Watercolor Desert

I awoke to rain this morning and it has been raining all day. This has been a steady drizzle coming from a seamless gray sky. My usual landmarks; the Sandia Mountains and the Jemez Mountains those other mountains and mesas farther away, are invisible in the opaque mist. It is a little disorienting. The world seems closed in. The birds have all taken refuge somewhere…wherever birds go.  The only sounds are the dull white-noise of the drizzling rain and the staccato of the water falling off the roof through the canales…those boxy channels that drain water off of flat roofs in the desert southwest.  I have two large rain barrels that produce a low drumming sound…I can tell that they are full to capacity. They say we might have more intense storms this afternoon.

This is our monsoon season, the only wet and cloudy season we have. We have been in serious drought the last few years but this year, thanks to El Nino, we are making up for it. I don’t know how our rainy season will affect the long-term drought but we are closing in on the record for rainy years.  This is my first full experience with the monsoon season. I moved here a year ago and only saw a little of it -- mostly the spectacular lightning storms that put on a big show but didn’t offer up much rain. This year it has been more rain than lightning. Albuquerque, some fifteen miles south of where I live, had a recent urban flash flood that stranded cars and prompted heroic rescues of stranded drivers and pedestrians.  I heard that Phoenix had a similar situation. My only crisis is trying to walk out to the road to retrieve my mail. My road is only partially paved…what actual pavement it once had is mostly a memory.  There is a slight depression that collects about six inches of water and turns my mailbox into an island.  I pull on my rubber boots and galumph out to the mailbox and try not to slip on the wet mud.  Usually the mail isn’t worth collecting and certainly not worth taking a bath.

The one thing that I wish I could convey is how the desert smells in the rain. I am surrounded by sage, chamisa and saltbush that grow wild. In my front walled courtyard I have a small honeysuckle thicket and Pyracantha and Russian Sage along with desert willow and Mexican Bird of Paradise and trumpet vine. Everything puts out its small contribution to the rainy desert smells. There is a Pinyon pine just over the wall that makes a bigger contribution.   Only the Russian Sage and honeysuckle and trumpet vine are showing blooms. Everything else is bloomed out but the plants still have a scent in the rain. There is no wind today so it all just hangs in the air. It is all very subtle and very pleasant.

 

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd...“

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…“   My apologies…I’m no Walt Whitman. He was writing about the death of Abraham Lincoln almost 150 years ago. One hundred fifty years is a long time but some of those lilacs or roses or daffodils are still out there long after the dooryard fell into decay. The folks who lived behind the door and planted the roses were laid to rest many years ago…generations ago. They were pioneers. They moved into a new land and tried to put down roots. Some survived and prospered…or at least made a go of it. Others tried and failed.


If you are a rambler out in the world you sometimes come across what remains of an old homestead. Maybe there will be a stone foundation. Maybe there will only be telltale corner stone blocks. The wood is gone. It might have fallen into decay or carried away by fire or storms or by people who needed an extra couple of of boards because that new baby or grandma needed a room.  Maybe there is a chimney. Often the garden remains.


I am fascinated by these old places. I once stumbled upon a relic of an old homestead totally overgrown in the Missouri woods.  What caught my eye was the large patch of daffodils blooming out where they don’t belong.  On further inspection there was an ancient scrubby lilac budding out nearby. The daffodils had gone back to nature and spread well beyond their original allotted space. The old Lilac was struggling in the shade but this was spring and it was doing its best. Most of it was dead but it had good roots. It was obediently standing guard where it was planted.  There was a rough stone foundation nearby.  A few yards away there was a small pile of logs and boards and rusted parts of a wagon wheel. The wagon was inside the barn when it collapsed. I always wonder what the story was. Maybe it’s a simple tale of boom and bust. People pick up and move to better places. But why leave the wagon in the barn?  Maybe it was disease…like the Spanish Flu or cholera or something else. I wonder how long ago the place was deserted. The nails were square…hand made. That puts it back a long way.  Maybe someone lived here during the Civil War era. Maybe he didn’t come home and she moved away. It is an unknown story.




I’ve hiked a few trails in the Missouri Ozarks and come across other lone chimneys standing out in the forest. Sometimes there are rose bushes overgrown into large thickets nearby. I wonder about the farm wife who took the trouble to plant the roses. Did she bring them with her? My mom would have done that. Whenever she moved she would take cuttings and have the same roses at her new place. It brought a sense of continuity.  Some of those old fireplaces are roughly made but others are made of cut stone and are nicely constructed. Somewhere there was a stone cutter and a stone mason close by.




In Big Bend National Park there is a ruined house sitting in a slope over the Rio Grande River. This was the home of a cotton farmer who chopped out a living in the heat and sand, blessed by the river water. This family had one of the southern-most homes in the country. Mexico literally loomed over them from the cliffs across the river.  They made a living there for a while but eventually they moved away. lt was a long way to market.  Only the ruined walls and some broken glass shards remain.





I’ve seen some others out here in the desert where I live now. Some of these are old tumble down adobe structures. Here they are not overgrown…they just melt away. There are ruins of buildings made of stone. I’m not talking about the Pueblo ruins that are scattered across the southwest. They have their own stories and mysteries. Sometimes you will find something, maybe an old shepherd’s shelter or an abandoned farmstead. I recall seeing stagecoach stations sitting roofless and with gaping windows and doors. Somebody made a life out of those places.



Sometimes you might find something you don’t understand.  Some of those people of past generations left a message behind for someone to find. Maybe we can figure it out, like this one: a religious sign left by a Spanish shepherd.









The Indian stone markings are harder to fathom. The ancient Pueblo people kept Macaws that they obtained through trade with people in Mexico. Sometimes you will see an engraved image of an odd looking bird. Other images are not so easily identifiable.





 
On my most recent ramble, out among the volcanoes just west of Albuquerque, I came across an unusual man-made assembly of stones. These were purposefully collected and laid out in a certain way. It looked like a grave, except it was too small, only about thirty inches long. Maybe it was a grave for a small child or infant. I didn’t disturb it – I didn’t want to know if that was what it was. But it seemed more like a marker for something else: An attempt to mark the spot for some reason. This place is so remote that people don’t often come this way and I was way off the usual trail. This is part of Petroglyph National Monument, a place where local Indians left hundreds of engraved drawings on the volcanic blocks of basalt. There is a long tradition of leaving messages at this place. The stone marker was not recently made; these stones have been here for a long while, maybe centuries. I took a couple pictures and sent them to the local National Park office that has jurisdiction over the volcanoes. They responded that they were unaware of it or what it could be and would have a resource person go out and investigate. I haven’t heard back. I’m still wondering and maybe they won’t have an answer. I’m really hoping it’s not a child’s grave.

 

Let's Hope This Doesn't Get Outta Hand...

“Let’s Hope This Doesn’t Get Outta Hand….” A local resident expressed hope during a time of despair.  I’m reading the news.  I guess most people have heard about the shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent rioting and other shootings in and around Ferguson, Missouri. I was raised there but lived just outside Ferguson. My backyard fence was the city limit. We were sort of sandwiched between Ferguson and Dellwood , two of almost 100 municipalities that make up the St. Louis suburbs. Back in the 1950s there were thousands of families moving out from St. Louis into the new suburban subdivisions. We moved in 1953. Sometimes this is called “White Flight” but much of it was actually pent up housing expansion for young families after the return of the soldiers after WW-II. There was a tremendous housing shortage and a baby boom going on so there had to be this explosion of new housing.  At the same time there was an influx of rural Black families coming up from the South looking for the very same things that those young White families wanted: a decent home, good schools and jobs. We had Cub Scouts and little league parades down Chambers Road.  We borrowed a local farmer’s wheat field for ball games.  Our parents were busy with BBQ and PTA and crab grass control. Most of the dads were gone all day, working in St. Louis. Most of the moms stayed home. The new interstate that cut a swath through the neighborhoods of north St. Louis meant that it was an easy commute if you worked downtown.  Those neighborhoods were irreparably damaged but it was all in the name of progress.  The southern Black families were moving in there anyway so the concept of ‘neighborhood’ was pretty much irrelevant to the city planners.  With the new highways, more White families discovered they could live farther out from the city and still commute to work. The city was bruised and hemorrhaging but during the 1960s, when other American cities erupted in riots and racial violence, St. Louis was mostly quiet.

Back up in the northern suburbs things were going along just fine. The baby boom overwhelmed the school system so there were too many kids in the classrooms but new schools were being built. The dads had other job opportunities. McDonnell-Douglas (later Boeing) had a huge facility over by the airport so many dads didn’t even have to go into the city.  More jobs moved out of the city into the suburbs.  Things were just fine….hunky-dory.

I can recall one year I had a birthday party at the Ferguson municipal swimming pool. This was in a nice, well-manicured park with a big fishing lake with ducks swimming around.  We would go there for picnics or to fish but this swimming party was a little odd…it only happened once and I only went to that pool one other time. I recall my mom saying that the pool was for Whites only; Blacks were not allowed at the pool. This was probably around 1958 or so and is the only example I can recall of ever encountering a segregated facility.  I remember feeling awkward about it and perhaps that is one reason why I didn’t spend time in that pool but I wasn’t much of a swimmer either so it wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do.  Ferguson was all White as was Dellwood and my neighborhood and most neighborhoods as far as I could walk. There were no Black kids in my school and no black families at my church.

Over on the other side of Ferguson somewhere was Kinloch, a historically black community that had been there for generations – probably since the Civil War.  Kinloch was a place unto itself – it was as if a southern Black community was picked up by a tornado and dropped in the middle of St. Louis County. It was not an urban Black community by any means.  People had little frame houses. Streets were sort of paved. Everyone had a little garden plot and maybe some chickens. It had a matriarchal social structure and culture. There were a few ladies who seemed like they ran the place. I know that one lady, at least, carried a pistol. That was a different world…almost a different planet from where we were.

Our street and close neighborhood was unincorporated and patrolled by the St. Louis County Police…but we never saw them.  There was seldom any reason for a police presence. We would walk about a mile to the West Florissant and Chambers road intersection where there was a A&P store and some strip malls. That was in Dellwood.  There was a Ben Franklin store where we would go to buy penny candy. I liked those paper strips with the colored sugar dots and you could get a strip for two cents.  They had lik-m-ade, which was sort of like eating Kool-Aid out of the package. Your face and lips would be brightly colored depending on the flavor you got.  They also had some exotic Dutch candy there that we could get sometimes -- Whoa…weren’t we sophisticated.  Candy cigarettes were always popular. The old lady that ran the store was sure we were shoplifters and would follow us around the store and sometimes she had other old ladies who would do the job for her. We never took anything but she was convinced that we were all little thieves.

Dellwood didn’t have police…they had Cops. These guys had a sort of swagger and attitude that the County police didn’t exhibit. I recall one time they brought my brother home after some sort of horseplay got out of hand. They were not bullies but not friendly, either. One time I volunteered as a Boy Scout to help locate a stray dog that people thought was rabid (right…send the kids out). We met at the Dellwood police station and were given walkie-talkies to report back if we saw the dog. While we were waiting, the Cop decided it was a good time to demonstrate to the assembled kids his ability to suppress and overpower an adversary and he selected me as his dummy.  It was not an enjoyable experience.  I had no encounters with Ferguson police.  At the time, Ferguson seemed more civilized than Dellwood…it had that nice park.

I grew up and moved away from my neighborhood in the 1970s. I was a public welfare caseworker for several years and would come back to visit some of the poorest families in the area. That's when I became familiar with Kinloch and the pistol-packing matriarch. I respected her and I was always treated well.  I moved out of St. Louis in 1976 and I really didn’t give the area much thought after that. I knew that it went through a gradual transition to a Black community but that was happening in a lot of “close-in” suburb municipalities. Some White families stayed and are still there. I know some that are still there. Things seemed to be okay on the surface…different but okay.

The police shooting of Michael Brown popped the cork in Ferguson and Dellwood and some other areas close by. So far, I think there have been two or three nights of rioting and looting and at least two other people shot.  Al Sharpton has made an appearance. People are trying to calm things down but there are small armed groups roaming around and causing trouble and the police are reacting with tear gas and SWAT teams. From the news stories, I don’t recognize the area. We never had a Wal-Mart when I was there. I don’t recognize the street names or the apartment complex names.  Some of the churches where meetings are being held sound familiar. If it was a poor neighborhood, riots and looting will make it even poorer. Businesses will move out and other businesses will not move in.

That local resident’s wish…“Let’s Hope This Doesn’t Get Outta Hand….” has blown away on the wind with the tear gas and the smoke from burning stores.  Perhaps things have been “outta hand” for a while.

The Black Box

I'm writing this just a few hours after learning that Robin Williams is dead.  Bear with me...I am stunned -- this is almost unbelievable.. This is such sad news that everyone is stunned...It's almost a national tragedy. There are countless expressions of shock and sorrow. He was a great talent and will be missed -- missed now when he (and his talent) is needed so desperately.


We only knew him through his public life and his performances. In his personal and most private life he was clearly not the same person. It is very early but it is widely assumed and reported that his death was suicide. He suffered from depression and was not able to overcome the darkness that obscured everything else. And yet he had so much talent. It is a mystery to me how the inner demons can inspire and fuel such great talent and artistry. He is not the only one....there are many examples of talented people who were privately (or sometimes publicly) tormented.


Another similar comedian, Jonathan Winters suffered from bipolar disorder and was institutionalized on two occasions. He is quoted as saying:  “These voices are always screaming to get out...They follow me around pretty much all day and night.”


Winters somehow managed to control his demons. The Black Box of depression consumed Robin Williams. We wonder how this could happen. Surely, we think,  if you or me or somebody had gotten to him today during his darkest time we could have made a difference. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work that way. Depression is private space where a person is totally alone....maybe even in a crowd of closest friends. I have never suffered from that kind of depression. I only flirted with it. I've been depressed, especially after my wife died. Profound grief is not the same as depression but I maybe can see some parallels and a person can die from grief. After a while it becomes almost a steady companion...not a friend but a familiar something that is always there, almost like a shadow but with a voice.


People suffer from grief and seem to get over it. Deep depression is not so easy to escape. There are pills and counseling but medication seems to make things different....not always better. Counseling  might work for some but not others. The Black Box is hard to break out of and I wonder if in depression, as in grief, it becomes sort of a companion -- a familiar presence that a person can almost bond with -- in an unhealthy way.  The strength of that bond might determine the outcome.


You know, commercial airplanes have a black box that memorizes and records things that can help explain what goes wrong or how things happen in flight. We hear about them usually in crash investigations but they are there, on the job, in every flight. Wouldn't it be nice if we had an internal black box that would allow us to inspect our own personal and private "flight" to see where things seem to be going wrong and make a course correction?  Sadly, we don't.


I wonder if a Van Gogh or a similarly tormented artist would give up the demons if it meant the end of their talent.  I have an acquaintance who prefers not to take their medication because they like the slightly demonized self better than the medicated one. So many talented people have succumbed to one addiction or another. Would their stars shine less bright if they didn't have the demons? I would not wish that on anyone....I'd gladly take the slightly dimmer world if it meant they could be healthy and break out of the Black Box.