I am Helene Hanff

Last night I downloaded "84 Charing Cross Road" from Netflix, a favorite movie I hadn't seen for a very long time, and it struck me that my life out here is very much like Helene Hanff's. I live in a too small apartment (though in the desert, not NYC), have a solitary job (not screenwriting, but tourism), have to be self-reliant, and tend to create vibrant niches for my time. For Helene, it was British Literature and her correspondence with the folks in the London bookstore. For me, I guess it is chronicling life out here on this blog. While I still carry some of Helene's scruffiness around the edges, I can clean up pretty well, just as Anne Bancroft did in the final minutes of the movie.

Everyone whines about there not being good scripts for middle-aged women. I'm a sucker for the good "little" story. Both the book and the movie satisfy quite nicely.

Apparently, the cartoons got it right

Roadrunners have quite the personality on them, Robert and Nada tell me. They get attached to humans.

Nada likes to keep a metal tub filled with water out in the yard for all the critters that pass through. She keeps a garden hose in the tub, so it is handy when the tub needs refilling. When the hose slipped out of the tub during a storm, one of "their" roadrunners pecked at the bathroom window until Nada came out of the house and put it in its usual spot.

One day Robert had to work on his truck out in the yard, and a roadrunner stood on the edge of the engine watching him and talking to him the entire time.

Paul and Sheila tell me a roadrunner likes to call and prance and put on a show off for them whenever they visit their ranch.

Oh yes, and they kill rattlesnakes! They are said to pick up a snake by its tail, and kill it by slamming the head against the ground!

Three Snake Stories

We've had so much rain this summer; the mountains are GREEN. This means life is especially abundant--we still have wild flowers about, but we also have quite a few snakes. That's okay, because they'll take care of the desert rat population, too. Everyone has their rightful place in an eco-system.

Story 1. Teamwork.
Robert and Nada live in a trailer 10 miles east of town. When you live out in the country, the roadrunners tend to adopt you. Last week they told me three roadrunners herded a rattlesnake away from their front door and under their trailer. One roadrunner took the right, another the left, and the third walked behind the snake, until it was completely under the house and out of harm's way.

Story 2. Plucky Girls with Machetes.
In the early days of the Mitre Peak Girl Scout camp, things were a little different than they are today. The counselors and the campers did heavy labor, character-building work. They cut trails, cleared campsites, built gathering places in the forest. The 9, 10 and 11-year olds revered their counselors, all recent high school graduates. This is no wonder, because the counselors were trained--upon seeing rattlesnakes--to take out their camp-issued forked sticks and their machetes, and kill those snakes dead!

Story 3.
The Stupid Tourist. Act 1. Many years ago, I attended a conference near Sundance in Utah, high up in the mountains. During one break in a session, I saw a moose (yes, my first!) lumbering away from us down the road. Without thinking, I grabbed my camera and took off towards him, only to fully reckon his immense size when he turned around and headed towards me! Running in fear, and then hiding behind a parked car, I told myself I was an idiot, a stupid tourist who should know better. And yes, the other conference-goers saw the whole thing. Dumb me. The Stupid Tourist. Act 2. When my running partner was here a couple of weeks ago, I felt comfortable taking to the roads for a daily run. I loved the change of scenery, and the companionship, and this was a particularly beautiful spot. At the end of our hot, challenging, hilly run, I saw my first rattler (in two years, that's not bad!) stretched out on the road. A long fella--a diamondback--he didn't seem menacing. But I got too close for my companion's comfort, and, in retrospect, my own. Later a snake expert friend of ours told us they're unlikely to strike when all stretched out; when coiled, that's when they're ready for action. I knew that, but in some respects, I still plenty to learn here.

Hallowed Ground and the Lore of Girls

I hear that girls don't want to be Girl Scouts anymore, and if they do they're more interested in computer camp than camp-camp. That's a shame, because there aren't better memories for me than my earliest outdoor experiences. Saturday, our women's hiking group explored Fern Canyon at the Mitre Peak Girl Scout Camp outside Fort Davis, a far more spectacular setting than Camp Kitanawa near Battle Creek or the camp at Lake Bloomington. These Texas girls were lucky, what a special place to test yourself and learn you were strong. And on Saturday, we weren't women in our 40s and 50s and 60s anymore, we were intrepid girls forcing our bodies through crevices and scampering over the rocks.

Mary brought her camp photos from her 1959 Brownie camera--tiny black and white images of girls from flat, desolate Midland sitting around campfires, swimming between boulders, mugging for the camera. We retraced young Mary's steps through Fern Canyon, where some ferns were green and others dormant, just waiting for water. We scared off javelina, who headed up the mountains as we tromped through. Then to the first pool, where the frogs chirped and leapt into the water when we arrived. And then to the second pool surrounded by red boulders, the bathing site of the earliest campers. This is where we stopped for lunch, watching the fish in the water below, sharing Kate's magnificent chocolate oat bars and contemplating our younger selves. Mary pointed out Frankenstein, a monster from their ghost stories, really just a knobby rock formation overlooking the camp. She noted time has given him whiskers, since trees appear to be growing under his nose and chin.

Mary was there in the early days of the camp, when the older campers really built the place, cutting trails, digging trenches, hard sweaty character-building work. She told us stories of plucky girls, torrential rains and flooded tents, javelina and snakes. More about snakes next.....

...and we're back!

I apologize for the long time between posts. Truth is, I have had a hard time dealing with the social isolation here. Sure, I have great friends in the region....but they're not in Van Horn, they're at least an hour's drive away. So I've been weighing the pros and cons of staying or going. As the days move forward, I think I've made a decision one way or another and then something happens and I'm Jack Nicholson in "Terms of Endearment." You know the scene--Shirley McLaine proclaims her love for him and he says, "just when I was about to make a clean getaway." I'm just taking the days as they come, but know a change of some kind is afoot. There's also a relationship to consider, with an urban-based sweetheart who would really rather be here, but life's interventions seem to be delaying the move. Anyway, I've had a lot to think about, so I've been very quiet. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Update: to answer a question from a reader, no this isn't a doctored photo...this is how the light looked early this Saturday morning!

Three Notable Sightings in a Mile and a Half

1. Parakeets and cages for sale in a vacant lot on the main drag.
2. Also for sale, a bright green plastic cow head used for lasso practice.
3. The new math teacher, a nice young black guy. This is notable because the most recent census figures show Culberson County has 2000 Hispanics, 700 Whites, and 20 Blacks. Think about it, just twenty.

Cake Pride

Two more historical photographs from Van Horn's museum collection on online at www.shorpy.com/texasmountaintrail

I wanted to name the first one, "Cake Pride," but shorpy's administrator thought otherwise.

Confession: I sent the anonymous comment about the hankerchief. My grandmother used to put hers up her sleeve, but I only remember her doing that with LONG sleeves, not short ones!

Oh, and you can click on each photo to get a closer look! Please do, as it helps our stats!