Viva Mexico!

Mexico was the second foreign country, and first truly foreign place, that I ever entered; childhood trips from Detroit to Toronto were too tame to count. When I left for college at the University of Arizona in Tucson, my mother specifically said, "Now I don't want you going down to Mexico with your friends!" So of course, my first real excursion after I got settled in was to Nogales, Mexico to a bullfight. Though the animal cruelty was difficult to stomach, I was thrilled by the color, the spectacle, the raw emotion of the country. In those days you could stroll across the border, showing no papers at all... and it's a good thing that we were afoot, because we were young, dumb and in love with tequila, lime, salt and each other.

Last week a considerably older but only slightly wiser group (Jim, Sara, Dick and I) took a spontaneous journey to central Mexico - destination was Copper Canyon (Barranca del Cobre), home to the Tarahumara Indian tribe and some of the most awe-inspiring scenery in the country. We threw clothes, hiking boots, board games, medication and snacks into the back of Jim's red truck and we were off - down Mexico's Highway 15 to San Carlos, where we arrived in mid-afternoon for beachcombing, beers and mariscos. The next, slightly longer, day's drive took us to El Fuerte, a blessedly unspoiled colonial town that is a jumping off point for the Chepe (Chihuahua Pacific Railroad) - the scenic railway to Barranca del Cobre Parque Nacional, 405 miles of bridges and tunnels through breathtaking canyons.

Our hotel, the Rio Vista, provided us with one of those serendipitous experiences that only happens on a really great trip. As we arrived at the hotel - hungry, cranky, and still vibrating slightly from the road - we walked out onto a bouganvillea-covered balcony set with a table for four overlooking the river, shining golden in the late afternoon light. Our host, Nacho, said that if it was OK with us he could serve us dinner - but all he had was tortilla soup, grilled lagostines and white wine. Oh, no, really, we couldn't... it was magical.

The next morning we hopped the train for Copper Canyon, drinking margaritas and playing cards while enjoying the panoramic canyon views. Home was a rustic cabin in Creel, where we engaged a guide for a trip down into the canyon to spend some time with the Tarahumara. A handsome and self-sufficient people, they have refused to leave their homelands or become Catholics, which I find admirable. They raise crops and cattle down in the canyonlands, and sell their baskets and pottery to the hardy tourists who pass through. They live in caves and cook over open fires, they worship the sun and the moon, and they're among the most serene people we've met.

Back in El Fuerte a few days later, we took a raft trip to view 200-year-old trees full of nesting egrets, cranes and herons; then we hiked into the jungle to view petroglyphs with ancient drawings of sacred coyotes and jaguars. A world apart from the image of Mexican narco-traffickers and gangsters portrayed in the American media...

As always, the memories that linger longest are of the people who treated us so kindly and patiently - their warmth and genuine sweetness will carry us through to the next adventure. We will be moving into our new home on Monday, so in the immediate future, our adventures will be of the domestic type!

Mexico Lindo

It's sad that most Americans know Mexico from visits to border towns or tourist beaches... the interior of the country, rural Mexico, is full of quiet villages that are reminiscent of idyllic rural areas anywhere. Of course, they're not as aesthetically pleasing as the small villages in France - few places are - but they're similar in so many ways - the roses, the kitchen gardens, the impeccably maintained cottages, the healthy animals, the smiling children... but with a vibrance and charm all their own.

We drove last Friday from Bisbee with our friends Jim and Sara, following our other friends Karen and Adam on their motorcycle (they're obviously younger and braver than the 4 of us)to Banamichi, a Mexican village 135 miles south of the border. After a few wrong turns and misbegotten "short cuts", we arrived at the Hotel Los Arcos in the late afternoon. The horrors of the road were soon forgotten after a few cold Mexican beers and a taste of bacanora, the local agave brew, sipped in the flower-filled courtyard on a balmy, velvety evening.

And then - best of all - our hosts, Tom and Lynne, sent us to the tacqueria around the corner, which has no name...it's just Martin's place. Since it was Dick's birthday, we filed into Martin's with a bag of beer and ice. He looked up fearfully when we entered - (Ah, chingada! Seis gringos!) but threw several large slabs of marinated meat on the glowing charcoal grill. While we drank our first round, he grilled it, chopped it (loudly - on the chopping block by the grill) and put the resulting manna from heaven on homemade tortillas, which the waitress brought to our table... along with watercress, cucumbers, sweet onions, salsa fresca and a creamy avocado-green chili sauce. Oh, the bliss! Oh, the happy groans from the gringos as we stuffed ourselves... and all for the magnificent sum of $5 per person.

Yes, life was good - and got even better the next morning as we sat in the plaza on white wrought iron benches, by the gazebo and the 17th century church, watching as village life went on around us. In the early morning light, housewives stood sweeping their already gleaming porches. Handsome vaqueros on horseback rode out to herd their cattle, little girls rode by on bicycles, smiling young men in ball caps drove by in trucks, old ladies in black promenaded around the square, and the handsome old men sat in the shade just like us. And every one of them smiled and waved and welcomed us to their beautiful town.

Why we left I don't know - but we drove way too far to Magdalena del Kino, where we saw the reliquary (code for skeleton) of Father Kino and bought milagros. Milagros (means "miracle") are silver charms of various body parts - you can buy arms, legs, breasts, heads - that you buy if you have an ailment in particular part of your body - if you use the milagro charm and pray hard enough, you'll be healed. I was ambivalent about the Father Kino thing - he was, after all, the leader of the rapacious Spaniards who plundered Mexico and forced Catholocism on these handsome indigenous people. But the sun was shining, and families wandered the park that sheltered the reliquary in a festive mood, buying balloons and cotton candy - history forgotten in the happy present.

We were not ready to leave on Sunday, but leave we did. We entertained ourselves on the way home by counting the roadside shrines, usually created to memorialize someone who died in a traffic accident on that particular spot on the road... but often just to give thanks for some everyday miracle. We're at 94 shrines and counting...

The result of all this fun is that we're going back! We're leaving on Wednesday for Copper Canyon Parque Nacional... taking the train through the canyon and hiking through colonial villages. So we'll file our next post when we return. Hasta luego!

The end of the rainbow?

You know what they say - "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans"... and we're proving that daily with our adventures. We've arrived in Bisbee, Arizona, and are staying with our friends, Jim and Sarah - and though there are jobs pending in Boston, Georgia and Florida, we've decided to take a stand here in this wacky, funky, historic former copper mining town and artist's colony. We're assuming, of course, that once we finally move here, something else will come up... but meanwhile we'd like to see if we can supplement our retirement income with photography and writing - it's a dream for us, and I'm thinking that you're never too old or broke to follow your bliss!

Bisbee is in Southern Arizona, almost to the Mexico border, at 5,000 feet in elevation. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it was founded as a copper, gold, and silver mining town in 1880, and named in honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial backers of the adjacent Copper Queen Mine. During World War I, demand for copper made Bisbee a boom town, and in 1929, the county seat was moved here from Tombstone (home of the famous OK Corral!) Bisbee is still the county seat of Cochise County... Is anybody out there old enough to remember the TV series "Sheriff of Cochise"? That was one of my favorite programs as a child (when my life's ambition was to be a cowgirl - go figure) and it was filmed right here in Bisbee.

Phelps Dodge Corporation closed the mines in the 70's, but not before developing Bisbee as a company town. Thanks to P-D there are some nice parks and public areas in Bisbee, in addition to the historic downtown area, which is lined with galleries, shops and restaurants, addition to the wonderful public Library and minor league baseball field.

Bisbee is currently best-known as a tourist attraction and a community of artists and eccentrics, with a year-round climate that's probably the best in Arizona - not too hot in the summer, not too cold in the winter. And of course, there's the famous Bisbee Blue turquoise, one of the more palatable byproducts of copper mining.

We found a great rental house in which to enjoy our experiment - roomy, completely renovated by two gay guys (which is always good)...room for a vegetable garden, and tennis courts a block away - what more could we ask for? We move in on May 1, so as they used to say on "Sheriff of Cochise" - stay tuned for the next exciting episode! Happy Trails...

Americana

We're on another coast to coast drive, and it's glorious! I love being on the road again... can't help myself. Every time I look out the car window and see a little road off in the distance, or a river winding its way along, I ask myself "I wonder where that goes? What's at the end of that?" There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere to me - the middle of nowhere is where all the good stuff is!

Once again, we started in South Florida, where our kind and generous friends have been taking care of our car and our mail... and last week they took care of us, with food, drink, shelter, tennis, friendship and laughter.

Traveling up the Florida Turnpike - sunny rest stops where they sell fresh mangoes (I love love love this!), through the Florida Panhandle to surprisingly handsome Mobile, Alabama; then side stepping NOLA, my favorite city, in favor of Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi. Breakfast in Gulfport, birthplace of our friend John Fabian, is an all-American treat - cheese omelette, ham, grits and biscuits at the Palace Grill, which I'm sure was there before John and will be there long after. Just a few blocks from the shrimp boats bobbing in the Gulf, Palace Grill boasts one of the best bulletin boards ever, including a sign that reads, "Drink some coffee - then you can do really stupid stuff faster and with more energy!"

While in the bayous and Cajun country along the Gulf, known as the "Redneck Riviera", we enjoy boiled shrimp, gumbo and an oyster PoBoy before we even get over the border into Texas. Driving through Texas is a career in itself... I've spent so much time involved in that activity, I should put it on my resume. We obey the law and stick with the 80 MPH speed limit, but despite the signs reminding us to "Drive Friendly - the Texas Way", people blaze past us as if we're standing still. Kind of like the Autobahn, only with gigantic black pickups and gun racks.

We stop to Remember the Alamo and eat chiles rellenos in San Antonio - a green and shady, charming, historic and friendly city; then continue through the surprisingly beautiful Texas hill country around Kerrville. (Quiz Question: what famous American has a ranch near Kerrville? Hint: His initials are GWB and he looks like Howdy Doody.)

Last night we were in Ozona, Texas, home of the Davy Crockett Memorial and the Hitching Post Steak House, where we were only allowed to have a cocktail if we purchased a membership - which was OK with me. I like the idea that if we're ever back in Ozona, we will feel right at home. We can flash our membership card at the Hitching Post and that nice waitress will smile and say, "Hey, Hon - how y'all doin'?"

Biloxi Babies

It all started with a photograph of my beautiful mother on her honeymoon. She sat on a seawall in Biloxi, Mississippi, dressed in an off the shoulder blouse and flouncy skirt, gazing coquettishly at my adoring father as he snapped the photograph. The seawall was patterned brick, the Gulf frothing with whitecaps... as a child, it was one of my favorite photographs.

So as we breezed along I-10 West on a beautiful spring morning this week, I saw an exit for Biloxi and said, "Hey - let's spend the night here!" I had a fantasy about finding that sea wall and having my picture taken, for old time's sake.

Of course I should have realized that Hurricane Katrina had done away with pretty much everything on the beach in Biloxi. Except for the casinos, of course, which lurk along the beachfront like gaudy predators ready to pounce on the unsuspecting geriatrics who enter their doors with a few bucks in their plaid pants pockets.

Undaunted, we reserved a bargain casino hotel room and ventured out onto the beach. As Dick prepared to take a photo of me on the new and unlovely sea wall, we noticed in the background an architectural wonder under construction that could have been created by no one other than Frank Gehry. We investigated and discovered that it was, in fact, a Gehry building which will house the Ohr-O'Keefe Art Museum. The museum was intended to open in 2006, but of course, Katrina destroyed the early construction - now the Museum should open in Fall 2010.

Why is it called Ohr-O'Keefe? The O'Keefe part is easy - he was a former mayor of Biloxi and local philanthropist who donated most of the money for the museum. The Ohr part is a wonderful story - about George E. Ohr, the "Mad Potter of Biloxi", whose collection of eccentric pottery will be housed in the museum. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Ohr was born in Biloxi in 1857, went to school in New Orleans, then apprenticed as a file cutter, a tinker, an assistant in his father’s blacksmith shop, and even put out to sea before chancing upon his life's work at 22, when he became a potter in New Orleans.

The rest, apparently, is history. He came back to Biloxi, built a pottery shop next door to his parent's house, and used clay from the Tchoutacabouffa River to make some of the wildest pottery the locals had ever seen. His humorous signs promoting his “Pot-Ohr-E” gave Ohr a reputation as an eccentric whose shop was worth a visit mainly for a laugh. As you can see in the photograph, he was a 19th century version of Salvador Dali - taking wacky photos of himself, letting his beard grow long, racing a motorcycle on the beach and walking the streets of Biloxi in a flowing robe, dressed as Father Time.

He often spoke and wrote in a disjointed stream of consciousness: “We are living in an Age of Wheels—more wheels, and wheels within Wheels—And MACHINE ART Works—is A fake and Fraud of the deepest die.” Right, George - I think.

At any rate, his work was discovered and became famous when Jasper Johns used images of Ohr pots in some of his paintings, and now, of course, Ohr's works of art sell for up to $60,000 each - although he sold very few while he was alive. 7,000 pots were rescued from his son's auto repair shop in Biloxi in order to build the Museum's collection. I have set up this true story as an inspiration to my husband - and other eccentrics we know - it's not too late to be a successful artist!

To our friends who are wondering what the heck we were doing in Biloxi in the first place: we've picked up Dick's car in Florida and are on our way back to pick up my car in Marin County... more to come soon. Cheers - we'll drink a toast tonight to George E. Ohr - my new hero.

A Perfect Place

"... to be or not to be..." that is the question that Hamlet asks every night during his performance at the Shakespeare Festival here in Ashland, Oregon - and that is our quandary once again. Ashland is certainly a perfect place if we go down our checklist: mountain scenery, flowering fruit trees, rows of grapevines marching up to rolling green hills, quaint neighborhoods of Victorians and Craftsman bungalows lining a downtown area that features a university, a 9-month theatrical festival at three venues, an independent film festival and a burgeoning food culture - even covered tennis courts to feed our shared addiction to hitting that little yellow ball.

When we moved to the Bay Area in 1981, I remember crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County and having the perfectly formed thought, "This is the landscape of my heart." The poetry of the thought surprised me, but it was true - the white capped Bay, ships silently steaming under the Bridge, the green Marin Headlands with their rocky outcrops - and the City side was Oz, the shining city of hills which never failed to thrill me. Many happy years and dear friends later, it's still true.

But there's a price to pay for Paradise - a price too steep for two potential retirees.

In our travels we've learned that there's no such thing as a perfect place - but that there are many, many places to love in the world. Places, like people, have their flaws, and, as with people, we often fall in love because and not in spite of them.

"My heart, being hungry
Feeds on food the fat of heart despise
Beauty where beauty never stood
And sweet where no sweet lies
I gather to my querulous need
Having a growing heart to feed..."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

So what's next? Maybe a perfect place, maybe not - but a place to call home... wherever that might be. We'll keep you posted.

Arizona Highways

We've been lost in America - having such a wonderful time with old friends that we haven't had the opportunity to post. Since we last wrote, we've had two weeks of memories - remembering the past and creating memories for the future.

We flew in from Chicago and were picked up at the airport by our old friend Linda Stuckey, who was my neighbor, excellent friend and soulmate in the Encanto area of Phoenix back in the 70's. She and her husband Larry had been babysitting the Mini while we were in Nepal - and the Mini was lucky enough to share quarters with Larry's cherry 1932 (I think I have the date right) Model A... pictured at left. Larry got this car when in high school (no, we weren't in high school in 1931 - very funny). As he tells it, he asked his dad for a Corvette and got a Model A! But now that Larry has grown up (kinda) he's finished his Model A to perfection. We enjoyed fabulous food at Pizzeria Bianco and at the Stuckey household... I'm so lucky that all my friends are fabulous cooks! There's nothing more fun for me than cooking with Linda...

Then on to Tempe to visit our friends Rob and Roni Melnick. Rob is my former business partner and BFF, (that's Dr. Melnick to you!) who is Executive Dean and Chief Operating Officer of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. But to me he's my sweet friend and hiking buddy - married to the incredible Roni, who's also a fabulous cook (how did we get so lucky?). We spent much too short a time - Rob is still working, and working hard - but we spent it hiking, laughing, drinking, laughing, playing board games, laughing, hiking with their sheepdogs, Angel and Cheyenne, laughing... eating great food, drinking great wine. I look at Roni and I see the adorable 20-something that I picked up from the airport the first time she came to visit Rob in Arizona...

Southward we drove to Bisbee, Arizona - a former copper mining town just this side of the Mexican border, often described as "Mayberry on acid". Bisbee is home to Jim Eubanks (that's Dr. Eubanks to you!) my former business partner and BFF - sound familiar? Jim and Sara spent a week introducing us to their friends and helping us to gather information about Bisbee as a potential home... we visited Karchner Caverns (one of the most geologically important caves in the US - discovered by my former UA classmate and friend, the late Randy Tufts), played tennis, went wine-tasting in Patagonia (Arizona wines are pretty damn good - surprised the hell out of us), saw a community production of Urinetown: The Musical(!), enjoyed the Bisbee Breakfast Club, and hiked the amazing mountains and deserts of Cochise County with Jim, Sara and their doggie sons, Lucky Mo, Dylan and Omar. And - surprise, surprise -Sara is an incredible cook!

We're heading to Marin County to housesit for Jerry and Pam while they vacation in sunny Mexico... adios y vaya con dios...