Lizard

It was so cold and rainy in Campo, that I really could not bear to stay another minute. I had some painting I should have finished, but after 4 days of what would be NE March weather, I’m heading for the desert.

Down out of the wild jumble of boulders , the Laguna Mountains, and out onto the flat, warm desert. I aimed for Yuma to say hi to an old friend of Don’s and meet her new man, but they are off for a summer of RVing the next day, so I spend an hour with them and hit the road the next morning.

It’s in the 70’s, and clear and sunny and windy, just perfect. I pass through the endless flats of rocks and sand with only a few tough creosote bushes, the cocoa colored mountains in the distance. Where the great canals of Colorado River water cut through, there are huge hayfields and huge dairy operations, then it’s back to nothing. It occurred to me that although methane from cow poop worries some folks, they only mention the beef lots, or the pig lots, never these vast dairy herds. There must be thousands of cows at each milk factory, all merrily making cowploppers and methane, but milk is so sacred to our idea of food, that no one says a word. (That I hear, anyway).

Yuma has a lot of growing and packing facilities, once you get back from the highway and the endless snowbird campgrounds and subdivisions. Acres of hay, orange groves with airplane propellers on towers in case of frost. I wonder what it sounds like when they start them all up.

The last week in Campo was sort of a lesson for me. The other workampers left a week ahead of me, and so I was alone on the place during the week. I worked away at my jobs, cooked and ate my dinner, and watched TV. After a few days, I realized that I much prefer to have people around in the day time. I wasn’t scared or really lonely exactly, just missed talking and laughing and working with people. Bishop Berkeley* muttered darkly, “If I can’t see you, you can’t be you”. My mother used to say this. It is sort of a piece with the question:” If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” I mostly know who I am, and mostly like that, but after a few days of solitude I felt sort of indistinct, as though not being seen or heard made me fuzzy around the edges. I think it takes a mighty thinker, or perhaps a lunatic to be all alone for any length of time.

And yet, I’m very happy right here. Here is a place called Painted Rocks Petroglyph Site. It is just west of Gila Bend. Out in the middle of nowhere. A double jumble of basalt rocks had just the right amount of dark desert varnish to tempt the local pre historics into covering the south east side of the boulder pile with lizards and mazes and suns and more lizards and goats and what looks like a roadrunner. There is no minder here, and there are maybe 15 or 20 primitive sites to camp in for $4 with the old age pass.

I climbed around on the rocks taking pictures, and found that the other group looking there was REALLY annoying. There was one woman who was the guide, and spouted all sorts of stuff about the designs and the people who did them. We truly know very little about the people and have NO idea why they laboriously chipped all these creatures and designs into the rocks, but she knew it all, and told about asking a Navaho man about them that had the man in the maze T shirt on which she went on about inventively.

We are not supposed to have our dogs, but she brought hers, we aren’t supposed to climb all over the rocks, but she did and then the last straw, she called her dog and its name is Blessing Way. What a crock. Longing for the Noble Savage.

Anyway, they’re all gone now, and I’m here just soaking up the sun and warmth, and enjoying the quiet. Maybe that’s the difference. I came here for solitude, maybe for solace. I held the idea of being solo in the desert like this close while the bad days of September and November went by. And dreamed of it while I froze in TX, and ran my heater in NM. Last night in Yuma was the first time in what seems like a year that I slept with the windows all open, like a sleeping porch. Just what this camping machine was designed for. I took a nap sprawled on my bed, and have only a minimal amount of clothes on. Perfect. My lizard blood is finally hot enough to flow !

In the morning I squeezed out the last minutes of laptop battery and found there was a Geocache here, so the dog and I trooped off. Away from the “site”, were two more hillocks of basalt boulders, and the cache location showed me more petroglyphs on these “unofficial” hills. Not the crazy, dense concentration of the main site, but there they are. I suddenly started to look at any small hill of basalt rocks with a new eye: are there more petroglyphs there ? Is that where the Rosetta Stone of these mysteries might lie?

Happily back in Tucson now, at the best RV B&B in town, I’ve been in their pool twice, the windows are all wide open. Good!!!

Peeps

Marshmallow chicks, iconic, nearly tasteless, and fun to pull to bits.

I have mixed feelings about the confectionary industry in general and most especially when they high jack a religious holiday. Halloween, St. Valentine’s Day, Christmas and today, Easter.

From my window here at the RR Museum in Campo, I do see signs of rebirth, green green grass, with white calves running and bucking around their mothers. Tiny purple and yellow flowers, and rapturous birds, and best of all a frog chorus in the nights.

I was invited to go to church nearby, at a congregation of local Christians of all flavors. I am feeling perhaps shy to go, as I would only know one person, he has a girl friend and I sense thin ice if I were to turn up unattached. I think my sense of church is scattered and dispersed, I loved the great music filled high mass at St. Paul’s church in Cambridge, and was worn down by the local small church (with a drunken priest)where I raised my children. At St. Paul’s, the congregation is huge, and anonymous and mostly affiliated with Harvard. The congregation all sing with skill and gusto, and the world class mens and boys choirs are backed up by a superb pipe organ in a neo Romanesque church with good acoustics. It is really more concert than service. The sermons are erudite and topical. Partly due to decades of attendance, and partly due to some musical and intellectual snobbery, it is “church” to me, and most others are something else.

Church going is (or more properly was) an enormous piece of stable community life, where you are known, and prayed over and when bad things happen, a source of real and emotional support. Probably it is for some, but as a drifter, and a rather disenchanted Catholic, it is mostly a duty. Done to please someone else, done to conform, done a little in hopes of community and connection, but not a joy or much use to the muscles of my soul.

So, I am here, sitting in the sunshine, and eating Peeps. Instead of Sanctifying Grace, marshmallow. The official website, http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/, will serve as an introduction to those who haven’t met a Peep, nor eaten one. Be prepared to be horrified. Then, if you dare, google Peeps, and you will find that the madness goes on and on. Folks delight in stop frame animation starring Peeps in costumes. Peeps can be seen in off color video clips, in various forms of massacres, and feeding frenzies. They are so vulnerable and so dumb looking, and so inert, that they incite people to all sorts of silliness. (Peeps jousting: arm two Peeps with tooth picks and set them in the microwave for about 25 seconds to see which one deflates the other. Note that they are not nummy after this and you may get burnt sugar. Google it for more.) For our Bunny Train, one child has a Peeps costume, and there is also a 3’ high inflatable Peep, and as you see, I was given an Easter Basket ( actually a Trader Joe’s reusable shopping bag) containing 4 different color Peeps, a Peeps lip balm (marshmallow scented cotton candy sic.) and Peeps bubbles. And a large stuffed Peep in blue which sort of resembles a large blue dollop of Cool Whip, or perhaps a blue cow plopper. I have finished the purple ones and am now happily working on the blue ones.

I note that an Australian paper has this headline: “Pope skirts paedophile scandal as Christians mark Easter.”

Yet another reason to sedate myself with marshmallow, enjoy the sunshine, and pray in my own quirky way that all those who read this, or who have met me or even seen me or just emailed me, will have a day of renewed hope, of renewed strength, and of peace.