Feathers and Stones

Walking up Cherry Creek Rd last Sunday, my eye captured by a spark of orange-red, I bent over and picked up a feather from a Red-shafted Northern Flicker. Brilliant orange underside with a black tip and black on the upper highlighting the orange-red shaft. We started looking around and found another and then a third, but that one with black and light on the edges which would contribute to the bird’s spotted wing markings. There weren’t enough feathers to suggest loss by violence. I tucked them into a pocket.

Our attention now focused on the ground, we found more wonders. Two small conglomerate rocks with shiny black bits and layers that might be obsidian, since there are volcanic rock boulders plentiful. Separately, a small rock with flecks that reflected the sunlight goldly. On closer examination, that one has tiny shavings and bits of gold – whether real or fools, I can’t be sure. Either way, not enough to make a fool rich!

My real treasure: what I have convinced myself is a spear point, with the point broken off. This area is rich in native history, going back to the Mimbres people of 900-1200 AD. I won’t begin to suggest who created this point, but I cannot be persuaded that it is not a hand-chipped spear point of someone’s design. It is shaped in a triangle with a flat surface and the other two sides forming a ridge down the center of the spear and with a waisted stem. Even without its business end, it is the size of my palm. It’s very rough and shows inadvertent dings and chips from being scraped, crushed and graded into the track that is Cherry Creek Road. Yet there are chips and flakes that are too consistent to have been inflicted by heavy road equipment.

On an early visit to Silver City before moving here, we found a hand-flaked scraper not far as the raven flies from Cherry Creek and in an area of a known Mimbres village. The stone scraper was made of similar-looking rock. So I have reason to believe I am holding a remainder of the ancestors.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend; the holiday has brought us much to value and appreciate. Beginning last night through all day today and predicted through tomorrow, it is raining/snowing. The ground is white and everything drips. In the high desert, we’ve learned never to regret the rain. Even when it rained for 45 minutes last night, ending just as the first float of the Christmas Lights parade began down Broadway. The parade would have gone on despite rain. 26 floats long, it included warriors in camouflage and dress blues under banners reading, Home Again and warriors of a more local variety – the fire and police and the Forest Service, including Smokey Bear. The floats sponsored by local businesses were their usual razzle-dazzle of living room scenes with chimneys and decorated trees, all strung with lights. I say “usual” as a true veteran of these parades – having seen my first Christmas parade here just last year ;^D What a wonderful surprise, though: the Habitat for Humanity float took first prize for non-profit-sponsored floats. While we didn’t help construct or decorate it and there was only one rider dressed as Santa’s Elf, we could still share the pride of recognition. And after the parade, we retired to Isaac’s where our waitress had saved our pre-parade dinner table for after-parade drinks and dancing.

And in just the time it’s taken me to write these notes, the snow stopped, a blue patch opened up, allowing the sun to shine and now the snow is 50% reduced – melting away between the pinions and oaks and mahoganies. But the tops of the Pinos Altos mountains, which I can see out my office window to the northwest, still disappear into the snow cloud and soon, the blue patches will close and the moisture will begin to fall again. Tomorrow, I have to go to work. At least I don’t have far to “go.” And the Thanksgiving holiday will be over for another year. But not the thanks.

What a difference a year makes!

We arrived in Silver City November 9, 2008. Steph and Skee brought us dinner that first night to our empty house, along with a card table to serve it on and folding chairs to sit upon.

One thing that hasn’t changed? Our friendship with them; we had dinner together Monday, November 9, 2009! They didn’t remember that it was an anniversary, but I did. And we’ll spend our second Thanksgiving here with the family.

But what a difference a year makes.

• Perhaps the biggest change is that we are now property owners, having closed in September on our 5 acre piece with a wonderful southern exposure with a view, and beautiful copper colored rock that will find its way into the house design in a living-room banco (bench) and fireplace.
• And a house design about which we’re getting very excited. Both for the design itself, and the new roots that the house and the land reflect.
• New friends made in a friendly town that largely welcomes newcomers. How quickly we have found community here, both socially and spiritually.
• We are now ‘wavers’ instead of ‘wavees.’ We wave at almost everyone on wheels or on foot whom we pass in our neighborhood. And why not! Waving is part of what has made me feel welcome here; I’ve learned the one-finger wave (no, not that finger!), the two-finger wave and the full-hand wave. While I may be more discerning out on the roads, waves still pass with regularity between passing cars and trucks.
• We are not only taking classes at the Western Institute for Lifelong Learning, affiliated with Western New Mexico University, for the second semester, but I’m giving a class. Dynamic Presentations. Not as sexy as the history of gold mining in Pinos Altos or as powerful as the history of the strike against the copper mines in the 50s which inspired the only movie, Salt of the Earth, to be banned by the US Government. Not as artsy-craftsy as beading, painting, sculpture or fabric art classes. But it’s what I can do, and it gives me the feeling of giving back.
• Habits and routines and regulars: things that we do, places that we go, people that we see and treats that we buy every week. Coffee at Javalina’s; Diane’s Bakery for fresh breads; Adobe Springs for dinner on Friday where she knows the wine I drink; Masa or Mas for pork and chicken tamales; favorite hiking at Gomez Peak, Ft Bayard wildlife reserve, Cherry Creek Road; Wally Lawder and the Artful Coyotes or Rhythm Mystics at Isaacs for a Saturday evening’s dancing.
• Local color: Oklahoma!; Gough Park hosting of July 4th and the Blues Festival; the Mimbres Art Council’s hosting of national and international performances at reasonable prices; the local parades – July 4, Christmas Lights and the one I missed this year, the Day of the Dead parade! The Chicken Art Auction (all the art was chicken-themed) and the Art Walk Weekend. And don’t forget the Wild Wild West Rodeo.
• Investing in the community: in addition to WILL, we are involved with Habitat for Humanity where Nick is on the Board and on the committee for the next building project. He’s also working on the Mayor’s Committee for Sustainable Development, a green-oriented committee responsible for winning a grant from the feds that will help “green up” private homes and public buildings by funding energy efficient upgrades.
  

At least once a week, I find myself driving down the main street of the old town, and saying, as I look at the lights-cars-facades-people, “I LOVE this place!” So I threw a party last Saturday to celebrate our first year here and my 60th birthday. A fun evening to celebrate a great first year, here. I do think we’ll stay.

The Colors of Fall

I arrived in DC just in time for the turning of the leaves. My 9th floor hotel room in Crystal City overlooked the old neighborhoods of Arlington overarched by a dense and vibrant hardwood canopy. I watched over 2and1/2 weeks as the trees blushed from the tips of the leaves until they flamed with red and orange. By the time I left, the row of maples along Jefferson Davis Hwy had progressed from a hint of color through a peak blaze to shedding their fall dress for the season. Equally, the view of the Potomac river and its treed banks and edges from our building’s conference rooms was washed with yellow and gold and rust and russet crowning still-green lawns. Flying out and southwest from National on Sunday offered up the crazy quilt of color spread across the corrugations that are the Blue Ridge mountains.

It was wonderful to see. I always said that Fall was my favorite time of the year, without the sadness or sense of loss that some experience as the year – and the trees – appear to die. Seeing Fall in the East did not make me homesick; it did make me appreciate again a sense of place.

By comparison, one would think the dry Southwest lacks Fall. Or at least lacks the colors of Fall. And yet, when we arrived last year at this time, I was struck by the gold coins minted by the cottonwood trees. This year, I’m discovering other deciduous trees that dress for Fall, although they are found singly rather than en masse. I am enjoying the rich flaming red-oranges of understory sumac at the higher-elevation ponderosa forests. I am realizing that I have not left Fall behind – I just have to look for Fall’s dress hues in a different context.

The grasses are the Southwest’s quiet answer for the colors of Fall. Especially where the ground is virgin – undisturbed by construction, unlittered by the gravel that passes for landscaping, uninfested with invasive species – the native grasses are a full palette of color. By turns, crimson and gold and orange, sometimes on the same stems. Grasses that have seed heads which catch the sun like shooting stars, constellations and delicate pinpoints of light. Ground cover that is intensely red on this side and yellow to brown over there – the same ground cover responding to the soil upon which it thrives.

The trees of the East in the Fall spread their coats tall and wide; the great mural of colors can be appreciated at a distance of feet, stories or miles. Here, a single tree stands out for its unique display. And to see Fall in the grasses requires slowing down and looking closely day after day to see Fall as a miniature portrait. There’s an intimacy required with the landscape to see the colors of Fall when the landscape of Fall is only inches above the ground.

There are probably life lessons in this perspective; if so, I think I’ll leave them to discover another Fall.

Book Report: Since I was on travel, I had lots of time to read:

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown – great if you want to know everything there is to know about the myths, symbols, history and significance of the Masons; long and boring if you don’t need 2 pages of didactics for every clever twist, point of philosophy or new technology in the story, and disappointing if you know Washington DC, the setting for this mystery thriller. I mean, really – flying into Dulles Airport and seeing the profile of the Washington monument? and then driving from VA into DC across Memorial Bridge with the Lincoln Memorial in front of you and the Jefferson memorial and tidal basin just off to your left?? Fire the researcher!
Dear American Airlines – something we would all wish to do if stranded 12 hours in an airport by a fickle airline: write a long letter to the airline asking for our money back. Well written, this is a real Oprah transformative book-club tale – at times depressing with a life confirming ending as the hero examines his life.
A Touch of Dead – A Sookie Stackhouse collection of short stories, Charmayne Harris – at least I think that was the title; I’ve already given the book away. I enjoy Sookie and have read all of her adventures. Good mind candy after a heavier read (see Dear American Airlines, above). I don’t usually read short stories and might have passed this one up if I had realized. $24.95 for less than 24 hours of reading. This is why they invented libraries.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows – loaned to me by a friend (thank you very much, Dona). This was one of the more delightful stories I’ve read in a very long time. Not necessarily transformative (although our heroine does realize what’s “real”), very little mystery (although there is a question of what happened to Elizabeth), absolutely no dark side (although it is just post-WWII and Guernsey was occupied by the Nazis). It is charming, sweet (but not saccharine or smarmy sweet), engaging and has all the right elements to keep you turning the pages.
Devil’s Teeth, Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer-prize-winning story of Lanny Bud, third in the series of 11. I was reading this when I left and took it with me. Sinclair wrote this series of historical fiction starting just before the first World War and continuing through both World Wars. This piece of the story is set in Europe in the mid-30s. If you ever wondered how people in their collective right minds could vote for and elevate someone like Adolf Hitler, this is an eyeopener. Challenging and thought-provoking, adventuresome. This is also why I read Sookie Stackhouse.
And read just before plunging into Devil’s Teeth, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett. The character’s name is: Not Sidney; his last name is: Poitier. Born in east LA; taken to Atlanta when his mother dies; lives with Ted Turner (yes, Jane also makes an appearance). I’ll tell you no more, except if you like reading something out of the ordinary – as opposed to The Lost Symbol – read this one.