even me by myself.  On clear nights I watched the stars and airplanes overhead but many summer nights were cloudy and that usually meant lightning. I’d watch fascinated until I had to go inside to bed. Sadly I did not have even a cheap small camera in those days to record the sights but they are as vivid in my memory as any photograph could render them.

The four summers I spent in Flagstaff ere not memorable for lightning. I loved the summers there and the nights too but it seemed many of the storms were in the afternoon and we were far above the valley views at some 7,000 feet. Then in 1970 I ended the summer down in Cochise County. I really had no place to sit out and certainly no one to enjoy it with but there were storms. Not for nothing are the mountains to the west side of that valley, the San Pedro, called Huachuca!

Huachuca is a slight corruption of a Sopaburi Indian word. Those native people dwelled in the area long ago, even before the Apache and other more recent groups arrived. They were leaving or dying out by the time the Spanish explorers arrived but it was the latter who picked up the word. It is often translated as place of the thunder, or more poetically, where the thunder walks. And walk it does, rolling and rumbling across the sky among the clouds behind the brilliant flashes of electric fire.

By the next summer I had relocated to Bisbee and then had friends to watch with, my future husband and two future step kids. We saw our share that summer and the next two, often driving out on High Lonesome Road, south and east down the canyon from Bisbee into the west edge of the Sulpher Springs Valley. Then by 1974, we were living in Colorado, a small then rural community called Falcon, about fifteen miles east of Colorado Springs. There were summer storms in that area too and lightning but not to the degree and spectacular profusion of Cochise County, AZ. However I did get a few photos and we did watch some.

The next six years were in the central valley of California—a horrible place to me since there simply were not any summer storms! How I missed that, almost as much as I loathed the pervasive fog that blanketed us all winter. Finally we got back to Arizona in the fall of 1983, settling briefly in Tucson. The monsoon was late that year and barely started when we arrived at the end of August but the fall was very wet--though not much in the way of thunderstorms.

By the summer on 1984 we had settled in Whetstone, an unincorporated village some three miles north of Huachuca City at the junction of highways 90 and 82. And that was a fine place to watch lightning!! Again there were mountains behind us, the Mustang Hills and just to the northwest, the Whetstones. The terrace in front of our house faced out across the valley giving us a grandstand seat as storms made their way up or down the valley, over the Mules, the Tombstone Hills and the Dragoons and on up past Benson. If there were storms more to the north or south, the flat roof of the adjacent garage was a great watching place too. Now I did take pictures, most with either my small 35mm Olympus or an SLR I acquired while in Tucson. Of course those were the old fashioned pre-digital film cameras so I had to take a roll, send it away and hope until the results came back. One of those revealed a surprise, a real gift, in the lightning limned figure I called The Spirit of Huachuca. But I got many other interesting shots too.

After Jim passed away in November 2003, I did not spend too many nights out any more. It was no fun to do so alone. In 2008 I moved over to the SW corner of New Mexico and the next spring, back to Colorado. Finally in 2011, brother Charlie and I moved down to Alamogordo, NM. That area had its share of summer storms and there was often some pretty good lightning displays but I was spoiled by then with digital cameras and too lackadaisical to dig out the old SLR with a timed exposure system and put it on a tripod, so no photos. And it was just not quite Arizona…maybe no one else would notice the difference but we did! 

Then last summer saw us finally head back to Arizona and once again settle in Cochise County although this time landing at the north end of the Whetstones. The first few nights we spent here after unloading the first big U-Haul truck near the end of August, we sat out back and watched lightning. That was when we knew we had come home. It was just as spectacular as we remembered as nature put on her light show just for us, or at least it felt that way.

This past Sunday evening, the 26^th, we watched the first real night storm of the season as it wandered among the hills and mountains to the north and east with blue flares seen through clouds and brighter bolts that came to the earth. I may try for some photos in time but for now it is enough just to watch and go back in memories to so many other summer evenings, each of them absolutely Arizona!

Lightning at Falcon

Whetstone Lightning

Cloud to cloud--bluer when distant

The Spirit of Huachuca

Sadly most of my other lightnng pix are on slides and I have not scanned them in yet! So for another time...

Colored in Shades of Gray

Colored in Shades of Gray

I was recently chided by a friend for failing to commit to an absolute black vs white stand on many big issues. No, I am not referring to race here, but the idea of unequivocal wrong vs right. Of course I feel very strongly about many issues and may throw support one way or another in various ways from letter writing to donations. But absolute?  No I cannot and do not go there. There really are a million shades of gray and I do not speak of the novel and movie with that title. Perhaps my big stumbling block lies in definitions.(i.e.)  Mine vs the dictionary's vs the new vernacular. It all depends on what "is" is...

I am not an attorney although did consider that career at one point and my late youngest brother did go to law school, pass the bar, and practice. We talked a lot about the lawyer mindset, the various levels of 'justice' and other related topics. There is a word in legalese that I find very important in all such matters. Specificity. Websters says, "The quality or state of being specific." In order to be enforceable and interpretable in a legal context, a crime, an act or a wrong must have specificity. Exactly what is it; what is included or excluded, what exceptions. This precise definition is critical.  Keep this in mind as you read on.

On to the 100% black or white. Let's take a first one. Genocide. Back to Webster's: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political or social group. Okay that is pretty dark, isn't it? Could there possibly be a situation where it could be excused, allowed, even condoned?  Certainly in the national and racial context, no. An unequivocal and absolute NO.

Although you will not find it in most of your searches, and the actual G word may not have been used, there are calls for an application. It has been said that the only real cure for racism is to do away with whiteness. Think about that a minute. End whiteness, erase it, do away with it. That could be considered genocide. Perhaps a less draconian means could be applied. Say make it mandatory that any child born after a specific date must have at least one genetically provable parent 'of color' or non-white. Work out the enforcement of that as you will. It could be conceivable and not quite genocide.

This is also complicated by the fact "white" is not strictly a race since it encompasses a huge range of ethnic and national identities. Take the Latino culture. Here in the American southwest and basically in many other areas, most who so identify are a mixture of white (Spanish) with various indigenous peoples. Some also include African heritage in the mixture. Should they be part of "whiteness" or not?  I cannot say. Maybe a '23 and Me' genetic test where the exact mixture is determined and over 50% puts the individual in one group or another. So am I 110% black when it comes to Genocide? Perhaps 99.9%,  yet in a few odd cases the jury may still be out.

Let's consider child molestation. That should be easy, 125% black, right? Whoa. Just a second . Where is the specificity? EXACTLY what act, failure to act or other behavior qualifies as this crime?  Molestation is fairly clear. Performing a sex act on a person under the age of consent as set by the jurisdiction, touching such a child in an "inappropriate" manner, forcing the child to perform, observe or participate in sexual or even sexually suggestive situations...  Got that. But what if a young man of say 19 is dating a girl of 17 (he is legal and she is not in  that area's jurisdiction) and they engage in heavy petting or even go 'all the way.' Then she breaks up with him or he finds a new love. In revenge she or her parents can legally charge him with illegal sexual behavior for she is still a "child" and he can carry the sex offender label for the rest of his life. Maybe even if he is only 18, turned 18 the day before.  Really black and white or not?  I won't even go into the precocious young ladies in mid to late teens who get a kick out of catching an "older" man's attention. He is spooky; she lies about her age and may even have an ID of some kind that says she is older. She dresses, looks and acts the part of an adult.  He does it. Boom. Statutory and deep doo. So, again I have to leave a thin sliver of not-black here as I point out that everyone who is charged may actually not be guilty.

Child abuse. This one is even fuzzier. Exactly what is properly labeled child abuse?  In somewhat descending order: regular beating or other physical assaults which would be considered an assault to another adult; giving drugs; wanton endangerment; failure to provide basic essentials such as shelter, food and clothing and also perhaps medical care, education and even an appropriate allowance or spending money equal to the average among the child's peers. Can you draw a positive line?

What if the parent is unable through no real fault of his or her own to afford meeting those needs? Is forcing a child to work in the family business or operation without pay other than maybe room and board? Is confining a child to its home, commonly called "grounding," to punish bad grades, disobedience, lying, or to curtail association with friends or playmates deemed unsuitable or delinquent? Is taking away a cell phone or tablet or other device for similar transgressions?

We do have the basic standard of what an average person, such as on a jury, would consider to be abuse or not but the legal specificity is rather thin. And again, a child who is upset with a parent for either sound or questionable reasons, can go to various authorities and scream 'abuse' and generally find itself believed so authorities are almost forced to at least investigate. The reality is guilty until proven innocent in most such cases.

I could go on but I hope I have provided a basis for my shades of gray philosophy. I also hope readers here will at least stop and think a few minutes about these things. Like I say, there are some very dark grays out there and some slightly dusty and dingy whites where the launderer did not apply enough bleach.  There are a million shades of gray but black and white are a bit more difficult to nail down.

Murder is wrong--black; adultery is wrong--black; theft from armed robbery to cat burglary is wrong--black. Does that mean there can never be extenuating circumstances? Does that mean anyone so accused must be automatically deemed guilty? Especially if they were perhaps captured on today's ubiquitous video? A minor change in the angle of a view can make a huge difference. We have all seen 'photoshopped' memes, jokes and revenge porn shots. Were they "real"? You tell me. Yes, video like still photos can be photshopped or shaded in any of a thousand ways, even staged or Hollywood style disreality Shades of gray, a hundred thousand of them so I cannot  and will not even pretend to play God or sit at a judgment seat and condemn anyone to jail, hell or wherever. If that is a character flaw, so be it.

A Life Socially Distanced?

Somehow this new normal, at least for now, has everyone in a tailspin. We can't go out! No church! No meetings! No movies or malls or bars or eating out!! Surely this is the epitome of durance vile. (A term used for medieval dungeons in novels and fantasy!) And I sit at home as usual, and shake my
head, not quite understanding what all the furor and angst is about.

Yes, we are faced with a serious epidemic which can kill people and has, which can be devastating in some places. That I get. No, I do not want to catch it either. Although I feel that I am  probably ten years healthier and in better shape than most people my age (76 and 11 months) I am in the age group that is supposedly vulnerable and most likely to perish if we catch this virus. So I understand the concern and even the austere precautions, which may or may not end up being worse than the illness itself.

But back to social distancing. What a phrase! We do abuse the poor English language something awful but that's off my track. For me this is of very little impact and even less distress. From my earliest memories, my parents were not big on sociability--no parties and only casual visits to a few households in Jerome, up there on Sunshine Hill in the later 1940s, Then the polio epidemic came along and I, still the only child, was almost wrapped in swaddling and confined to a cage to "protect" me. We did hie off to California where I guess there were currently fewer cases and stayed for a time with relatives. My very young memory really did not register how long. I know I had not yet started school. At that same time, I do remember quarantine signs on people's doors. Red was measles, yellow chicken pox, green mumps and probably others, or at least that is what I recall.

Until I started school--in first grade since somehow I never made it to kindergarten--I had minimal contact with other children. Most of the kids in our neighborhood were older but anyway, I played alone. It was about that time I started to make up games that were in essence stories of a sort. In a few more years, I was writing them down  and starting to rewrite the books I was then reading to suit my idea of how they should go. Still, I did not have the run of the neighborhood and any play dates were generally brief and closely supervised. I survived first grade, more or less, By second I began six years of tiny rural schools, two in an eight pupil school where I was the only girl. The summer between those years we spent in the Kaibab Forest on the north rim of the Grand Canyon where my parents ran a fire lookout. There were no kids. Again, I played alone and was not dismayed at all.

Things did gradually open up some.  I had friends once we moved to Clarkdale and when my brother Charlie came along, I was no longer the only and some of the excessive protection ceased--but not nearly all of it. Even through high school I did not date and attended very few special functions. By then the enmeshment of our family was growing stronger and tighter all the time. We did not bring friends home, much less do slumber parties or birthdays or much of anything. I think I spent one night at a girlfriend's in the entire span of years from age 6 to 19, when I graduated. The people who came to our house--and none of us went to theirs much at all--I can count on one hand.

After I left home and went to college and later to work, my world expanded geometrically and I slowly adjusted despite being still rather shy and very much an introvert. After I married a complete extrovert and people person, I had to adjust some more. We joined things and participated and talked to people a lot. There were times I loved it and others when it was still almost more than I could cope with. That life lasted for thirty two years. After Jim passed away, I found myself alone much more than I had been but still kept quite a few contacts. I went on that way for five years but then moved briefly to New Mexico, from there to Colorado and then back to New Mexico. I found myself reaching out, going out and interacting with other people less and less. Internet began to take the place of  'live' contacts and also the many letters I had written from about age twelve on.

It was not hard to slip back to the kind of self-sufficient life I had known in my formative years. True, I shared a home with my brother who is more of a people person than I am after years of working and being a union officer who had to travel and talk and meet and deal. But we both still carry that deep set feeling of holding the world at bay and a kind of mistrust that we can never completely distance ourselves from. Since 2009, I have not been active in any organization on a live meeting routine. I've never been a church goer and shopping gradually has become more of a chore or even an ordeal than a fun activity. The last movie I went to--a real theater movie? I think maybe a couple of Clint Eastwood flicks at the Olivehurst/Linda mall with my daughter when we lived up in north central California --that would be somewhere between 1977-83!!

So today, I am perfectly content to stay home and work on my various projects, be it writing, sewing/fabric art, beading, yard work, or whatever. I may talk to Charlie a half dozen times a day on our household activities and sometimes just shooting the bull. I talk to my dogs a lot but to other people? Not so much. I have got to where I can chat to folks I meet at the store or while doing some business but not to the extent that I 'miss' it when I now must either stay home or minimize contact when I have to go out.  After one has lived a socially distanced life for the greater part of three quarters of a century, never goes to a bar and to church only for a necessary wedding or funeral, hardly ever sees a movie or attends a live performance and maybe a dozen times a year out to eat...what is there to feel deprived of?

I suppose many will find this shocking and certainly weird. I suppose it is, but my point is one can exist in such manner. Really!  I am pretty sure I am not the only one who actually feels more comfortable being pretty much alone and can find amusement beyond adequate in reading, listening to music, playing videos or watching things on YouTube etc. To those who are very upset and feeling deprived, I can say this too will pass. In those 75 years I have seen a number of apparently drastic developments and each of them has been survived by the majority of the people. The Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, polio epidemic, MERSA/SARS, stock market crashes, and farther back the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, the Great Depression, the Civil War...  It just might be necessary for the populace to be shaken up now and then...too much ease and complacency can be stultifying.

Desert Blooms

Every now and then there is a year when the rainfall is just right from fall through to early spring. Those are the years the desert explodes with flowers. Last year it was the case in California. This year maybe Arizona. I have not been up into the middle of the state and have not heard if the route from Tucson to Phoenix or on north from here on I-17 is good or not. Locally (Cochise County) it is an above average year.

Here we have a lot of the Mexican Gold poppies. They are very similar to the California variety and look much the same. To me they always look like sun drops scattered across the ground, some in thick clumps and others one by one anywhere from inches to yards apart.  As I walk along our road each day with my dogs I've been watching them start to appear. I probably missed the best day to get photos on Saturday. It hit 79 here that afternoon and the  flowers were aglow that morning. Then it rained yesterday most of the day so this morning they were all closed and a few beaten down. They may pop back to full display tomorrow--I can hope! There are a few on my place but they are widely scattered. I intend to get some seeds and spread them around in hopes that next spring will be just right again.

I have no idea when the pictures I am going to share were taken. It was sometime between 1979 and 1988 and they were taken by my parents and deceased youngest brother while they were living at Duncan, a tiny town on US Highway 70 just inside the line between Arizona and New Mexico. The mountains between there and the larger town of Safford, AZ are almost famous for the poppy displays that appear every now and then. Something in the soil and climate seems to really support them. There are other flowers too but the poppies are the pinnacle.

These were film photos, probably with a good SLR camera, but the color has faded some on these non-commercial prints. I suspect it was also rather overcast that day because the light looks a bit flat. However the spectacular views are still impressive. I've thought about driving over there--it is about 2-3 hours from my current home--but have not made the trip yet and it will soon probably be too late. We'll see.

Another interesting thing about this area is a great number of small probably volcanic stones, tiny geodes of white quartz. Some are very opaque and I call them "desert pearls." Other are semi translucent and the tiny crystals inside look almost like a strange miniature 'brain' while a few larger ones are broken open to reveal the sugary crystal structure inside. I'm not sure it is safe or allowed to go off on some of the dirt tracks and collect them now or not. Much has changed in the last twenty years or so on such things. So go at your own risk.

I've added a couple of other desert bloom photos, not mine but just to give you an idea of how amazing and gorgeous one of these special springs can be! Never say the desert is barren, boring and ugly!!  Arizona Highways magazine is justly famed for their beautiful desert flower pictures!!

A Close-up View

Wide angle with Ash Peak 

A yucca in the foreground

a floral carpet

Mom enjoying the view

Probably out near Yuma

The ocotillo-beauty and thorns

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.