Serendipity

Tonight was a night of serendipity, good karma, pure luck. I just happened to look out the window when the sky started going dark after a truly beautiful day, the kind of dark that hints at a good storm, and decided to go out for a look. Wow. What color in the east. What a glow on the painted desert on the other side of Interstate 40. Look at the white semi truck on the lower right for scale - this is one huge place.

Shot after shot and the sky continued to change color. How gorgeous. How could it get more gorgeous than this?

This is how. I turned around to go back in and this was in the west. I've often wished I could paint but no amount of talent could produce something like this. Look about a quarter of the way in from the left for a telephone pole on the horizon. That gives a clue to how large this configuration was.

I have never, in my entire life, seen a sunset like this. Which morphed to this.

And then to this.

Life is good. This is one of those things that makes my problems petty, that makes me very glad to be alive.

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Thought of the day:
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)

Blindsided

Grief is an assailant in the night, one that comes from nowhere, attacks with pitiless ferocity, and leaves you bleeding and gasping for breath.

I thought I'd kept a step ahead of my own personal demon, was living a life that filled me up with accomplishment, acceptance, friends, challenges, and experiences I never knew existed. I thought I'd done a pretty good job of leaving that other life behind like an already-read book that wasn't worth carrying along on the rest of the journey. I thought I was making progress and maybe I was, but the assailant took a mighty swing at me last week and took me to my knees.

A friend asked to see my house, the one I still co-own in Washington state, and I had no idea I would be blindsided. There was my house on Google Earth, with our motorhome in the drive, waiting to be sold "due to divorce" as he phrased the Craigs List ad (and left town so I could be the one to deal with all the lookers). There were the two raspberry patches that I weeded and tied up and harvested buckets of berries from. There were the apple trees that I picked bushels from, then peeled and cut and canned for days and days. There was the indestructible rhubarb that produced gorgeous stalks from spring to fall. There was the multitude of rhododendrons that I pruned and shaped. There was the grass I cut all the time I was killing myself at our bakery. There was the insidious English ivy that I tried and failed to eradicate. I saw all this in about fifteen seconds of looking at the computer screen. I saw two and a half years of living in that house and I was knocked flat.

I've shown people the interior of the house, too, especially the kitchen that we finished remodeling about six weeks before I learned my life would inexorably change. I loved that kitchen and seeing the photos I took of it before, during, and after the remodel always makes me sad. Sad because of the loss of what I expected my life to be, sad because I was so ignorant and trusting that I never saw it coming, sad because it was perfect but it was a veneer over rot. But it was seeing the house and the yard and the gleam of the canal from the air that took me down. It was a tsunami of anger, sadness, hatred, and bitterness more vile than I could imagine. I felt like stone, red-hot and nearly immobilized, and could do nothing but sit and cry.

I hate with fierce passion the control this situation still has over me. When I said to my friend that I'd told the ex-husband some time ago that I got it, that I understood why he did what he did, and that I forgave him for it, all my friend said was that I was still bitter. He was right. I don't know how forgiveness works after all. I thought I could will it but I can't. I don't know how to walk this path with heart I thought I was so firmly on. I don't know where to go from here but the only way that seems open is forward. I guess that's where I'll go.

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Thought of the day:
Perhaps I am stronger than I think. (Thomas Merton)

I lost my job, my dog died, and my wife ran off with my best friend

People steal petrified wood from the park. They do. How much is up for speculation, but it happens. In the past the entire focus was theft prevention, dating back to the early days when Theodore Roosevelt declared the area a national monument in 1906 (it didn't achieve national park status until 1962). Tons of the stuff were carried off and legend has it logs were blasted with dynamite to release the beautiful crystals that were inside some of them. 

The author Edward Abbey worked at the park in 1961 for a few brief months before being fired for being a "wrench in the operation." He said his job consisted of sitting in the entrance booth for 8 hours at a time asking people if they had stolen petrified wood, and feeling like they were all lying to him.

It's true that the park was inhospitable to visitors for years, but the emphasis now is on making the park open, accessible, and welcoming. Still, a sign at each end of the park says vehicles are subject to inspection, a kind of "trust, but verify" philosophy.

Some folks all of a sudden remember a chunk that's made its way into the car, and they're found on the side of the road between the sign and the exit.

 

I've been out there where the stuff lies thick on the ground, I've seen these truly beautiful and unique marvels of nature, and I understand why people want to take one home. 

Sometimes the pieces that make it out of the park also make their way back home. I was in the post office one day and saw this box, a lot worse for wear, waiting for someone to pick it up.

 

The box was already open on one corner, so I took a better look. Not the most gorgeous piece I've ever seen, but apparently attractive enough for someone to take home.

 The returnees are often accompanied by a letter. I don't know about this one; maybe the sender thought the note on the box was enough. 

The park keeps all the letters. There are at least a couple of boxes of them, and I sorted through some scans to find a good one. Many, many of them tell tales of bad luck coming in waves since the wood came into their possession. Here's one that's a typical account, sounding like a bad country music song:

If you absolutely have to have some, just buy a piece in the gift shop or from any of the vendors along the road. Stolen petrified wood is bad juju. 

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Thought of the day: 
A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. (Carolyn Wells)

Never, ever pass up fry bread

In a panicky flurry of day-tripping a few weeks ago to see all the places I'd put off, I made the return visit to Canyon de Chelly that I'd promised myself. The first time I went I didn't have the time or the water or the shoes for a hike into the canyon to see White House, but the second time I was prepared.

This trip was made on Highway 12, which crosses from Arizona to New Mexico and back to Arizona across Navajo land, and it got me wondering if there is a blah stretch of landscape anywhere in this part of the state. If so, I haven't seen it yet. I'm so grateful that there are usually wide shoulders to on which to pull over because otherwise, I'll tell you, I'd be sorely tempted to stop right in the lane with an eye on the rear view mirror. How could anyone pass up views like this?

Wild horses, I think. They're all over the area.

Knowing I was on Navajo land got me thinking about fry bread, and lo and behold, at the intersection of 12 and somewhere, there was a food truck selling just that. You betcha I stopped.

  

No turkey legs for me but plenty of people lined up behind me ordered them (at 8 bucks a pop!) and must have depleted the supply because by the time I left the sign was down.

The young woman forming the bread allowed me to photograph her tossing the dough into discs just like pizza makers used to do.

The discs were slapped into the grease in the pan over the gas burner one at a time and a short time later this is what I got for ten thin dimes. Yes, just one dollar for this most delicious fresh, hot disc of fry bread. I went back and bought another, which I definitely should not have done.

After eating way too much of the second piece I headed directly to the canyon just down the road. After nearly two pieces of fry bread... well, I had to try to work them off.

The trail is three miles round trip and in one of those weird circumstances that makes so sense whatsoever, it was much harder going down than coming up. From the rim, the trail looks somewhat steep but at least smooth - but they are faking you out.

This is what the trail really looks like, except this section is fairly level. Somehow it was easier to navigate the loose rocks leaving the canyon than it was going in.

Once on the canyon floor, a big disappointment was finding a fence all around the ruins. I know better than to climb all over but apparently enough other people do not, and a five-foot fence was the only way to get the message across.

I suppose the same ladders used to climb to the upper section were used to carve the petroglyphs.

The dark streaks are desert varnish, a mineral that's deposited slowly and often serves as canvas for rock art.

You can see how the upper level is somewhat protected from the elements.

This line of eroded rock was about thirty feet off the ground and interesting because of the stones piled up in a couple of the holes. Who? Why?

I met a nice young woman on the climb out, a traveling nurse from Alaska who was sightseeing before beginning her first assignment. She took this ever-so-flattering picture of me in all my sartorial splendor. In my world, dressing appropriately for the activity and dressing anywhere near fashionably are mutually exclusive conditions.

 

I expected to feel the spiritual 'pow' at White House that I've felt in other places, but didn't. Maybe it's like any other thing you expect to find or look for too hard - love, happiness, fulfillment -- whatever is missing in your life and think you desperately need to have right now - it's never where you think it should be. Just live, and it'll show up when you're ready. Maybe, probably, when and where you least expect it.

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Thought of the day:

It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations. (Danny Boyle)

Alley pickin'

Petrified Forest is the only national park to host a section of the Mother Road, Route 66. For the longest time it freaked me out that walkable sections of it appeared in two widely separated sections of the park, and what seemed to me to be at right angles to each other. I don't know how long it took me to figure out the road through the park has a switchback at the north end, so the park road touches Interstate 40 and Route 66 twice. Anyway, the section on the north end is close to where I call home and I walk it every once in a while. On that end of the park, it skirts the Painted Desert on the east for a short while and then goes off cross country.

Where 66 appears farther to the south in the park there's a faint, grassed-over depression in the earth, and with your imagination you can see the ghost of the old highway, but on the section in the north, pavement intermingles with gravel areas and is kept clear of weeds by vehicular traffic from park staff who use the road for one reason or another.

Between the road and the Painted Desert lies what I first thought was the park landfill; a couple of acres of trash surprised the heck out of me the first time I wandered out there because it was such an anomaly for an organization that's dedicated to preserving natural resources. Then I found out there used to be a lion farm, The Painted Desert Park and Zoo of Native Animals, which held a motley collection of wild critters. It had no association with the park but the owner was trying to make a living by capitalizing on its proximity to Route 66. When the government bought the property in the late 1950s and razed the whole mess a short time later, the trash got left behind and what a scavenger hunt it has turned out to be. Bottles, cans, hubcaps, pop bottle tops, dishes, all kinds of good junk. Lots of the glassware is broken and when you think it's been half a century since the place closed down, it's amazing that anything breakable is unbroken. Many pieces look like this,

 and are found in areas that look like this, piles o' trash:

 so when intact items show up, with lids even,

or little treasures like this bottle with the stepped, deco-looking sides, it's a pleasant surprise.

 

Intact Coke bottles are ubiquitous.

Broken dishware abounds; I've found the remains of a few different sets.

Consider a stroll through the area if you're in need of car parts. I don't guarantee good condition, but they're there, like this hubcap from a Hudson, maybe,

a fender skirt from who knows what,

or a mud flap. I don't know that I've ever seen a metal one before.

People's food preparation habits are in evidence, as shown by this two-course meal,

and the bowl used to mix something or other.

Extracurricular activities like photography,

adding to one's seashell collection (in the desert?),

or playing a game of marbles are represented.

But here's my favorite find so far. How long has it been since you've seen a LePage's glue bottle, and intact to boot? It made my day.

A gorgeous morning with the sun at my back, and I couldn't resist looking taller. But tell me, does this shadow make my butt look big?

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Thought of the day:
Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party. (Jimmy Buffet)