Mendocino, Mendocino
Where life's such a groove,
You blow your mind in the morning
           
The Sir Douglas Quintet sang that many, many years ago and in many ways it’s still true.  The spectacular ocean views, the flower-covered headlands, the dark forests just on the other side of the coast highway, they're all still there.  This is the view from our son and daughter-in-law’s front yard; the construction tape marks a massive landscaping project currently underway, which fortunately is mostly on the other side of the house, I say "fortunately" because it would be a shame to disrupt that view.

We were lucky to have two full days of sunny weather while we were there. The first day we took the grandchildren to Glass Beach, which isn’t a sandy beach but rather a rocky area known for the quantities of sea glass that wash up there.  Every time we go we collect at least half a sandwich bagful, and Martha Stewart gives instructions on how to drill holes in it so you can use it for beads.  Of course you could also wrap it with wire, and of course I haven’t done either of those things yet, but I have the glass and I have the tools, and one day I will. I’ve promised myself.  But mostly it’s just such a joy to go there with Geneva and Dante, to turn them loose with their own zip-lock bags and to climb over the rocks with them and poke among the tidepools, to gently touch the fleshy, flabby sea anemones, to just watch children doing what children should be doing instead of spending so much time in front of computer and TV screens.  And I love taking photos of them when they're busy and not conscious of the camera.  Little girls, especially, get taught to "pose" in ways that make them seem calculated, affected, and fake, when real beauty lies in spontaneity, for instance, in the joy of running over rocks in rubber boots or, like Dante, climbing into a crevice in the rocks to see what might be there.

 

These seals were basking on rocks just far enough away that we could watch them (and they could watch us) without fear of actually disturbing them.

 The second day was more typical Mendocino weather, cool and gray, so I went into town to Compass Leather, where I bought my favorite purse a couple of years ago.  It’s gotten a lot of use and was showing it, and I’d been unhappy with the results I got when I tried to clean it.  The owner, whose name I should have gotten and who does beautiful leatherwork himself in addition to selling that of others (and other items) cleaned and waxed it for me at no charge and explained the qualities of leather as it ages, so that now I can appreciate the patina my bag is developing.
      Towns like Mendocino rely on recreational shoppers and diners for their survival, and after the first time I visit a place and cruise the galleries and shops, I’m not really into that, but I do like Mendo’s local yarn store (where I got 3 skeins of gorgeous wine-colored yarn on sale for $2 each!) and bookstore, as well as Rubaiyat Beads, across from the Mendocino Bakery, where I found the perfect gift for a friend whose birthday is coming up in early August.
      Mostly, though, I just like being there, and my only disappointment, as it is in most places we visit, lies in not having time to just wander and sketch and breathe.  No doubt I’ll use some photos as the  basis for paintings, but I’d love to have the time to just go out alone with my art supplies and real feel my surroundings and try to express them on paper.  I suppose that is one of the true poverties so many people face, a poverty of time.
       But our four days there were enriching and inspiring, especially the time we spent with the grandchildren.  On the second sunny day, while Dante was in preschool, we took Geneva to the local cemetery, a place she’d been wanting to visit for some time.  The Mendocino cemetery is beautiful in a rather gone-to-seed way that’s much more welcoming than carefully manicured acres of lawns, and it has graves dating back to the 1860s, many of Italian, Portuguese, and Irish settlers: “So and so, born in Ireland, native of County Mayo….”  She said it was her first time in a cemetery, but as previous posts have shown, I like visiting them.  They're peaceful, usually scenic, and you can learn a lot about a place from its graveyards.  (We also went to one at Fort Bragg, just a few miles north--it was very well-kept but much less interesting.)

On our last evening we took the family to dinner at a lovely restaurant a few miles south of town, with a spectacular ocean view and excellent service that almost (but not quite) made up for the rather ordinary food; most of it was okay, the desserts were very good, the beet-and-goat-cheese appetizer even better than that, but our daughter-in-law’s fish stew (which I almost ordered) was all but inedible, and nothing else was very impressive.  Even so, it was a nice evening.
       It seems funny to me how much I enjoy travel, and visiting family and friends, but when it’s time to leave, I’m always ready to go. I miss my house, my garden, and especially my kitchen.  We returned to scorching heat and I don’t mind it – yet.  Guess Dorothy was right: “It’s so good to be home.”

Bisbee, Part Deux

As I said in my last post, the Shady Dell where we stayed during our mini-vacation in Bisbee is right next to the cemetery, and I'm one of those people who's always been fascinated by graveyards. Maybe that started with my grandparents, who always went to the Memorial Day observances at the cemetery outside Emmett, Idaho, a beautiful, green, well cared for place above the river, where several family members are buried, including, now, those grandparents.  The cemetery at Bisbee bears little resemblance to the Emmett one.  First, the harshness of the southern Arizona climate makes velvet green lawns impossible.  And as a sign on the informational kiosk makes clear, it is not a perpetual care cemetery.  Families are responsible for the upkeep of their relatives' graves, and many of the deceased have no families left in the area. Still, some parts of it, and some views, have their own austere beauty.

And many markers, like this one, offer fragmentary glimpses into their occupants' stories.  I wonder who, exactly, left the flowers on this otherwise untended grave? Probably not the sister or brother who had it erected.
     Back in town, the art scene is much more lively and spills out of the galleries and into the residential neighborhoods.  Bisbee has its own special funk and flash, and I like it a lot.  Joe and I walked the hillls of this largely vertical town, climbing up and down steep inclines and narrow streets.  In many places, instead of a sidewalk, one finds flights of stairs a block or more long.  In fact, October is the month for the Bisbee 1000, a fund-raiser in which participants commit to climbing 1000 of Bisbee's stairs.  I've decided I'd like to participate this year and now, having made this public declaration of my intent, I guess I'm committed!
      Most of the galleries and antique and other shops are on Main Street, which has a fairly gentle slope. One block over is Subway Street (I saw no signs of a subway, or even a Subway sandwich shop), which is quite short, but a walker who continues past the "Dead End" sign finds a network of interesting streets.  These angels, who look to me more like Lucifer's fallen companions than the ones who stayed in heaven, guard someone's gate at the end of Subway.

Even though, for pedestrians, this is not a dead end, the sign seems to go with those slightly menacing angels.  The path continued uphill to the left, and we followed it.  The steps in this next picture just lead to the house above them, but others like them are blocks long, linking streets that are (barely) accessible to cars.
     Higher up we found this collection of interesting things alongside a parking place outside a small yard.  A neighbor told us that the place belongs to a couple of antique dealers. The picture doesn't  show half of what's there.

Most of the yards in Bisbee are small, but many residents have made creative use of the space they have.  I especially liked this garden, with its terraces and fountains that make such creative use of vertical space.
     Eventually, of course, it was time to leave this town that seems caught in a time warp that somehow combines the rough and tumble wild west mining town of the late 19th century with an artistic sensibility firmly grounded in the 1960s.  Pick your decade, and you're likely to find vestiges of it surviving in Bisbee, as shown in these last two photographs, taken on the only street that survives of the once busy neighborhood called Lowell, that was eaten up by further expansion of the huge pit mine.

 University of Arizona creative writing professor Richard Shelton, who taught at the high school there (I think) earlier in his career, wrote a book called Going Back to Bisbee, which I haven't read yet, but plan to.  And I highly recommend J. A. Jance's mystery novels set in Bisbee, with Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady as her detective.  I know I'll be going back, and not just for the Bisbee 1000!