Talk about laziness, and you’ll see that some of my blog posts this year are a perfect reflection of that. Not that I’m lazy per se (though that is open for interpretation), but the fact that I am consolidating some of my posts, particularly visits out to Duncan, Arizona, could be perceived as me being a bit unmotivated in the writing department. The reason for this on my previous outings to Duncan was that my focus was not on traveling and photography but precisely on this act of writing. Our drive east for this year’s long Memorial Day weekend was to spend time not only with Caroline but also to capture something rare, time of doing close to nothing. That nothing included making a minimal effort in the photography department and subsequently in bringing this post together.
“Nothing”, though, is not in my DNA, and so something must be done. When I started writing this post here on Sunday morning, I was apparently not doing “nothing”. Even this moment of jotting down thoughts followed a three-mile walk out along the Gila River and over some old, abandoned farmland in the floodplain.
Back on Friday when we arrived, our hosts were nowhere to be found. They were in neighboring New Mexico visiting family, comfortable knowing that we are self-sufficient and would be fine by our lonesome in their place. In the garden at dusk, the enchantment of dozens of bats swooping in to nab insects was a welcome surprise with one approaching close enough for us to catch the sound of its vocalization as opposed to its ultrasonic echolocation that obviously wouldn’t be heard by human ears. On the other hand, later that evening our eyes were able to take in the dark sky, enjoying the stars that bats do not regard as the light is too faint to help guide their navigation. Mind you, I make no claim of being an expert on bats and am relying on Claude Opus and Mistral Large for my information, and please, do not conflate that my use of AI for research could imply that it helps with my writing; I take full credit for that.
Saturday rolled around with a morning walk along the northeast side of the Gila River, where our interest was drawn in by the many songs heard from the birds that call the riparian area home. The first bird we spotted was one I’d seen on my previous visit and had no idea what it was, but Caroline has Cornell University’s app Merlin installed which allows her to easily identify birds. It was a vermillion flycatcher. High up in a tree, she saw a great blue heron, and when she pointed it out, I thought she was pointing to the nearby common black hawk in a neighboring tree before I, too, caught sight of the heron.
Turning on the audio capture part of the Merlin app, she showed me that we were listening to the calls of yellow warblers, Gila woodpeckers, northern cardinals, yellow-breasted chats, and the ever-present Gambel quails. By the next day, Sunday, I too now had Merlin installed, and on the southwest side of the Gila River, we added willow flycatchers, white-winged doves, song sparrows, and common yellowthroats to the list of birds heard but not always seen.
After Saturday’s walk and following breakfast at the always adequate Ranch House Restaurant, while walking back to our artful lodgings at the Simpson Hotel, we met Minister Sherry Brady of the Duncan United Methodist Church who was holding a yard sale in front of the church she presides over. With a small congregation of about ten old souls, she’s optimistic that with some care, cleanup, and renovation work, she can grow the flock. We were invited into the old church, a simple and unadorned place of worship. From the yard sale, I picked up an old coffee cup with the nickname “Topper” on one side of the cup while on the other side, Floyd Johnson was penciled in before the cup was glazed.
On Sunday, I went back to the church before services got underway and was able to talk with parishioner Marilyn Thorne, who knew Floyd and was able to make out his indecipherable last name for me. Floyd worked at the Duncan High School as a janitor and occasional bus driver and had served the U.S. military in Korea. So, in honor of Memorial Day, though Floyd didn’t die there, and this should really be a Veterans Day gesture, I’m taking this moment to recognize this local resident of the area; he actually lived in the small community just east of Duncan called Franklin.
Back to the early-summer, lush gardens of the Simpson Hotel, Caroline fastened her backstrap loom to a rock wall in front of a bench where she sat for the next hours watching the trees sway in the heavy wind, which she thought were reminiscent of the trees in the Miyazaki animated film, My Neighbor Totoro and busied herself weaving and listening to the birds. From time to time, Iskander the tabby cat would come to visit Caroline for head rubs. Meanwhile, I took to working out some details regarding a cross-country road trip taking place in August and September while simultaneously trying to convince myself it was still part of my agenda of nothingness.
On Saturday, when mid-day arrived our hosts arrived too, not that this motivated us to shift our positions of slothfulness, we just continued on our trajectory of participation-inertia as we aimed to maintain nullity. Things stayed this way until the blood pooling in our rear ends began coagulating, a common measure old people use to judge the effectiveness of their laziness. This could only mean one of two things: head into the kitchen for some ice cream or go for a walk. Seeing how we were not at home, not that we have ice cream there either, we took a walk to the River’s Roadside Cafe and Bakery for coffee. I know, you likely thought I was going to say we went for ice cream, but we were already past that. We’d stopped in for a lunch of burritos earlier, and Caroline had dessert in the form of a scoop of triple chocolate and one of strawberry to help celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend, so who in their right mind would have even more ice cream just a few hours later?
Note: the photo above is of the blue death-feigning beetle, its taxonomic name is Asbolus verrucosus.
Other mundane stuff happened along the way, though dinner with Deborah and Clayton that would never be considered mundane also happened and closed out the day. Then, here on Sunday morning the wake, walk, eat, write, eat routine got underway once more. This brings me to this point where I’m about to take a break from writing so we can mosey up the street to the Ranch House Restaurant for a mid-day meal unless, like yesterday, something from the River’s Roadside joint piques our interest. Come to think about it, they are closed.
For the sense of time, it is the morning of Memorial Day Monday as I reopen what at the moment will have been a draft, though as you read this, it’s obviously a post of some sort. Last night was an evening out of the ordinary: while likely quite mundane to most people, I still feel compelled to share this, not necessarily with readers, but with future Caroline and John. We had dinner with Deborah and Clayton again, except this time we watched a movie. The movie was The Wonder Boys about a man lost in writing and indecisive, in part due to the need to pen something better than his first successful novel and in part due to his weed habit that’s made him compulsive and indulgent. While it was congruent with my effort to do nothing, watching a movie while eating and doing so to the very end of the film while out and away felt peculiar. I should add that this is not something we do at home, so it’s outside of all forms of my normal unless I refer back to my thirties, three decades ago.
Before the evening’s festivities, there was the late afternoon garden indulgence that included a slow walk, a meander actually, that had me searching for details of things overlooked. It’s bound to happen when we move through an environment and are uncertain of the amount of time we can allocate to finding what is present, that we first see the big picture, and subsequently, should lingerability be available, we’ll look into the granularity of what was initially unseen. The surprise comes during follow-up visits when you are left wondering how you missed so much in the first and second encounters. Imagine my chagrin that on my umpteenth visit to the Simpson Hotel and Garden, I’m still finding new enchantments hidden among the many layers that exist here.
This brings us back to Monday and this mid-morning session of capturing thoughts in the parlor as the aromas of breakfast waft through the hotel and I’m refueled as far as caffeine is concerned. At 6:00, we were out the front door for a three-mile walk that was well-timed with the passing of the twice-daily train that travels through Duncan on its way to and from the Morenci Copper Mine north of here. Up a nearby hill for a walk over town looking into the distance on a slightly chilly start to the day was a great reminder to appreciate these cooler moments that down in Phoenix are already over.
To close out this post/update: between these two visits to Duncan, I was working out some travel details regarding a late summer vacation that will take us to points in the Eastern United States and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Actually, not just some details but rather intricate plans that come with being able to invest nearly 60 hours investigating options that will guide our first-ever visits to Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. For Caroline, the vacation will begin when she lands in Buffalo, New York, where I’ll pick her up with our car, and it will come to a close in Portland, Maine, from where she’ll be flying home. As for what our exact plan looks like between those dates and my road trip that bookends our time out that way, you’ll have to wait for the blog posts that will offer insights into our adventure. One thing I am willing to share: we’ll be paying homage to one of Caroline’s favorite foods with a stop at the Canadian Potato Museum in O’Leary, Prince Edward Island.
