Weaving Workshop

JWise Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise Weaving at a Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

If there is any question that the Brillenschlange smiling at me in this photo is an uber-nerd, let this serve as proof that my wife has geek cred that flies off most every chart. You might remember that back on September 9, 2019, Caroline took possession of her Baby Wolf loom. Since then she’s been off and on again busy making stuff on it but this is the first time she’s been able to lunk it out of our place and drag it across town to Mesa, Arizona, so she could join a 3-day workshop.

All last week Caroline toiled after work to wind the warp which is the process of winding off the requisite number of weaving threads in the length that the project calls for. Next, you sley the reed. This means that she pulls all of the threads of the warp through a toothed device that keeps everything separate and aligned. Time to thread the heddles where she pulls each strand of yarn through a wire with an eyelet attached to a shaft controlled by treadles that are used to open a shed. Sheds are the opening of patterns of warp combinations where the weft (the thread that goes across the warp) is beat against the accumulating other wefts thus making cloth. Before that can begin though she has to beam the warp meaning she has to roll the warp on a beam in the rear of the loom that will feed to the front of the loom where she’s tied those warp thread ends to the cloth beam, allowing weaving to commence.

Woven Samples at a Weaving Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

At the workshop, the Mesa guild known as Telarana Fiber Arts Guild has invited Denise Kovnat from Rochester, New York, to share a technique called “Deflected Double Weave” with the group. Workshop teachers are often from out of state and are likely renowned in the Weaving World which helps guarantee the success of the workshop as they need at least 10 attendees to make the event financially viable. (As a non-profit organization the guild just needs to break even when it is all said and done.)

Attendees such as Caroline are given a list of requirements they need to prepare prior to the workshop and then upon arrival, there may be handouts or options to purchase additional materials that could further enhance their knowledge or SABLE. This popular acronym stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy and most every member of the guild is guilty of this hoarding disorder.

Caroline Fabric on her loom at a Weaving Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

Through it all, these highly skilled and very sociable women gain between 18 and 24 hours of hands-on experience, collaboration, and gossip over the typical 3-day workshop.

The image above shows an example of Caroline’s effort where the colors and pattern decisions were part of her pre-work before arriving on Saturday. What you are looking at is the front of her loom in closeup. In the background is the reed and behind that, out of sight, are the heddles, shafts, and warping beam. The warp are the threads going from the pattern upfront to the reed in the background. Sitting on the cloth is the shuttle that is used to throw a thread through the sheds to be opened to lay down the emerging pattern.

Now consider for a moment that not all too long ago every strand of thread had to be handspun and dyed before they’d find their way to a loom and the more fine threads packed in per inch would typically mean a finer fabric. Should you ever wonder why certain cultures never developed cloth or why people right up to the industrial age had only one set of clothes, it was due to the intensive amount of labor involved with simply making sheets of cloth before they’d ever be cut up to be sewn into shirts and pants.

Duncan Arizona – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Along the Gila River in Duncan, Arizona

Up at the crack of dawn because who says clichés shouldn’t be lived by on occasion? Looking out the front door at the frozen cars gave me pause, but not so much to stop our momentum to catch the sunrise and see if the bird trail lived up to its name.

Along the Gila River in Duncan, Arizona

The grasses are alive as early birds flutter undercover of the brush. Overhead, we can hear the approach of the sandhill cranes long before we see them. Cranes turn out to be quite common here in the area at this time of year. Last night, we learned of the Wings Over Willcox festival that celebrates the cranes. It is held each January, and we will try to place a permanent note in our heads to visit next year.

Along the Gila River in Duncan, Arizona

Our walk along the Gila River this morning took us on a mile-and-a-half long loop trail under a clear, frosty 34-degree blue sky here near the Arizona and New Mexico state line. The bird trail ended up being well worth the minor effort to bundle up and get a little exercise in before breakfast, and with the eight o’clock hour approaching (the time we told our hosts that we’d like to eat), we had to head back.

Cat at the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona

Maliki the Cat enjoying the warm sun and a snuggle in front of the big window at the Simpson Hotel. As much as the Simpson acts as a hotel, it has a dual role as Bed & Breakfast. Deborah and Clayton, the proprietors of this historic building, made us a terrific homemade, gourmet breakfast, allowing us to move at a slower pace than would be typical when we are anxious to get out and start exploring the area.

Joyce and Juliette came down to join us after a bit, which slowed us down yet again. Talk of sandhill cranes, ghosts, hotel lore, and an interesting trail out by Virden, New Mexico.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the Arizona and New Mexico state line near Virden, New Mexico

The interesting trail wasn’t found, but the state line was. Mea culpa time, as I’ve bragged countless times that Caroline has already passed over every state line crossing that Arizona has. Well, we’ve never been over this one. Now, before I go blowing my horn again, I think I’ll pore over a map and see which others I might have missed. Hmm, maybe I could blame this on the fact that paper maps never took us down to a close enough resolution, so this could have been an honest mistake.

Abandoned ranch house in western New Mexico

The outside turned out to be more interesting than the inside of this abandoned ranch house with its multitude of textures, all of them in different states of wear.

Gila River near Virden, New Mexico

I don’t think we drove much more than 20mph on our short loop out the Virden Highway and back up Franklin Road. Along the way, we stopped to admire a small flock of sandhill cranes in a farmer’s field, and then next door, Caroline pilfered a bunch of pecans that were still on the trees. She’d call it gleaning; I just hung my head in shame.

The muddy water racing by is the Gila River. It gets its start near the Continental Divide in some mountains east of us and then collects the waters of almost half a dozen other rivers as it passes through Phoenix until reaching the Colorado River down near Yuma, Arizona. After traveling a length of the river today and having watched the patterns of the sandhill cranes this morning, it is obvious that they stay very close to the river while out looking for food.

Caroline Wise at Hilda's Mexican Cafe in Duncan, Arizona

After a meander over the countryside listening to Westlin’ Winds by Robert Burns, we are back in Duncan at Hilda’s for some Mexican food though I wimped on trying the Meat Daddy, which now seems more appropriate while listening to At Seventeen by Janis Ian.

The Rugged and Obese could be the tagline for many of these out-of-the-way outposts that were once something and are now, more often than not, on their way to oblivion. From the amount of tossed-off beer cans, shooters, and broken glass the drinking problems that are supposed to relieve loneliness are hard at work here where little else is found.

Lunch is solid, but hopefully, not so much that it leads us to a siesta. While coffee might be in order about now to ward off drowsiness, we know in a place like this, it’ll be something along the lines of Folgers or Yuban, and after years of strong coffee, that stuff seems like water dolled up to look like coffee, but it’s not fooling us.

With nothing else needing our attention, the thought of just sitting here sipping coffee and smoking while talking about nothing sounds appealing if it weren’t for the fact we neither enjoy smoking nor is it allowed in restaurants anymore. Funny that we grew up in an age where smoking at the table was the norm. To compensate, Caroline has fetched her knitting while I swipe notes into my smartphone, allowing us to skip the chatting part, too; at least we have “coffee.”

Ruth just came in. Strangely enough, this is the third time running into her in less than 24 hours. Last night in Safford at Walgreens, we stopped and picked up Girl Scout cookies from her and the troop. Then, this morning, heading out of Duncan, we pull up to get gas, and there’s Ruth chaperoning some other girls, so we buy even more cookies we don’t need.

Drive-in Theater in Three Way, Arizona

We are way out in the middle of nowhere. The junction is called Three Way, and over 60 years ago, when this giant movie screen was erected, it must have drawn people in from far and wide. I can still hear the echoes of excitement as the car got into position and the tinny speaker was pulled into the car as maybe Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief or James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause flickered onto the screen back in 1955. Walking over to the refreshment counter for a fountain drink and the smell of fresh popcorn would round out the treat of visiting this window to the world that may as well have been a million miles away from those who worked on the ranches and in the mines of rural Arizona and New Mexico.

Looking out the Morenci Mine near Clifton, Arizona

While we miss the paper maps of yore, the in-dash panel of our Kia Niro hybrid features maps that are seriously accurate for letting us find alternate routes to places. A small side road took us out for some nice views towards Morenci and its mining operations (left side of the photo) and past the Clifton Cemetery.

Clifton, Arizona Cemetery

Masin Greenlee may be the most famous person buried at the Clifton Cemetery as one of the 15 counties in Arizona, Greenlee County is named after him. But there are 1098 other people buried in these rugged and rocky mountains, including a number of children such as Baby Goss here, who died December 30, 1924, on the same day this infant was born. There were a number of graves from back in that time where babies didn’t make it or lived only a few days before passing on.

Clifton, Arizona

Clifton, Arizona, is as close to being a ghost town as it can get. If the local mining operation were to cease, this town would blow away. Turns out that it’s almost washed away a number of times due to storms that created catastrophic flooding of the nearby San Francisco River.

This is not our first visit to Clifton, but it is one of the saddest. We’ve enjoyed peeking into derelict old buildings on previous visits, but today, they are mostly boarded up. We can only figure it’s due to vandalism. We’d ask someone, but nobody is around to ask. Most of the few shops that are here are closed on Saturday, which baffles us. There was one small shop open towards the end of Chase Creek Street where a young woman shared some of the pleasures and struggles of living in a town with such difficult living conditions regarding work and the availability of simple things like credit and loans to buy houses and such.

Speaking of Chase Creek Street, that catastrophic flooding I spoke of was exacerbated by the fact that the main road that slices through this part of Clifton and this historic district is part of the creek that, while small or non-existent in dry years, has been known to achieve flows of water that rival the Colorado river when reaching flood stages. We learned about this as we finally Googled why this town has giant steel doors at the south end of the place that are reminiscent of flood gates used in Japan, where tsunamis occur: those doors are part of Clifton’s flood control.

1941 Cadillac Flying Lady Hood Ornament seen in Clifton, Arizona

I think this is the Flying Lady from a 1941 Cadillac, but I’m only about 95% certain. I wonder if the owner knows these hood ornaments can sell for about $750, and if he did, would it still just be sitting out next to the street? A few doors down was another intriguing hood ornament on what might have been a 1950s Cadillac.

Big Horn Sheep in Clifton, Arizona

Getting ready to leave town, we ran into this team of bighorn sheep with that ram over there giving me stink eye more than once.

San Francisco River in Clifton, Arizona

This is the San Francisco River that in 1983, was moving 56,000 cubic feet per second of floodwater through its channel. Today during our visit, it’s only about 520 cubic feet per second. With fading light, we pointed the car south to return to Duncan and get some dinner at the Ranch House before settling in at our cozy hotel. As we head into being tired and seriously satisfied with the day, we are at a loss for what we might do tomorrow. Having that kind of flexibility is not a bad thing.

1st Road Trip of 2020 – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

Spent some more time appreciating the La Posada Hotel here in Winslow, Arizona. While I’ve said it elsewhere here on my blog, I’ll share again why a property designed by Mary Jane Colter holds so much interest for me. Mary Jane was a firebrand of her time, being the architect of much of the style that would heavily influence the look of the southwestern United States national parks. That we share the same birthday, only 97 years apart, might also figure in this, but probably not, seriously not.

There were other visually striking hotels Out West that had been commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad, featuring restaurants managed by the Fred Harvey Company, but sadly, some have been destroyed in the name of modernity. The El Navajo over in Gallup, New Mexico, is one such hotel that disappeared the same year La Posada closed. The La Castañeda over in Las Vegas, New Mexico, is another Colter design that found a new life thanks to the efforts of La Posada’s owners, Allan Affeldt and his wife, artist Tina Mion. By the way, Amtrak runs daily between the hotels in Winslow, Arizona, and Las Vegas, New Mexico, for as little as $56 each way.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

While today is the official anniversary of our wedding at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it feels like it was late last night when it was most meaningful. Not that we really noted anything, toasted the evening, or even shared a little sweet after dinner in recognition of the date because every day is our celebration of having found each other.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Petrified Forest National Park was our first destination for the day, and during the drive over, we realized that it might be our last one in this area. Getting to the park and learning that the road to the southern end of the place was closed for bridge repairs at about the halfway point, we figured we’d do the first hike we wanted to take through the Blue Mesa area, and then we’d drive back to Holbrook, have lunch, and then circle down to the southern end of Petrified Forest National Park. Down there, we’d hike out to Agate House and head home from there.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Fragility and permanence exist simultaneously here in the harsh conditions of Petrified Forest National Park. The contrast of these elements is always around you here, but to the casual eye, maybe only the dryness of the desert and the nearly barren landscape can be seen. Consider this rain-and-wind-sculpted tower made of sandstone that at one time was just a bunch of rock underground. Over time, the surrounding earth was worn away, exposing these harder layers of rock, and while they are profoundly more durable than our soft organic selves, they, too, will crumble and fall.

As I looked up at the top rock balancing on a fractured column, the evidence of other rocks that used to be up there lay all around me. I suppose I should be happy and hopeful that things stay the way they are, but I know that it’s all temporary and that, at some point, that rock will come down here where I’m standing and that it may not be identifiable once it is smashed to bits as it topples from its perch.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

These wood chips, well that’s what they looked like to me, are fragments of giant trees that towered over this barren landscape 225 million years ago. As the petrified logs emerge from the earth or maybe fall for a second time, some of them will shatter into tiny bits. Somewhere well into the future, after I’m long gone, they may erode to the point of becoming sand and be blown away by the wind to be part of the soil that will grow new trees.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

I wonder about our return to this particular national park and how, on our first visit, we sprouted impressions into memories that would become fragments of our personalities. As those earlier images are toppled from their perch atop our experience and become tiny shards of our existence, we cycle back to reinforce our remembrances or bring on wholly new images for our memories to chew on. Before those have much time to fade, we return yet again and try to find the meaning behind what it is that’s drawing us back.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Maybe we are trying to become that which we are: human. A tree grows in place and falls where it grew. A mountain rises and is blown away in the wind, its shadow scattered in all directions. As the earth recycles that which arises upon its surface, the constituent elements are destined for new realities without any kind of certainty they may see the same form for millions, if not billions, of years. I can see in this photo the reflection of the tree that once was, as though someone split this log for a campfire and then walked away.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

What does it take to become human, or are we simply born that way? For me, being human is an act of becoming. We must walk into our potential and discover how to see and what’s out there to be seen. We have to explore the unknown and not only the familiar. Even when we’ve walked the trail before, and although the view might look generally the same, it can never be identical to what it was. If we walk with awareness and learn something or other during the time between visits, we might see what’s in our mind with new eyes.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

As above is not necessarily so from below but we should strive to explore both. What then? You must go within, go deeper, go further because the horizon open to our human senses is infinite, but within that infinity is a great unknown landscape. It is the unknown and the fear of it that will stop the majority of people from traversing the highs and lows of where they could possibly wander. Why even go out if you fear the encounter with that which may challenge your dogma?

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

In the crevices, folds, and cracks that are part of the space between are treasures waiting to be found. Artists such as Da Vinci and Dali and thinkers like Einstein and Deleuze explore where the average person is afraid to look. While they helped pave the way for all of us, allowing us to benefit from those things they brought illumination to, we must similarly do the same thing with our limited amount of time to explore life.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

That means you must venture not only into your world but into your mind, emotions, and everything our senses offer our perspectives. There are crystals nobody has ever seen and never will. Just a millimeter behind the one at the surface might be the most perfect specimen, but we will not know it when we don’t put ourselves out there where it might be discovered.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Caroline and I are out here where few others have decided to visit today. We do not see anything of particular note that others haven’t also seen, but they cannot adequately convey the impact that was made on them and how it might have altered their perspectives, so we must witness things by ourselves. I, having now seen these things, cannot offer you any great insight into some intrinsic and profound discovery that will change my course in life, but I can tell you that I am not the same person I was before we traveled from the above to the below.

Northern Arizona on State Route 180

And then it was time to go further. If you look way out there, you might see tomorrow on its way.

Back country trails in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Guides to backcountry routes are great for traveling to places that are known, but no matter how much we think we know about humans, there is no guide to help you find a deeper meaning aside from your maintaining vigilance to peel back the onion of yourself. Maybe you can see the bigger picture by looking at the title page, and you can have some idea of where the trail leads once you’ve studied what’s on the pages that follow, but you will not own anything of real meaning if you fail to put yourself in motion and verify how the patterns you find in your journey compare to the notes others have left you.

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

I wonder how Native Americans of the region understood this wood that wouldn’t burn? Did they try to cut into it in an effort to discover its wooden core? Normal wood weighs about 45 pounds per cubic foot, while petrified wood weighs between 150 and 200 pounds per cubic foot; how was it that these logs would require multiple people to move them? The best way to describe a mystery pre-enlightenment would be to ascribe the phenomenon to the gods and so I could imagine the wood found here belonged to one of the gods of the desert. Funny how modern humans might find it archaic that “primitive peoples” could have polytheistic beliefs devoid of any scientific understanding of the world around them, and yet those same people go right about their business holding monotheistic beliefs with a mere modicum of scientific understanding.

Caroline Wise at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

I rather consider that we look upon our world with the eyes of God. I don’t care which god anyone will do. So, if we are so lucky to have been gifted with the eyes of God to gaze upon its creation, how do we honor such a responsibility? Do we look upon violence with relative indifference? Do we witness poverty and ask why others are not dealing with it? Do we lament sharing our good fortune by paying more in tax so those who are less fortunate may also honor god by seeing the bounty and beauty of our world? My answer to that is a resounding: “We don’t do fuck all!” We glibly look upon the victims of war as enemies. We scoff at politicians who failed the rest of us by allowing homeless people the right to despoil our streets with their excrement. We reel in horror that someone else should be the recipient and beneficiary of any part of our wealth that we can hoard. And that, far too often, is the face of our religions. Just look at this fossil of a tree with a width that was nearly 5 feet across and stood in this arid landscape 225 million years ago. That tree could not grow in this climate today as it needs to be someplace, such as the coastal region of Oregon or the wetter parts of California. Would you invest the time and money to put yourself here at Petrified Forest National Park to show your god through your eyes that you care enough about its creation to be a personal witness to the incredible things that exist on this planet? Or will you choose to hide in your home with your cache of guns, shy away from the indigent, and trade more of your valuable time for money so you can afford your streaming media service and junk food delivery from someone starving with a dead-end gig job while you spew your xenophobic racism?

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Uncomfortable with my horrible generalizations of painting vast swaths of our populations with the ugly brush? So am I, but it’s what I see and hear everywhere I go. After people started living loud outside as the phones moved from indoors to the restaurant dinner table, the barrier of what was appropriate to talk about in public collapsed. It was once considered rude to eavesdrop on people or listen in on private conversations, but I never requested that people up their volume and discuss the shit that I hear when I tune in the couple three tables over talking about an idiot boss, an idiot politician, or their idiot server. Would you fault me for observing that the rock in this photo looks like the bark of a tree? Of course not, because that’s exactly what it looks like. Just as James Whitcomb Riley once said, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

The spectrum of hues, minerals, and history found in this fractured chunk of petrified wood holds more breadth of attributes I find curious than the majority of humans I see. I’ve encountered some amazing people in my life, from the rich and famous to the poor and fascinating, but the majority should honestly be held in disdain for collectively; they amount to being more worthless than throwing another teaspoon of water into the sea. The fossilized trees I walk amongst here in the park cannot deny evolution; they do not lament the burden of being too hot or too cold, and they cannot ignore the truth of their existence. I’m offered a symbiotic relationship with inanimate things that have a profound story, do not require embellishment to appear beautiful, are not too old or too fat; they hate nothing. Instead, they bask in the sun, waiting for the appreciative to come along and gaze upon their magnificent histories and incredible intricate natures and show their gods something amazing.

Agate House in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

So, what should you do with my petrified thoughts? If you know me, you likely try to ignore this side of my self-righteous blathering as being the crap of another grumpy old man. But if you were an indigenous person walking with one or more gods and being witness to the incomprehensible beauty that somehow was all around you, you would have built a temple from the gift offered you and called it home. If you are reading this today, how are you taking your potential intellect and building a temple from your gift of cognition? On second thought, why did you ever read this nonsense?

1st Road Trip of 2020 – Day 2

JWise Food, Photo of the Day, Travels

La Posada Hotel Winslow Arizona

La Posada Hotel opened 90 years ago in 1930 and closed only 27 years later in 1957. For a while, the building served as offices for the Santa Fe Railway, but they moved out in 1994, and it looked like the building would be demolished. Now renovated and operating again, we are finally spending a couple of nights here. In the past, this iconic property designed by Mary Jane Colter has seen Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Howard Hughes, John Wayne, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, James Cagney, and many more celebrities all stay here.

Being at La Posada in the off-season on a quiet Friday night lends tragedy to the experience. I’m sure that during the main season they must be doing well as at other times we looked to book a room the place was sold out. All the same, while this historic relic from the past is still operational, it was a decline in rail travel back in the late 1950s that forced the closure of the hotel.

Walking in this building today, it’s easy to imagine the excitement of America’s well-to-do rubbing shoulders with some of the famous guests and marveling at the difference in architecture and landscape from what they were accustomed to back east. Today, everyone has seen “Marlboro Country” in car and cigarette ads along with sci-fi movies, so they no longer need to be here for the in-person experience. In the age of Instagram, only the moment captured in the right pose with perfect lighting has any value, while experiencing the architecture, ambiance, and history of a place won’t do much to attract followers.

Influencers don’t need stories steeped in the minutiae of geography, biology, design, or history. They need to convey urgency to consume, capture, and move on, as the next great thing is only a click away. This, though, is not the way many of us wish to live. Sitting down for an extended dinner instead of hitting the drive-thru and having the wherewithal to sit quietly to read, craft, or explore one’s inner dialog instead of heading to a room to watch TV is a disappearing art.

This nostalgia for an age I didn’t live in often feels misplaced in that I’m trying to somehow own it or over-romanticize what it might have actually been. The fact is what I take from my perception of the heyday of these outposts here in the southwest is that they represent a kind of ancient internet of sorts. Novelty was in full swing, and finding your way to such an exotic location that was like nothing found in Europe or the American Northeast meant that you’d arrived. Without video, streaming media, or even high-quality color reproductions, the average person never really had great impressions of what they might find before getting there and witnessing it with their very own eyes.

Exploration and discovery were still easily found, and real astonishment could be had. By today’s standards, La Posada is hardly a luxury hotel, but in 1930, as a destination to a giant, colorful land of exquisite sights, it was the height of superlatives. This ability to find novelty from a relative perspective of naivety is now long gone.

Highway 87 north of Interstate 40 on the Navajo Reservation, Arizona

Consider the emotion of love and its connection to discovery. Is the child’s bond with its parents amplified due to the adult being the primary source of helping the child learn about and explore its world? Or what about the first love of young adults as they begin the discovery of sensuality through the intimate exploration of another person? How does love foster greater sharing and deeper learning? Why, when holding hands driving down the lonely highway, is the view ahead magnified into something possibly greater than it might have been otherwise?

Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona

If there is an emotional and intellectual basis that arises out of learning, love, discovery, and exploration, how are young people who are isolated from loving community relationships supposed to develop personas that care about other individuals? Are we creating sociopaths from the insulating routines of lone play, electronic communication, and solo exploration? What happens when the individual is more concerned with moments of self-love instead of group identity and harmony?

Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona

Without a plan but having a good sense of where we are, the decision to wander was an easy one. Our first thought was heading to Leupp after our server last night told us of the flea market up there, but then this morning, a different server told us she thought there was a flea market in Dilkon. Instead of choosing one or the other, we decided to head over to Dilkon first and then loop around to Leupp afterward. Both villages are on the Navajo Reservation.

Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona

By the time we arrived in Dilkon, there was only one table set up, so we knew we were too early. Instead of waiting around we pointed the car west and kept on driving. The flea market in Leupp was going full blast, and as luck would have it, we were now approaching lunchtime and had enough appetite to make the stop worthwhile.

Caroline Wise in Leupp, Arizona

Smoke is an important factor in deciding which vendor we visit first, as our primary interest today is roast mutton, and an open wood fire is the only way to properly grill mutton and green chili. Today was going to be different as the family that was cooking our lunch was preparing the bread right over the fire instead of frying it in lard.

Blue corn Navajo treats in Leupp, Arizona

We are here so rarely there is no chance of forsaking indulgence by being reasonable. From roast mutton, we went to a trailer where another family was offering mutton stew with steamed corn. We started to smell of mutton ourselves, and just as greasy as either dish, we weren’t done yet. A couple of older ladies had Navajo Cake on offer, along with other corn-based treats we stocked up on. Then, it was back to the first family, where they had a form of ach’íí on offer. Traditionally, this item is mutton fat wrapped in sheep intestine and grilled, but this variation was chunks of liver and diced intestine fried in mutton fat and then cooked as a stew. Caroline enjoyed this far more than I did; after one taste, I deferred to her, but by now, we were stuffed, so she ended up sharing the last small bit with one of the rez-dogs wandering around.

Sunrise Trading Post in Leupp, Arizona

Next to the empty lot where the weekly flea market gathers is the ruin of the Sunrise Trading Post. Not far from the Little Colorado River, this trading post opened in 1920 and ceased operations in 1985.

Roadside on Indian Route 2 in Northern Arizona

Like a flip of the coin, we took the next paved road north that brought us up to the Hopi Reservation. There are not a lot of opportunities to stop next to the road to check out the area, so we mostly just stop right in the street. With long stretches of road offering a clear sight of things ahead and behind, we can easily handle the odd approaching vehicle, but we also can’t wander far from the car. So we drive slowly, but we keep going, admiring the stark landscape as we crawl along.

Caroline Wise in Kykotsmovi, Arizona

The first Hopi village we come to is Kykotsmovi and it has a small shop and gas station. This is weird; we’re the only white people here. Okay, it’s not that weird; as a matter of fact, it seems to be the norm as this isn’t our first visit to a reservation. This place was busy, with two registers going and a line for each. We leave with a couple of drinks and an ice cream because we are traveling, and indulgence is our middle name. What was noteworthy was the pheasant pelt we bagged. For only $10, with its head still attached but its guts removed, we leave with the feathers of a beautiful specimen that Caroline says will become part of some crafty thing or other.

We ventured up some pavement that turned to dirt which we weren’t feeling today, so back to Highway 264 across Hopi lands until we reached the Hopi Cultural Center, which felt like a good place to stop for a coffee. Caught up with a bit of writing, transferring photos, and Caroline finishing some crocheting, we were again heading down the road to other places.

Walpi and Sichomovi on the Hopi Reservation in the distance

Our first stop on our way back towards Winslow was at Tsakurshovi Gallery, and were happily greeted by Janice, who owns the place and shares it with her husband Joseph, who was napping. We’d not seen these two in years, and while it would have been nice to say hi to Joseph, too, it was great just learning that they were doing well.

Caroline eyed a bracelet and some earrings that were talking to her, and seeing they’d now represent a wonderful moment surrounding our anniversary weekend, the splurge felt well deserved. This thought of splurging, though, would be disingenuous if I weren’t honest in admitting that everything else about our stay up north is indulgent, too. From the luxury of the historic La Posada Hotel and the exquisite food at the Turquoise Room, where we’ll be again tonight, to the Leupp Flea Market, where we were able to eat absolutely unique foods we cannot get anywhere else.

Sunset along State Route 87 traveling south in Northern Arizona on the Navajo Reservation

And this has been our day. Out in a vast open landscape where many would argue there’s nothing to do, we moved into a countless number of impressions that feel exceptional, and if it weren’t for our familiarity with these places, I’d say it is all quite rare for most people.

1st Road Trip of 2020 – Day 1

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John Wise and Caroline Wise in Northern Arizona

Not only is this the first road trip of 2020 for Caroline and me, but it is also the 26th anniversary weekend of our wedding back on the 12th of January, 1994. We are most obviously headed north, though I suppose had we gone east, we could have encountered snow, too. In any case, we are headed to Winslow, Arizona.

Moonrise over Winslow, Arizona

This photo does absolutely no justice to what we saw. The moon was lensing hard, with undulations moving up and down the edges of the biggest moon we’d ever seen. The drive up has been incredibly quiet as normally we have many a car wanting to pass us since we drive relatively slowly so we can see things along the way. From Strawberry, until we were just about 15 miles outside of Winslow, there wasn’t one car that came up behind us.

La Posada Hotel Room in Winslow, Arizona

For years, we’d talked about staying at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow as we’d drive by saying, “Maybe next time.” I should clarify something here, as I pointed out above, that it’s our Jade Anniversary: we are not really here because of that but because we decided last year to try and travel more frequently as we did in the first decade of the 21st Century.

It was less than a week ago that it struck me that we needed to figure out some get-out-of-town plans for January, or before we knew it, we’d be in February and would have missed the opportunity to start off on the right foot. With nothing else scheduled for this weekend and certain I’d never get a reservation at this historic old Fred Harvey property, I checked out availability, and, well, here we are.

After arriving here on Friday night around 6:00, we checked into our $129-a-night king room and were ready to have dinner in The Turquoise Room. I just have to note the dinner as it was amazing. We split two appetizers, starting with the piki bread and tepary bean hummus, followed by their signature corn and bean soup presented with each of the types on their respective sides of the bowl, ready for the diner to mix it, eat from the middle, or each separately. Our entrees were the Churro Lamb Sampler for me and the Wild Platter for Caroline, which featured crispy quail, elk, and a tamale topped with bison, elk, and wild boar. Dessert was a Harvey Girls Pie of apple, quince, and cranberry.

We even saw the Amtrak stop right outside the restaurant, which had us thinking about taking the train from right here to Chicago. Checking out schedules and prices, the trip becomes even more enticing as it’s only $276 for the two of us, though it does take around 31 hours to get there. The train leaves Winslow at 6:25 in the morning and arrives in Chicago at 2:50 p.m. I can’t help but think that this would be an incredibly unique way to see America, and it may not always be available as the route is not profitable. I’m convinced we need to do this sooner rather than later.

Oregon Coast 2019 – Day 9

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Seaside Beach in Oregon

Cannon Beach (not pictured as we were already in Seaside before I took a photo) is where we spent the better part of a few of our previous trips to Oregon and was the starting location for this last day of our visit. With the rain coming down, we skipped the usual beach walk that would take us past Haystack Rock and instead left immediately for Seaside just north of us. This brings up one of the considerations of pre-booking a room, which, unfortunately, is often required on holiday weekends.

Had we woken to nice weather, we wouldn’t have cared about breakfast (and remaining dry) quite so much; we would have started on the beach first thing, and our day would have likely included a walk at Ecola State Park. The premium we paid to be in Cannon Beach would have been justified for our convenience of doing more with the short day under sunny skies. Instead, we incurred an extra $70-$90 for our room but have nothing else of value for putting our heads down here. So it goes, and like all things on vacation, we have to negotiate the variables.

Seaside Beach in Oregon

While it may well be a gray day for the remainder of our time out here, we must consider what we’ve heard about the freeze the rest of the country is experiencing and even take note of the snow blanket on the mountains just east of us. Being lucky enough that we can take this short walk between rain showers makes things quite okay. Three tornadoes touched down in Phoenix a couple of days ago, one of them only about 5 miles away from where we live. The Grand Canyon had blizzard-like conditions, losing electricity and heat, all of this while we walked the seashore with nary a care.

Seaside Beach in Oregon

The photos so far are of the beach in Seaside and were taken after our interesting breakfast at the Osprey Cafe. The wait for a table was well worth it as I can say I’ve never had Nasi Goreng for breakfast; it was even topped with an egg, making it especially breakfasty. While I’m at it, Caroline opted for Huevos Rancheros with a kind of corn cake called arepas. We’ll be back.

Dough Dough Bakery in Seaside, Oregon

It was starting to rain again as we finished our walk for the short drive to the intersection of Broadway and Holladay Drive and a return to the Beach Books store. Last year, we met Alexa, who we learned yesterday is working today. The Seaside Yarn and Fiber store is two doors down, and in between is the Dough Dough Bakery with hot coffee, free WiFi, and some excellent baked goods. After talking books for a time with Alexa, I headed into the bakery to catch up on some very neglected blogging chores.

Armed with more coffee and willing to suffer greater indulgence for the sake of allowing me to extol the virtues of being fully on vacation where the senses should always be operating at full capacity, I had a cinnamon roll. What’s the big deal? It’s just a pastry, right? Not to a person with diabetes; it’s evil incarnate and promises to spit on my cells that cannot absorb any more glucose. More insulin is the solution, you say? Not in my world where exercise, diet control, and Metformin have been able to keep things in check. This form of hedonistic debauchery in the realm of culinary sweets is tightly controlled, but not on vacation, as that would be torture.

Seaside Yarn and Fiber in Seaside, Oregon

Let’s pretend this is just a normal day and that we live here in retirement. This raises my ire as it brings up what is broken with Oregon beyond the clearcutting of forests and overfishing: the cost of real estate. Wealth from outside the area has moved in on the coast, buying up property for vacation homes and investments, thus driving up the cost of real estate for everyone else. You need not point out that this is the norm in cities across America, allowing the wealthy to earn more from their already concentrated wealth. Combine the rising cost of a dwelling, be it a rental or purchase of a home in places with relatively depressed economies where most people make something under $15 an hour, and you have a recipe for pain.

The idea that we could rent a place in northern Italy cheaper than we can two miles inland in Florence, Oregon, strikes me as a horrible deal that doesn’t bode well for the local economies up and down the coast here. Instead of Caroline and I leaving our savings here in Oregon, we’ll likely be spending them across the Atlantic, where our cost of living will be more manageable. What justifies these extraordinary inequalities where a small cadre of wealthy people are able to bring financial ruin to so many? These actions drive the people of lesser means out of the region into bigger cities, but their lack of formal education relegates these transplants to menial jobs. I guess this is one way to curtail Hispanic immigration.

This is not a win-win situation for anyone unless the wealthy, who are displacing the residents of this coastal region, believe their working-class minions will commute 20 to 70 miles from points inland to take the jobs of serving them lattes and walking their dogs. As I write this, I want to blurt out that I think this is just plain old fucked. Maybe you are suggesting I do something about it? Well, what does one do in a country where mediocrity and acceptance of a distorted and broken status quo rule the day? Ayn Rand, with her idiotic Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, was wildly successful in bringing us to a pure version of survival of the fittest, which has translated into everyone out for themselves and be damned those of you who can’t keep up. To this end, I don’t feel we are any longer Americans except when someone asks us for our hopes and prayers, to stand for the national anthem, or somebody brings up soldiers and their sacrifices.

Beach Books in Seaside, Oregon

Out of the bakery and back to the bookshop. This being Sunday, the bakery closes early at 1:00 p.m. due to business fading after the rush of people leaving church services. At the last minute, Caroline decided she really liked the Dough Dough Bird t-shirt too much to let it go, so we have one more item to pack tonight.

It looks like we might have another book or so coming home with us, including The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson that Alexa inadvertently brought our attention to. She also let us leave with Me and Mr. Cigar by Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers and The Adventurer’s Son: A Memoir by Roman Dial. These two last titles are not due out until next year; lucky us. These would join yesterday’s findings with 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard, and Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey.

The Ken Kesey book was recommended to us down south while at the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum in Florence due to our interest in the historic industrial side of Oregon and how its past is crashing into the reality of the present. While I thought there was a small chance we’d find this title up here in Seaside, I was surprised that they’d have a title that is 42 years old, even if it is about Oregon.

This makes me wonder about resource depletion going on 100 years ago and how the wealthy are depleting the working class today by harvesting every penny they can from them through owning their homes and apartments and wrecking their participation in acquiring a quality life for themselves. But who cares about the unwashed masses who made their bed and are now being forced to sleep in it, right? I care because Caroline and I could easily be priced out of our vacations. Right now, we are privileged to have the means to bring ourselves into these kinds of experiences and are well aware of the fact that the majority of people along this coast do not have the ability to take themselves even down to Arizona, forget about the expense of heading to Europe for a few weeks.

Moss is allowed to live a better, more symbiotic life here on the coast, where, from its vantage point near the ocean, it lives free. Its descendants inherit its place tax-free and do not require an expensive university education to make a living. The birds take a place on the beach or on a tree branch when not darting about the sky without a license or rules they have to follow as they travel freely on their quest to find food along the way. Only when humans come along to displace their habitats do these creatures and plants find their existence threatened.

I’ve probably made this exact lament at least one other time here on my blog, but I feel it bears repeating. I’m supposed to feel free. To the extent that Caroline and I have the education and economic ability to bring ourselves into these adventures, I certainly feel lucky, but I also appreciate that so many more people in Europe have the same opportunities and means to share in the extraordinary. I attribute this perceived disparity to giant differences in health, education, and business practices in Europe that have at least some bias favoring the common individual. Europe’s population is twice that of America’s, and yet they can afford free university, great public transportation, and a humane amount of paid vacation for the individual to find a quality of life that better justifies the sacrifices made for the state and for big business.

Astoria–Megler Bridge between Oregon and Washington over the Columbia River

Bridges are interesting in regard not only to transportation but to human endeavors, too. In practice, they make moving between two geographical points easier, saving us time and allowing us better access to things and people that might otherwise be out of reach. In society, we use bridges as part of our social networking, which is supposed to offer us access to opportunity, but as we become electronic shadows of our former selves, we are increasingly irrelevant as part of the intellectual highway system. In that sense, it’s as though this bridge over the Columbia had been built for birds that would just fly from shore to shore. So why is this human-to-human bridge failing?

Is it because of our dismal view of one another? Is it because we no longer feel like an integral part of a larger thing and instead are isolated electrons in orbital positions around a nucleus of the ego existing in a void? Are we nothing more than a transaction with an IP number moving about like some anonymous packet of data? While hydrogen and oxygen are almost inextricably entangled in a water configuration, it is as though we humans are on a path towards oblivion, believing we can be on our own alone in a universe where the execution of financial transactions is the apex of being. Community and belonging to a larger something is going extinct.

Dismal Nitch in Washington

Our act of becoming nothing was being recognized by the early 1980s as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari were writing about our deterritorialization in the book A Thousand Plateaus. In the ensuing years, we’ve accelerated the process and broken free of all territories on our way to full dematerialization. While those authors were seeing the hints of losing cultural meaning they could never have predicted that the personal electronic economy would not only remove any vestige of personal territory but that it would reject the physical existence of the individual.

As we become electronic puppets on the stage of parody where consumerism has replaced survival, we no longer have a need to be human in the sense that we are an evolutionary species seeking meaning. In another age, we learned to brave the elements, were taught about our environment, we sought symbiosis with a hostile world. Becoming nothing more than information, are we casting the die that suggests that without meaning, the course of evolution may have little need of us?

In an otherwise symbiotic system where death and growth found balance, maintaining relative harmony, we humans discovered ways of subverting nature while destroying our life support system. Simultaneously, we have been dispatching culture and turning ourselves into binary anonymity. Where we used to be a family, community, town, village, state, or country, we are quickly approaching that of being nothing.

Not that any of that really has relevance here, as the larger issue is why we ever believed that the proliferation of information was going to act as a great equalizer by making the wider distribution of knowledge something empowering. Greater access has had the contrary effect in exposing the depth of the individual’s proclivities towards debased idiocy. Collectively, we pander to the lowest common denominator in the name of individual choice under the guise of freedom. We are bullshitting ourselves at the expense of our continued existence but are rendered too narrow-minded to understand our predicament. A dismal situation indeed.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Dismal Nitch in Washington

Caroline’s and my situation, on the other hand, is anything but dismal when I consider that we have options, can travel, read, write, explore our minds, develop skills, and contemplate the deeper corners of the ocean, the cosmos, and our emotions I realize our inventory of wealth is overflowing. We continuously try to build bridges with everyone and everything we encounter. While I have embraced our deterritorialization on a path to better knowing our world without any personal allegiance to any particular state, we are at the same time cultivating a global reterritorialization where we work to develop a kindred spirit with everyone. Our path doesn’t see us fading into dematerialization and nothingness as we do not lead a passive life of observation but are out here trying to find the things we do not know, understand, or fully comprehend. On occasion, we stumble into the profound and magical, dressed in moments of love that bring sunshine to the most dismal of days.