Mississippi Sojourn, Sonoran Reprise

Either my computer skills, my comprehension of wireless operation or the internet itself had deserted me during my visit in Hattiesburg and the past two weeks here in Tucson. While the latter cause is improbable, I had been unable, up to this point, to catch or ride a wave long enough for substantial interface. Now, however, I have learned that, by the simple expedient of raising my mini-blinds, opening the window, sliding back the nylon screen, setting an external high-gain, dual-band, wireless-N transmitter on the window sill and maintaining axial alignment of my on-board antenna with the repeater that's less than a hundred feet from that window, I'm able to connect and hold a signal. Go figure.

My two-and-a-half week stopover with the Farmer and the Belle was simply the best. They are perhaps the most personally generous and delightfully refreshing people I know. While, like most of my Colorado friends, they suffer from Fox News Syndrome, their personal behavior belies their public opinions. They have shared their home and family with me now for a dozen years and make me truly feel a part of their lives. I left Hattiesburg in mid November restored and revitalized--and a few pounds heavier, thanks to the Belle's great cooking.

Now I'm back in the Sonora, after a largely uneventful and relatively comfortable trip across Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.

I enjoyed Thanksgiving with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson, even my ex-wife--my second ex-wife, that is. And, for the first time ever, I didn't have to do any of the cooking. And it was delicious, thanks to the kids' hard work.

The Sonora is offering its usual autumnal selection of mild days and cool nights, sparkling with the low humidity that further tempers any extremes. We even managed a late-season night of rain that left next morning's air tingling with the scents of wet sand and aromatic desert shrubs. The chirps, twitters, songs and squawks of the real snow birds surround us. Last summer's quail chicks now sport their own topknots; they share the underbrush cover with the park's resident rabbits while rock doves snooze in the branches overhead--and I snooze in my bed.

Outbreak

I was delayed in St. Louis's less-than-delightful cold and rain two more days recovering from a minor illness. Then I enjoyed two days and nights in cold and rain headed through Illinois, Kentucky, Tenessee and into Mississippi. I did take time to visit the confluences of the Mississippi with both the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. There seems to be something sacred about the confluence of waters, and those two are major.

I hadn't seen the sun in nearly a week, an odd experience for a Coloradan, especially one from the San Luis Valley, where we see the sun 360 days a year. Around Tupelo, just about the time I began to consider the advisability of sacrificial offerings, the sun finally broke out. Unfortunately, so did a case of the shingles!

As the outbreak was, mercifully, more annoying than painful, after seeing a doctor I decided to push on to Meridian. Once here, since I was on my way to visit an already sick friend who was vulnerable to chicken pox, I decided to lay over a week and recover myself.

Strange trip.

St.Louis

Cold and rainy, but when it's not raining it's actually quite damp.

The Otter is his usual temperate and courtly self.

And with the Otter I can be my real self: an overbearing and obnoxious know-it-all--whether it's due to his gentle tolerance or his covert inspiration I'm not certain. What's more, he's the only person I know who can argue with me without getting upset. Including me. I will stoop to name-calling before I'll admit I'm wrong.

Did I mention I love to argue? About anything. I don't even have to know what I'm talking about, and that covers a fairly wide range of topics.

So the Otter, with the help of the (Legal) Beagle, another exceptional former classmate, has been taking me on a whirlwind tour of unique Gateway City eateries. There's a passel of 'em.

This is grand!

Fall Dorado

On the mountainsides the aspen flash into golden plumage, while down along the Rio the cottonwoods seem reluctant to convert to their umber phase. Surprisingly, this year many cottonwoods dare to challenge in their spiciest mustard hues. In response, a few aspen casually flaunt intense pigments of bronze, crimson and maroon.

The quakies’ staging is better, too. They mingle and mass high on sun-washed slopes against a dark background of pine and fir, visible for miles in every direction, their lustrous chorus a denial of finite life. The cottonwoods wander morosely along the Rio’s sunken course, a somber procession of seasonal leave-taking.

As in every other year, the aspen take the prize.

It is on this golden glory that I now turn my back.

I’m headed east, to visit good friends: the Otter and his wife in St. Louis and the Farmer and the Belle in Hattiesburg. I’d hoped to extend my itinerary to my siblings in Georgia and Florida, but unanticipated vehicle repairs and shockingly expensive new tires have taken a big bite out of the budget.

Ah well.

The San Luis Valley

High in the mountains of southern Colorado is a long, broad valley known for its cool summer days, cold winter nights and an abundance of sunshine year round. If you look closely you can spot its ovoid shape on most national TV weather maps, just behind the narrow front range of mountains on the east and extending into northern New Mexico. This is the great San Luis Valley of Colorado.

The SLV is the largest, highest inter-mountain valley in North America. At more than 7000 feet, the Valley floor is 2000 feet higher than Colorado’s prairies to the east. It is separated from them by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. On the west the Continental Divide marks the Valley’s other rim high in the San Juan Mountains. On both sides the peaks can thrust more than 14,000 feet into the stunningly clear, wide blue sky.

The Valley is a desert, receiving less than 10 inches of precipitation each year. But the surrounding mountains collect sufficient snow during the winter that the runoff, in the form of rivers, streams and deep aquifers, provides the SLV with its agricultural economy

There are notable contrasts. Desert sands border streams, lakes and marshes important to the abundant waterfowl and fish. It was the first area settled by Europeans but is among Colorado’s most sparsely populated regions. In many small communities Spanish is still the first language, preserved from the time when those villages were part of Mexico. And while still a wild place of craggy mountain wilderness, where moose, wapiti elk, deer, black bear, lynx, bighorn sheep, coyote, cougar, badger, bobcat, mountain goat and pronghorn antelope roam with minimal interference, the Valley also sports two colleges, a thriving fine arts culture and exemplifies aspects of ultra-rural health care.

Finally, it is elemental. Climate, weather and topography often challenge everyday life. Winters can be extremely cold. Water sources are not to be taken for granted. Distance is always a significant consideration. Commercial supply lines are stretched. Public services are basic. Neighbors are important.

It is rough and demanding. It is spectacular and sublime.

The Valley is all of this and for me something more. Though I didn’t grow up here, I call it home.

Between the White and San Francisco Mountains

As a boy in Ohio I read all of Zane Grey’s western novels. I was especially impressed with those set in Arizona where, I learned later, Grey had spent some years in the early 1900s.

I remember particularly his word-picture landscapes, the descriptions of earth forms and hues, of vast visible distances, of heights and depths and distinct and varied ecosystems layered like environmental parfait. His accounts presented a fantastic and unimaginable background to elemental stories of good and evil and I thought Grey was exaggerating his settings for the sake of an interesting story.

He wasn’t.

One of my favorite places to witness this fact is along that section of the Coronado Trail in eastern Arizona between Clifton and Alpine also known as US Highway 191. It’s an extraordinarily fascinating, positively gorgeous drive, but not for the faint-hearted.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s a paved highway, painted stripes and everything, though it reminds me more of the unpaved Forest Service logging roads common throughout the western mountains. The first third of this route has numerous steep grades, tight switchback curves and unrailed drop-offs, but they reveal some of the best scenery around. I recommend the south-to-north direction because of those road conditions.

And it’s not just the natural scenery that makes it so interesting. Funky little mining and tourist towns, forest lodges and campgrounds, one of the largest open-pit copper mines on the planet and the engineering of the highway itself contribute substantially.

Consider just the copper mine: the route takes you through the middle of it! It’s not one of those gigantic bowl types; while it is gigantic, this one looks more like it was planned by a committee of five-year-olds not willing to share the shovels. Even the highway leads you into the mine's industrial areas that make you think you’ve lost the road, but it quickly brings you back again. And that’s merely the opening act.

As for that natural scenery, it‘s, as I said, incredible— but I’m not going to try to compete with Zane Grey. You can read him yourself.

De Amicitia

I have two good friends, men who I trust to listen to me talk about my wildest schemes or my worst fiascos without judgment or reproach. One might expect a bit of specialization in that one of these men is a bit more mechanical and the other somewhat more intellectual, but both have been of more support to me than they’ll probably ever know.

I look to them for advice and, when they’re not available, I try to imagine what they would suggest. My most stringent reality test is to tell one of these men what I am considering; often it’s enough simply to organize the telling for me to know whether I’m off the mark.

And when it’s a tough go, it helps put things in order just to explain it to them. Their measured responses and shared experience compose my own.

Oh I use these men, mercilessly. And to show my gratitude I poke fun at them in public, ridicule their habits and scoff at their opinions; I trust them to know that, were I to express my appreciation in real terms, it would be as blubbery and maudlin as this ode. Still, this fault is mine.

These men are my friends. Because of them, because I even know them, my darker hours have been illuminated and my brighter days better informed.

Adios Sonora

Plan to head out today. It will be a late start due to some afternoon obligations, but the next day or three should see me in the White Mountains in eastern Arizona.

Some spectacular views up there, looking down below the Mogollon (MUH-guh-yun) Rim; some of them were described by Zane Grey in several of his western novels.

Looking forward to it.

I raise the white flag.

The Monsoon must have gotten wind of my disparaging remark of two days past—because last night it came looking for me.

In two separate surprise assaults it threw volley after volley of blasting rain and multiple barrages of rig-rocking turbulence—it even probed for me with bolts of lightning, the closest booming attack luckily diverted by a metal fence post just a few dozen feet away.

Even surviving these actions, every pinpoint hole and weak seal was revealed, the worst being that around the pull-out on the side that bore the brunt of the attack. Here the perimeter was breached leading to wet hand-to-hand action inside the walls. And my refrigerator went down and still hasn’t been fully revived.

These attacks were followed by two feints later in the night. Lighting, thunder and wind would maneuver, then back away. But it was enough to keep me lying awake in my bunk, twitching at every flash.

Even more remarkable, the thunder in the last feint, reaching again and again to every corner of the sky, sounded suspiciously like deep, derisive laughter.

Probably just my imagination, eh?

Hidden Agenda

My friend Joe in St. Louis has sometimes claimed that he enjoys my writing.

But can you believe a guy who not only is a government bureaucrat but also is a long-distance runner--not a racer, mind you, but just your average, ordinary, run-10-miles-a-day-for-the-fun-of-it sort of guy? I sometimes picture Joe pounding down some empty St. Louis street before dawn, cutting a slipstream of sweat through the swimmable Missouri humidity, sodden hair plastered sleek, banking into a turn, teeth exposed in a grin of delight and increased air flow, just having the best darn time that a government bureaucrat possibly can have--next to telling someone he regulates "No," that is.

Remember that old Disney animal short, the one with the river otters cavorting in utter purposeless joy in the snow to the background of Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2? That's what I'm reminded of. From now on, we'll just refer to Joe as The Otter.

And I know what The Otter likes in my writing: it's when I get on a rant about something or other and pour my guts out onto the page--where they lay exposed and steaming so that even the most novice soothsayer could read clearly and exactly who and what I am. The late sports writer "Red" Smith put it just slightly more poetically: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

Unfortunately for me, The Otter knows my weakness: it's that I think I'm smarter than other people. What a curse! The probability that it's shared with a majority of the human population does nothing to diminish the impact because I figure I'm smarter than they are, too!

Arrogance upon arrogance!

But I won't let a little thing like that stop me.

So while The Otter lured me into blogging by suggesting it would be interesting to read about my travels, I know what he really wants--blood!

And there are just a ton of things that tick me off. I'll call them "Sidebars."

Sorry about all the commas, Otter.

Try to keep up.

This is Joe's fault. My friend in St. Louis. Perhaps he thought that, if I started a blog, I might stop writing emails to him. Or maybe it was a matter of misery loving company. Whatever. He kept pushing the button, for some years now, and finally it sputtered to life.

By the way, Joe has a thing about commas; he thinks they're overused. So if my phrasing sometimes crashes into itself at least you'll know Joe's happy.

Right, Joe? Happy now?

Tucson. All summer. These people call it a "cooling trend"--with a straight face--when the temp drops into the upper 90s. And the Monsoon? Hah! I sweat more than it rained.


"But it's a dry heat" is the common explanation for the locals' acceptance of such ridiculous customs. I'm sure "But it's a dry heat" will be printed on the T-shirt they'll give me in hell.


At least I'm not in the middle of town anymore. Here, along the banks of a dry river, there's plenty of open desert; and surprisingly verdant for being a desert. But that's what I like about the Sonora.

Coyotes, jack rabbits, little rodent and lizard critters, quail and doves all around. The occasional Saguaro stands sentinel. Sunsets settle into glowing embers behind the mountains. Much later toward morning, the next hot day fires a warning shot across the bow.

My ashes could be happy here.