BurningbirdNow, what was there about a mountain and my name, and not pestering nice people?
Oh, yes. I had somewhere else I was supposed to be, now. I have a book to write. I have some friends I’m helping. There’s a hundred hikes with my name on them, and I am not packing my computer when I go. And I dropped my sense of humor somewhere recently, and have to go back to look for it.
Ta Friends.
Better crumbs to leave behind me than notes on comment spammers.
Two little boys in a square in San Antonio, hiding behind their coats pretending to be pigeons that they chase from the square.
An exercise in light one night when I was playing around.
I walked in the meadows last weekend, a dark day with a cold wind blowing and I stood on top of a hill and looked all around me. There was no other person in sight, not a car nor a plane. Just me and the wind and a storm on the horizen and the desolation of the trees and the meadows in winter.
We should seek to preserve our areas of desolation: in this day of forced cheerfulness and among the bright neon markings of the human animal, desolation is our most endangered beauty.
I wrote a poem. Just be glad I’m not publishing it online.
There is nothing more beautiful than a leafless tree.
Except for the joy of simple things, like putting your coat over your head, pretending to be a bird.
Update:
My deepest thanks to Mark Woods for highlighting the Colonias of Texas, home to children no different than the ones playing as birds shown in this posting.
The desolation of a browned meadow, with a hint of new growth come Spring, or a lonely mountain top or leafless tree is beautiful; the desolation of a people trapped into a disposable worker class for the benefit of companies such as Wal-Mart, or lured into our country to fuel a new military made up of volunteers desperate for citizenship, is not.
Saturday’s weather was warm and mild for this time of year, as I set out to visit the Falls at Johnson Shut-Ins, and then Elephant Rocks on the way back. As I drove out to the Shut-Ins, I kept my eye out for the MDOT sign that proclaimed that this next mile I would drive would be cleaned up by the fine folks of the Ku Klux Klan. I couldn’t find it where it was supposed to be, on Highway 21 just north of the intersection with Highway 8. I guess someone had taken it down again.
Signs aplenty, though; yard after yard along the way with green and white signs saying, “Jesus”, handed out by one of the local churches. Not to mention all the homes in Iron Country proudly flying the Confederate Flag.
The water in the Shut-Ins was high and they were particularly beautiful that day, with the mix of running water and frozen ice. There was family exploring about and it was pleasant walking here and there and listening to their good natured chatter. Once the father stepped in front of me when I was lining up a photo and then apologized for ruining the picture. I told him he didn’t ruin it, he was acting as an unpaid model. He liked that, went to tell his kids he was a model.
It was late when I got to the Elephant Rocks, with only a couple of cars in the parking lot. There was this old woman walking around the lot using a walker, just circling about. When she passed me, she smiled, wished me a good day as she continued her dedicated circling.
Out among the rocks I passed one couple as they were leaving, but there was no one else about, which is unusual for the Rocks. It was a beautiful day, too — sunny and cold and the late afternoon light looked nice against the red granite with their streaks of green lichen.
At the overlook I heard what sounded like voices ahead of me and when I turned the corner there was a man standing behind one of the boulders. I thought he was speaking with someone but he could have been peeing in the shelter of the rocks. I averted my eyes just in case, not wanting to embarrass him. While I was admiring the view of the valley, he passed me, wishing me good day with a nice smile.
A bit later I ran into him again as he was standing on the path looking at some of the rocks. As I passed he pointed out where the granite work had stopped and mentioned that the quarry played out when most of what was left was granite that was too soft. I said that he sounded very knowledgeable about the quarry and he replied that he’d worked with rock at one time.
Later when I was taking photos around the Elephant Rock formation, I could see his feet beneath the overhanging rocks, hear him walking about, but he didn’t say anything, just looked about and moved on.
Finally it was getting cold and late and I left, heading on the trail past the old quarry lake. The man was there and smiled again and seemed pleasant enough. I stopped to look at the Lake like I always do and we fell into a conversation.
He said he’d been at quarries all over the country — liked to walk among them. He pointed out that the lake below us was only about 40 feet deep, but one up in Wisconsin was over 400 feet. He asked where I lived and when I told in St. Louis, near Webster Groves, he mentioned that he’s spoken at the college there once. I asked if he was a teacher or a researcher or something and he paused and said, no, he worked with the homeless, with people who were in trouble.
People who were in trouble, I do remember him using that phrase.
He was about my height, stocky, wearing an old fashioned wool hunter’s coat and seemed like new hat. He had deeply brown eyes, I remember that. Beautiful brown eyes, and dark brown hair to match. His hands were tough, like he’d been working in dirt lately, and there was an old, old twisted gold ring on his wedding finger.
He said he was from Chicago, but he lived all over now — going wherever he was needed. Said that the kids in St. Louis needed him now, they were killing each other with drugs and hate. I asked who he worked with and he named a minister’s name, but I didn’t recognize it.
He was pleasant to talk to but it was getting cold, so I bid him good-bye and headed down the path. He turned to me, looked at me intently as I started walking away and said, “You be careful now.”
When I got back to the parking lot, I noticed that my car was the only one in the lot. There was no one else around, and the only place close to the park was the trailer for the park manager. I wondered if he was a friend of the manager’s, but there was no cars there, either.
As I got into the car and prepared to leave, I noticed him walking down from the path into the parking lot, hands in his pocket, walking without any hurry. I pulled out slowly, looking at him in my rearview mirror as I drove away. He didn’t head for the trailer but headed out the way I was leaving, to the road leaving the park. However he got there, he didn’t get there by car.
I found myself almost circling back to offer him a lift, but didn’t. It was not in my nature to not offer a helping hand, but I just kept going.
I left San Diego at a reasonable time Christmas day and ran into the storm in the hills that ended up causing the southern California mud slides. Along the way I could see the extensive fire damage, so am not surprised at the slides. Visibility was extremely poor, but aside from the heart stopping moment rounding a corner and coming up on a car stopped dead in the freeway lane, no problems.
In fact weather Thursday and Friday was beautiful, as I made my way first to Tucson, and then the long, long trip to San Antonio.
I put my faith in digital magic on this trip, using Mapquest to get directions to all the places to stay, and using Hotwire to find the places. Thursday’s was a lovely one bedroom suite in Tucson, with a courtyard filled with palm and orange trees. Since I put a moratorium on tree photos for the nonce, you will not be treated with a photo of the palms, but I will share a photo of the view from my room’s balcony.
Friday, I read the Mapquest directions too literally and ended up somewhere past San Antonio. Thanks to two incredibly kind people I met up with at a small store I found, I was able to make my way back to the hotel with no problems, and had a lovely chat in the bargain. Social software is good, but only if there’s kind people to help you when you fall through the gaps between the bytes.
I am staying a couple of days at this incredibly funky place right next to Riverwalk, Tower of the Americas, and the Alamo: the Fairmont. It’s a 37 room historic hotel that’s been modernized, sort of. I have a one bedroom suite on the first floor facing on the ancient courtyard, with lovely, huge windows covered with antique wooden blinds in the living room and bedroom. Part of the furniture is modern, including one of those famous office chairs that cost a fortune, but the rest — mainly tables and side chairs — is old. Ceilings are 16 feet tall with wooden trim around everything; there’s a slightly musty smell in living room, a large marble bathroom with a scale, of all things, big bedroom with very comfy bed you can sink into, and I’m not sure how the heat works — but there’s a broadband connection skillfully threaded through the base of the antique lamp table. This is in addition to the wireless internet access in all of the common areas, including the little French courtyard.
It’s the combination of old and new that adds to the funk of the building. Not only that, but the place has a history. It was built in 1906 to be a railroad hotel. In 1985 Wyndham had the entire structure jacked up on wheels and moved several blocks over a period of 6 days, giving the hotel the Guinness Record for largest structure ever moved — all 3.2 million pounds of it.
The staff, like so many other people I’m finding in San Antonio are genuinely friendly and welcoming. I think I love it — the hotel and the city.
(The hotel is also extremely romantic, and my suite is much too large for one — something to keep in mind if you’re thinking of treating your significant other to a weekend in San Antonio; just make sure you can live with that combination of old and new — it is very different.)
This trip along I8 and I10 (or HI10 as they call it here in SA), was my Christmas gift to myself. I10 in particular is called the ‘lost interstate’ because it’s very isolated. What a joy to get away from the traffic and stress in California and to spend two days in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas desert and praire. Contrary to popular opinion, the desert country of these states is not plain and dull, but is, instead, beautiful in its austerity.
However, cutting the trip one day short and taking a direct route home to St. Louis tomorrow, rather than the roundabout ride through Baton Rouge. I’ve driven over 4000 miles in the last week, and I’m ready for home. For today, it’s the Riverwalk and the Alamo.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I have been reading about the snowstorm in New England, and hearing about snowfalls of several feet, which can take forever to recover from in cities; especially Boston with its narrow streets and parked cars. However, Boston is only three miles long and unless you’re heading across the river to Harvard, you can walk to work. In a couple of hours or so.
The snowstorm that struck the Midwest and the Northeast passed us by and we’ve had mild temperatures. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before we get hit, but we’ll take the mild weather and the beautiful sunsets for now.
However, we can’t have snow without a little poetry, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow agrees with me:
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.“Snow-Flakes”
Easier to find poetry about snow than about sunsets, as I found when I looked about. Other than:
Red sky in the morning,
sailor take warning.
Red sky at night,
sailor’s delight.
I think its because sunsets have their own beauty and anything to do with them – poetry, painting, or photography – is a given and a bit of a cheat. But I’ll take the cheat for now.
Of course, the sunset figures prominently into our fiction, particularly westerns. Cowboys would always ride off into the sunset when they’ve saved the day, which I thought was stupid.
I mean think about it: they ride in, get shot up, go against the bad guys 2 to 1, overcome against all odds, and just when the farmer’s daughter cries out, “My hero”, and we presume is feeling mighty grateful, the idiots ride off into the sunset.
I bet the horse had more sex. No wonder there’s no poetry about sunsets.
That’s not completely true, there are poems about sunsets. Emily Dickinson wrote a couple – she wrote on everything it seems – and I rather liked, “The Sunset Stopped on Cottages”:
The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Sunset hence must be
For treason not of His, but Life’s,
Gone Westerly, Today –The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Morning just begun –
What difference, after all, Thou mak’st
Thou supercilious Sun?
Tired of sunsets yet? Just be glad I didn’t publish the other ten photos I took tonight, because the sky did put on a lovely show. I grabbed my camera and ran down outside, fighting my cat at the door – me out, her in – before standing out on the deck in bare feet snapping pictures.
The neighbors are used to it: they think I’m nuts, and maybe I am. Am I of age to be eccentric yet?
Oh who cares. I spend too much time worrying about what people think of me when they see me puttering about, and most likely they don’t think of me at all (which is very liberating, let me say).
The sky is pretty and so are the trees, but yes I do need new subjects, which means I’ll have to go look for them. New things to write about, too. Good.
And on that note, I’ll end with JRR Tolkien:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.And whither then? I cannot say.
