A Little Vacation 5: Winter

It was another morning of being the early bird, but I filled it with blogging again. Not posting. Just composing another first draft, meaning mostly fighting with the auto-corrupt system that somehow got turned on days ago. I swear I didn’t do it! It’s really named autocorrect, but it doesn't actually do that, going left when I’m wanting to go right. So mostly I swear silently at it. Not always silently though. Just mostly. Since I not only didn’t turn it on in the first place, I have no clue how to send to back to the hell it rose burbling up out of.

It was too cold for me to entertain heading out with the camera again, but a grey squirrel (If that’s the exact variety, since it had a brown underside to its very long tail) appeared in one of the trees outside the wall of windows. I eased over to the pool table where my camera had ended up yesterday, took out the camera, sidled up to the window to take a shot. Success! It stayed there. I suddenly saw why. Its mate was just a couple feet away on another branch. We all had fun, them watching me and each other, me watching and shooting them. I culled the results down to three pictures which all showed both of them, the last with the first squirrel’s tail just a blur next to the other one’s face.

With wi-fi back we’d known that snow was expected last night. Worse, it was supposed to accumulate later in the day. Apparently, however, Cornville isn’t important enough to have its own correct forecast, as we found out as the day progressed. Snow hit the high ground above Cottonwood and above Sedona, accumulating there. The few flakes which flew around here just lasted almost long enough to get a couple shots of it for proof you hadn’t been dreaming. The closer we got back to the B&B, the more scattered the flakes were, stopping exactly as we passed through the gate to the property. Because of course. But that was at end of day.

I had hoped for an early shot of the sun hitting that mesa in the background with some rosy tones first thing, but all I got was clouds between the back of the orchard and the front of the mesa. Another no-go. At least the squirrels had made up for that. But what to do today?

Jerome had been discussed again, but the sweater my friend had offered me was not after all going to be returned to the store now that I’d turned her offer down. She’d decided she could make some adjustments - aka darts - here and there so she’d like the fit. So we sat. We told stories. Long showers were taken. No plans were made. More stories were told, childhoods were compared, food was prepared and eaten, more stories shared. The harp was played, song requests were honored.

If we were going out, it had to be soon. Tomorrow was leaving day. Steve and I would head home, they would head to Flagstaff, then a couple nights in Santa Fe, then Kansas, some town they couldn’t recall the name of, before their last leg home. It was decided that another trip to Cottonwood was in order. A few things were needed. My friend was hoping maybe a museum or more could be located and visited before the roads got bad. So we finally headed out after lunch. Steve stayed home again, giving his back some ease. He’d be bouncing enough in my car the next day.

This time I knew where we were going, though not where the museums were, but I was able to give major directions. She discovered as we entered town that it wasn’t how she recalled from her previous museum visits, even though we made several various turns looking for what her memory insisted was the correct part of town. Since we passed the WalMart and a gas station in that process, two needed stops were made along the way. We had just heard about Russia and expected gas price hikes, but they hadn’t happened yet. However, by the time the errands were concluded, she expected that any museums we  might eventually locate would be closed already. We still decided to take a drive through town just in case. We passed an antique store advertising a sale, and circled it to find a parking spot. We women went in. Just in case, you know.

Many little nooks had southwest pottery displayed. Most of those were simply cheap. I could finally show her the tempera paint colored pots made for the tourist trade by the Jemez potters before Mary Small came along and restarted their good pottery traditions. (Yes, I have several of hers.) She found one she liked, a larger pot marked both Casa Grande and Mata Ortiz on the bottom. It was clearly the former in style, so I wondered about the second attribution. Was the Mata Ortiz just a way of drawing attention, now more famous and creative in their pottery? Is it done by Mata Ortiz in the other style? She doesn’t care either way. After nearly an hour inside the very packed maze of a store, enough of a maze I had to go find and rescue her, she bought that pot plus a scarf she really liked.

On the other hand, I went in hoping that perhaps Chinese snuff bottles had made their way into this part of the world, but no. There was some exquisite carnival glass, enough to tempt me even after buying lots of it back when I was working “Doug Auctions” and could buy selectively when the occasional low price came along on something I liked because the regular buyers were all shopped out. I must have been really spoiled by those auction deals because the one piece I was drooling over was ten times what I would pay for it.

So instead I bought a piece of pottery totally unfamiliar to me. It is a large seed bowl, the center hole large enough to hook a finger securely through to hold it from slipping while I carried it through the rest of the store. It has an orange-brown base color, tiny swirls etched through that to the light clay beneath, and a pair of large blue butterflies covering the top. The surface is smooth, sensual to the touch, mildly shiny  without being actually glossy. I asked what they knew about it and found out it’s from Panama, circa 1980. No wonder I was completely unfamiliar with its patterns. Since my pottery cases in the living room are so full they successfully discourage me from buying any more, until this anyway, it is now sitting in one of the nooks covering the wall behind my bed. Besides, it doesn’t really fit in with the pueblo pots.

While most of this was happening the snow had started falling where we were. Initially we could watch it travel across the mountains in the background, while tiny white pellets struck the car and melted. No road issues at all. By the time we hit Cornville again it had actually turned to flakes. Just as we entered the orchard B&B property it turned back to pellets, because of course it did. No chance of shooting an actual flake or bazillion once we returned and I had a chance to grab the camera.  So of course I did anyway, scouting for some kind of shot with snow. I found pellets in the grass, but the pictures were blurry for unknown reasons. The shots of pellets in the ivy patch were clear, and there were accumulations on the car windows since it hadn’t moved all day, thus staying cold. I looked around with expectation of more shots, but it had already started melting everywhere.

Oh well, time to eat anyway. Tell more stories. And tomorrow, pack and leave.