Distraction #1, the beautiful natural world: How to Keep from being Depressed by Today's News

Fall color in the White Mountains

This morning I got on the Internet as I do every morning to read the latest news. As too often, the news is troubling. I've learned that as his campaign collapses, Donald Trump reveals himself to be a poor loser: he's commanding his followers to watch their local polls for "certain" people who may commit voter fraud. This, despite that in-person voter fraud is practically non-existent. Our voting process seems more likely to be hacked by Russians, who seem to want Donald Trump to win the election.  I also read that the Trump campaign got a cousin of one of the women who has accused Trump of sexual assault to release a statement accusing the woman of lying "just for attention." This is what happens when women speak openly of sexual assault: they are immediately attacked, not infrequently by friends and relatives who refuse to believe the personal experience for any number of reasons. (#WhyWomenDontReport) And it seems that Donald Trump is looking to set up a television network that will likely be an outlet for his many conspiracy theories as well as for the alt-right crowd, led by Steve Bannon and Breitbart.com. 

And that's a short list of the news that threatened to throw shade on my day.

What do I do when crappy news or unhappy circumstances beckon the black dog? Well, here I begin a series of posts on what brings me joy when circumstances don't.

• Looking at the big picture, which is a lot bigger than we once thought

Here in Apache County, Arizona, the Milky Way is still visible, and to do my part in reducing light pollution, I try to keep our outdoor lights off unless we're planning to return home after dark. In July, we set up a telescope and got a good look at the rings of Saturn. But then I turned my binoculars to the Milky Way and was blown away by the millions of stars that are totally invisible in most parts of the country. It turns out that there are even more galaxies in the "observable" universe than we thought: "Hubble Reveals Observable Universe Contains 10 Times More Galaxies Than Previously Thought." Nothing makes one's worries seem more inconsequential than to put them in perspective of a galaxy or a universe. I like to think that there are other worlds out there where sentient inhabitants are doing a better job at being stewards of their worlds and each other than we are.

If the night sky is overcast, the moon too bright, or the lights of the area too bright, one can always go to the NASA website to look at images taken by the Hubble telescope:  https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/index.html

• Paying attention to my own backyard

Immersing oneself in the details can also help distract one from all the worries in the world.  While living in Abita Springs, Louisiana, I began paying attention to all the tiny creatures that lived in or visited my yard and gardens. There are worlds almost unknown to us a step or two from our back doors, with dramas enacted every day. I have watched tiny predators stalk their prey, and I have identified insects I did not know existed until I started prowling around my yard with a camera. Our yard here in Arizona has plenty to interest me, too. Birds come to the feeders and the birdbath I created out of a stump and a large, shallow bowl I purchased at a thrift store. Occasionally, a skunk will wander nocturnally through the yard, and deer will jump the fence, leaving hoof prints in the muddy ground or bare bark on trees they have rubbed against. Rabbits burrow nests in our greenhouse and under roots of trees. Pollinators visit the flowers, and I am learning to identify bees and wildflowers here in my Arizona yard. 

• Enjoying the changing seasons 

Yesterday Tom and I drove through the mountains while running errands and took a short detour on a national forest road just to look at the aspens in their fall color. A deer crossed the washboard road ahead of us and into a glen covered in golden aspen leaves. We stopped a little later to take photos of a landscape which will be covered in snow in a couple of months. 

Last weekend we hiked a forest trail where we thought we would have a good chance of hearing elk bugling. We were not disappointed. 

Elk cows follow the large-racked male that we got just a glimpse of through the trees.

Since we moved here in March of 2015, we've taken advantage of the beautiful natural areas, hiking on forest trails, along rivers, or up to the top of cinder cones.  Beautiful wildflowers bloom here in the monsoon season, as a hike along the South Fork of the Little Colorado River last summer demonstrated.

Wild bergamot and goldenrod along the South Fork Trail of the Little Colorado River

Coneflowers along the South Fork Trail of the Little Colorado River

more flowers along the South Fork Trail of the Little Colorado River

Nothing lifts the spirits, I think, than being out in nature on a beautiful day--and research seems to prove it. In one study at Stanford University, "volunteers who walked briefly through a lush, green portion of the Stanford campus were more attentive and happier than volunteers who strolled for the same amount of time near heavy traffic." Other studies have shown that walking in green areas can have a measured neurological and physiological effect on people. 

And those days when the weather is not conducive to a walk in the woods, writing about those walks and looking at the beautiful photos I've taken on those walks are pretty good substitutes.

Cooler Days for Gardening

tiny bee on a globe mallow in our front yard

After an out-of-state, nine-day trip, we've almost put away all the stuff we had packed for our travels though the tent that we used in an overnight camping adventure in the Cascade Mountains of Washington still sits crumpled on a chair in our study. When we returned to Arizona, early fall seemed to have arrived. The wildflowers in our yard were blooming prolifically, temperatures hovered in the fifties at night, and with the windows open at night we could hear elk bugling in the nearby mountains. 

Globe mallow, a native plant, growing in our front yard

While we were gone, one of our neighbors picked the ripening vegetables in our garden and the apples that fell from our trees and canned salsa, spaghetti sauce, and apple butter. Tom got busy the first weekend we were home and canned more tomatoes--35 pints total for the season so far. And this week, I have been cleaning up the garden and planting seeds that I hope will have time to germinate, grow, and produce before the first freeze. I should have planted the seeds --two kinds of arugula, a spicy mustard mix, Crimson Crunch radishes, a mesclun mix--mid-August, but I didn't free up any room for fall planting until I dug the potatoes. Then Tom transplanted onions into two of those rows. But when we returned from Washington state, I cleared out the cowpen daisies that were past their bloom, and Tom pulled up a couple of dead tomato plants. Gardening here is an experiment for us, anyway, and we can always blame any failures on our being newcomers and unfamiliar with the climate.

Yesterday I spent all afternoon making salsa from tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro from our garden. I'm a slow worker when it comes to cooking anything more than dinner. I'll chop up some vegetables, take a break and read some headline news on my computer, return to chop up more vegetables, take a break to check on the garden, and return to the work at hand. That's why it took me all afternoon. Also, I simmered the salsa for 75 minutes to get it to the right consistency. 

salsa ingredients from our garden, serrano peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro

And after all that work, I got only 6 pints of salsa (we ate one pint already) out of about 12 tomatoes. I am freezer-canning the salsa rather than pressure canning and hope to can some more salsa as tomatoes continue to ripen in our garden and greenhouse.

Salsa simmering on the stove

five little half-pints of salsa for the freezer

This morning I took the cats out for a brief romp in the yard before their second breakfast. (We space out small meals throughout the day; Tom feeds them first around 4 AM.) Taking them out before meals makes it easier to call them inside.

Sunlight and shadow--cats getting their morning yard time

Cassie in the daisy fleabane flowers that haven't opened yet for the day

While the cats sniffed around the yard, I wandered into the garden. The birdhouse gourd vines have covered the back fence, and several large gourds are ripening. Instructions I found online counsel harvesting the gourds after the stems turn brown, then gently washing and storing the gourds in a cool, dry place to cure. The stems of my gourds are still green, and I'm anxious that the gourds be ready to harvest before the first freeze so that they won't rot.

birdhouse gourds

more gourds

It was a beautiful early morning in the garden.

early morning in the garden at Casa Malpollos

Tomato plants escaping from the greenhouse; shadow of a neighbor's shed

A high wind yesterday blew apples from the apple trees

Not having grown apples before, we're not sure when they're ripe for harvesting. Our neighbor Gloria says after the first frost, but she has made apple butter with the ones that have fallen from our trees and says the apples are tart and a little sweet.

Moving On: Another Stop in the Journey We Didn't Imagine 38 Years Ago

With this latest move we have now lived in the South (Louisiana and Texas), the Midwest (Minnesota), the Southeast (Georgia), and the West (Arizona). At the age of fifty-seven, I had imagined that our next move would be into retirement, and with that in mind, I had been receiving automatic notices from Trulia.com about houses for sale near Duluth and Grand Marais, Minnesota. I had been entertaining the thought that we would return to the area we had enjoyed so much as a young family, the one state to which we had not returned to live a second time. But life is always delivering surprises, and here we are in Apache County, Arizona, in an area that gets an average of 12 inches of rain a year and near two towns with a combined population of less than 5,000. Gardening here will be vastly different from gardening in southeast Louisiana, with its 60 inches of rain a year. Already I am receiving advice from our real estate agent --be prepared to transplant seedlings rather than sowing seeds directly, as it's not unusual to get a freeze in May. I think there is a small greenhouse in my future.

Every move brings with it frustrations and delights. The nearest town with big box stores or an adequately stocked natural foods store is an hour's drive away. The largest cities are a four-hour's drive away. The little towns in which we are house-hunting have nothing to offer like our little cottage on its acre of land in Abita Springs, Louisiana, tucked away privately as it is on a dead-end road yet within walking distance of the Abita Brew Pub, the Abita Cafe, the Tammany Trace, my doctor's office and my dentist, yet within a fifteen-minutes' drive to a Target, World Market or Home Depot. And I will surely miss the English Tea Room.

The economic crisis of 2008 did not hit southeast Louisiana as badly as it did other parts of the country. As our real estate agent drove me around these Arizona towns, she pointed out the "failed golf course" and the many empty lots around the fairway. Lots that had once gone for $80,000 were now being offered for $20,000 or so, she said, and one man had recently purchased the golf course and remaining lots, perhaps hoping for another boom in the area's economy when the lots could then be sold for a good profit. 

One of the two towns in the area seems to have most of the commercial base and the other most of the population. The second town is spreading out into the juniper-covered foothills of the White Mountains. People retire here or buy a second home or cabin to escape the extremely hot weather of Phoenix (reaching the 90s already in March!) for the cooler air of the White Mountains. But there are signs that the towns have seen better days. Many businesses are empty, for sale, or falling into disrepair. We were excited to see a nice coffee shop with great online reviews, only to discover that the shop has recently closed. One man at the RV park where we are temporarily living  told us that he could recommend only one restaurant in town. (Fortunately, we discovered that his recommendation was short-sighted. There is at least one other good restaurant, but it seems that the food is too spicy for a lot of people; Tom and I have really enjoyed eating there, however.) 

street view

The area has other offerings, though, to offset the lack of commercial enterprises and the disappointing (for us) housing market. The nearby White Mountains have lots of hiking trails (though the Wallow Fire of 2011--the largest forest fire in Arizona's history--burned hundreds of acres of Ponderosa pine), small lakes suggest opportunities for future kayaking, ancient Indian ruins provide a peek into the archeological history of the area, and the landscape is a textbook for anyone interested in geology. Also, there are many recreational areas within a one-to-six hour drive, with Utah and New Mexico within that driving range.

This past weekend we took a tour of the Casa Malpais ruins near Springerville, Arizona, which can only be accessed by driving along private ranch roads and thus are open to the public primarily through these tours offered by the Springerville Heritage Center. The city of Springerville purchased the site in the 1990s, and the Heritage Center has a nice room-sized museum that displays the artifacts that were discovered during archeological digs. The Zuni and Hopi tribes seem to have some say in how the site is administered, as our tour guide told us that the tribes allow digging only in previously disturbed areas. Both tribes claim the ancient inhabitants--mid-1100s to mid-1200s--as their ancestors. The Spanish stamped their presence on the area with the name by which the ruins continue to be known: "Casa Malpais," or "House of the Badlands," the badlands referring to the jumble of volcanic rocks in which the ancient homes were built.

Casa Malpais ruins from the top of the ancient volcanic flow that rims the Little Colorado River plain

ruins of a great kiva

Then, yesterday late morning, we drove to the trailhead of the South Fork Trail at the end of County Road 4124 and hiked three miles along the South Fork of the Little Colorado River before turning around at a dirt road that crosses the river. Four more miles would have taken us to trail's end at Mexican Hay Lake. The day was cool and our jackets unnecessary, though we carried them tied to our hips. The trail begins at a picnic area where camping is no longer allowed, we assumed, because of the danger of burned and falling trees left by the Wallow Fire of 2011. While the trail begins in an area green with Ponderosa pine, it soon enters great burned areas of dead trees, with a tree here and there having miraculously escaped the conflagration.  Pre-fire descriptions of the trail describe the hike as shady and cool in the summer, but not much shade is left now. Pussy willow and wild rose line the banks of the river while charred Ponderosa pine and Douglas fire loom darkly on the slopes.

South Fork of the Little Colorado River, with remains of the Wallow Fire of 2011

We took our binoculars and did a little bird-watching, identifying western bluebird, American kestrel, dark-eyed juncos, American robins, and the ever-present ravens. I also learned a couple of very important lessons: 

• Don't just look up and down the trail before dropping your pants in an area with little cover; look across the river, too!

• Don't grab wild rose for support on a steep trail slippery with mud.

On the first lesson, nature had been calling for quite a while, and I finally answered the call, asking Tom to act as lookout as I peed behind the trunk of dead Ponderosa pine. What we didn't see were two older gents crossing the river from the other side....and even more embar-assing, they were folks we had met on the Casa Malpais tour the day before!

What are our chances we will run across these guys again in this area of about 5,000 souls!

Thus we end our first two weeks in the Round Valley of the White Mountains. 

Tom leans against a Ponderosa pine on the South Fork of the Little Colorado River

pollinating bee-like fly on a pussy willow bloom