Backyard Drama

 

There is a reason that this fine specimen of a buck will likely go loveless during this fall mating season.  The reason?  This fellow who is also waiting patiently for the same doe:

Yes, the two pictures were shot on the same day, a few seconds apart.

Advent, 2010

Advent begins on Sunday, 28 November, which hardly seems possible.  Isn't there a lot more autumn ahead of us?   I think what is throwing me off is the recent warm spell in Central Texas. It just doesn't "feel" like winter is upon us yet!  The weather prognosticators are predicting a cold front will roar through on Thanksgiving afternoon, so perhaps that will aid in the seasonal adjustment.

Trinity Church Wall Street has for several years produced an online Advent Calendar which they offer freely to everyone.  The calendar can be accessed daily and can be embedded on blogs and web sites.  I discovered the Trinity calendar last year and found it a good devotional tool and I am happy to share it with others.  Access the Trinity calendar at this address:

Trinity Wall Street Advent Calendar

Blessed Advent!

The Colors of Autumn

One of the most colorful events of autumn I have ever experienced is a cranberry harvest, the time when the bogs are flooded and the berries separated from the scrubby bushes they grew on.  The berries rise to the top of the water in an explosion of color that rivals the foliage surrounding the bogs.

The best place I have found to marvel at the riot of crimson is Carver, Massachusetts, a town settled by liberated slaves, and the best time for observing the harvest from the dry shoreline is Columbus Day weekend.  

First the bog is flooded by a system of locks and dams.

Then a contraption that looks like a giant tricycle is run through the bog, releasing the berries from the bushes where they have been growing all summer.

At first there are only a few berries that slowly float to the top as the harvester steers through the bog.

As the labor continues, more and more berries appear.

 

 Slowly the flooded bog looks less like a pond and more like an artist's palate.

 

 The bog changes right before your eyes.

Who ever thought that cranberries are simply red?  In fact they are crimson, pink, white, and every shade of red in between.

As you watch the palate evolve before your eyes, slight currents in the water flow through the berries making pictures that move.

Performance art in nature!

Click on any of the pictures for a larger view, and you can almost see the picture change before your eyes.

Early Winter? Detour to Cape Cod?

When you look at these pictures, it is easy to imagine a winter snow scene.  Or even a visit to the Cape Cod National Seashore just down from Provincetown.  

 

In fact, this is the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico, the world's largest gypsum dune field, aka White Sands National Monument.

We detoured to White Sands after leaving Ruidoso, wending our way back to the El Paso Airport by a circuitous route, and we were glad we did so.  The area is both unique and impressive.  And we were also glad that there were no missile firings on the day of our visit.  The monument is closed when there are "activities"  at the nearby White Sands Missile Base.

 

The gypsum of White Sands (hydrous calcium sulfate) comes from a dessicating lakebed to the west, with the wind producing the dunes usually seen at a seashore.  These are "active"  dunes, moving as much as 30 feet per year.  The movement comes as the wind blows the sand into a dune, which gets higher and higher, making the leading edge of the dune (the slipface) steeper and steeper.  Finally the force of gravity pulls the dune down, now a little farther to the east than when the movement started, and the entire cycle begins again.

The area averages about 10 inches of precipitation each year, which makes it even more astounding that the dunes sustain substantial animal and plant life.

Some plants have learned to adapt to the harsh conditions by quickly growing an elongated stem when a windstorm has buried the plant under a ton of sand.  The plant literally digs itself out.

How I long to return to this magnificent area at dawn and at dusk, when shadows play over the dunes!

A Journey Back in Time

Perusing one of the tourist brochures of the Ruidoso region, this entry caught our attention:

Lincoln is a village forgotten by time. Its only street is lined with adobe homes and

buildings dating from its colorful and often violent past. There are no

gas stations or convenience stores in Lincoln, and only one public

telephone. It wasn't always so peaceful. Gunshots, some fired by the

infamous outlaw Henry McCarty alias William H.Bonney (Billy the Kid)

often echoed in the surrounding hills during Lincoln's territorial days.

Today's visitors can see the Old Lincoln County Courthouse Museum and

walk in the footsteps of Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, and other

characters of the Old West--famous or obscure. Because it looks much as

it did a century ago, it isn't hard to picture the Kid's escape from the

courthouse jail, the shootouts, and the more peaceful inhabitants taking

cover as bullets flew.

So we decided to drive over and check it out for ourselves.  Enjoy the images! You can click on any image to enlarge it on your screen.

Serendipity

The first family in American art for many years has been the clan begun by N.C. Wyeth, an accomplished artist best known for illustrations in children’s books.  N.C. Wyeth’s greatest contribution to American art, however, was surely his children whom he mentored and their children still active today.  We had no expectation of encountering the Wyeth circle on our trip to New Mexico, and the encounter came about in an unusual way.

N.C. Wyeth’s famous son, Andrew Wyeth, is one of the best-loved American artists of the twentieth century.  We visited the Farnsworth Museum http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/wyeth-center in Maine several times while we lived in New England, a wonderful little museum with a renowned collection of works by the Wyeth family.  Though the Wyeths are especially associated with New England and Pennsylvania, where Andrew lived and worked for most of his life, one member of the family went west.  Henrietta Wyeth, sister of Andrew, and also a student of her father, met the dashing West Point graduate Peter Hurd, who came to N.C. Wyeth for art instruction.  Later Henrietta and Peter married, and they returned to Peter’s native New Mexico, where they lived and worked for the rest of their lives.

Years ago my father purchased an original lithograph by Peter Hurd which I have now had since his death.  Though Peter Hurd never achieved the fame of his brother in law Andrew, he remains one of the important western artists still today.  Which brings us to our “discovery” on a trip to the western village of Lincoln, New Mexico, the last stronghold of the notorious Billy the Kid.

While driving from Ruidoso to Lincoln we whizzed by a road marked “Peter Hurd Loop,” made a hasty U turn and drove into a dusty village (no paved roads) called San Patricio, and arrived at the La Rinconda Gallery http://www.wyethartists.com/ .  There we met a chatty curator with a vague personal relationship with Michael Hurd, the son of Peter and Henrietta, and while we roamed the galleries displaying prints and paintings of the Wyeth clan, Michael himself came in and introduced himself.

There had been no mention of La Rinconda in the tourist brochures we consulted, so we chalked this encounter up solely to serendipity.  As was this parish church in San Patricio, a pure and simple example of New Mexico church architecture.

Pistachios

If anyone had asked, I would have said that pistachios come from California, like almost every other agricultural crop (avocados, strawberries, marijuana, etc.) On this trip we learned that pistachios also come from New Mexico!

Imagine our surprise, driving through the high plains—mountains still ahead of us—to spot an orchard by the road, right there in the desert. Row after row of pistachio trees ran right up to the highway, with roadside businesses hawking the bounty of the arid countryside.

This discovery called for a stop—a good thing. How could we have missed the world’s largest pistachio?

And what treasures the vendors had to tempt the weary traveler? Pistachios with chile pepper seasoning, habanero popcorn, and most surprising of all, lollipops with a genuine stinging scorpion embedded in the solidified high-fructose corn syrup! The desert is indeed full of bounty if one only knows where to look.

A Visit to New Mexico

Thirty four years ago in August, 1976, we went to a new resort for our honeymoon—the Inn of the Mountain Gods, located in the ancestral home of the Mescalero Apaches, just outside Ruidoso, New Mexico.  This week, to celebrate Noreen’s birthday, we returned to the Inn to see if the facility and the environs had improved over what we experienced then.  The short answer is that everything was better even than we had remembered it.

One can have no doubt why this region was sacred to the Mescaleros.  Driving out of El Paso the traveler sees mile after mile of desert, displaying every shade of grey and brown.  Leaving Alamogardo, however, the road begins to climb, the hills turn into mountains, and green replaces brown.  Then you catch a glimpse of Sierra Blanca, the 12,000 foot peak (site of the downhill area Ski Apache) which presides over these lands.  The effect is magical indeed.

The modest buildings of the Inn of the Mountain Gods have been replaced by a new facility situated so that Sierra Blanca is always visible from the huge picture windows, changing in appearance during the hours of the day as the sun rises in the sky and as clouds move by. 

We dined looking at Sierra Blanca, and we left our bedroom drapes open to glance at it when we were in our room.  One day we drove to the base of Ski Apache and hiked up onto the mountain to experience it that way as well.

 We ran each morning across the lake from the hotel in the foothills of Sierra Blanca, and one morning were treated to a small herd of elk grazing on our trail through the woods.  We learned later that the Mescaleros have a herd of approximately 4200 elk that they manage in the tribal lands.  One night we tried a tenderloin of elk for dinner (verdict: sweet and delicious).

One memory from 1976 was the discovery of a sweet little church in the woods—the Church of the Holy Mount—so we decided to seek it out on this trip.  The church is still there, though somewhat enlarged, and now with the town of Ruidoso all around it.  The view of Sierra Blanca over the altar is still as breathtaking as we had remembered it.  No wonder the legend over the front door of the church is from the Psalms:  “I will lift my eyes to the hills.”

Inside the church we found a new addition—a wooden statue of San Miguel, carved by a local artist.  The sculptor rendered his own local vision of Revelation 12:9—the “satan”  whom San Miguel is vanquishing is a western rattlesnake, whose eyes are fixed squarely on those who come to view the sculpture.

More of our “finds”  to follow.