HAPPENINGS OF NOTE

AN AFTERNOON OF INSPIRATION
I recently spent an afternoon in one of my favorite art districts, downtown Flagstaff. I stopped off there on my way to a women's retreat last month. I visited my favorite galleries and shops, walked the quaint old streets, enjoyed the eclectic-ness of the architecture, merchandise, and people. I soaked up the rich textures and creativity around me. I took several photos, but I am not able to post them now. Poor planning; I'm in the valley and forgot to bring with me my camera from which to extract them.


WOMEN'S RETREAT
I went to a wonderful Women's Retreat about two weeks ago. It was held at Lost Canyon, a Young Life camp in Williams, AZ. I became a Christian through Young Life and it holds a special place in my heart. The camp is beautiful and definitely not rustic. Boy, camp was NOT like this when I was in high school! The speaker was Diane Andrews, a pastor's wife, women's ministries leader, and retreat organizer/speaker. It was VERY good. She spoke about four women of the Bible: The Samaritan Woman, The Hemorrhaging Woman, and Mary and Martha. All the messages were good. They were simple and direct; I took away one important thing from each one. Diane used a lot of visual aids, videos, and music to complement her messages. The most impacting message for me was on the Hemorrhaging Woman...about how she has been known to us - and probably in her community - simply as the Hemorrhaging Woman. In her culture, she was unclean and untouchable, an outcast...for 12 years. Imagine her loneliness. Imagine her sense of self worth. Twelve years. Not only did Jesus heal her physically, He gave her a new "name"; He called her Daughter. What healing that must have brought to her soul. Diane brought a powerful visual aid project to accompany this message. It was a really good weekend. It was great to get away, see friends, share in a small group of open, honest women, and be met by God over the lessons.


DEER FARM
Every time I travel I-40 to Williams, I see the Deer Farm and wish I could stop. When I drove past it on my way to the retreat I decidedly declared to myself, "I'm going to the Deer Farm on Sunday afternoon." And I did. It was a lot of fun. I was disappointed in the aesthetics of the place; it was, well, OK, I'll just say it. It was downright ugly. No grass. Nothing but dirt, rocks, fencing, and enclosures. The center area was open and that's where all the deer were. Despite the ugliness of the place, the deer were awesome. As soon as I entered the gate, they saw me coming with my cup of food and started making their way toward me. Soon I was crowded around by small Fallow Deer. I loved it. I'll write more later when I can post photos.


THE VALLEY
I went directly from the women's retreat to the valley for a few days. I was busy helping my brother with my Mom's estate. He has all the responsibility but no time. Time I have. I'm going down to help get whatever done that I can. While there I ended up going to two of my 12 year old niece's volleyball games. It was fun watching her play well and seeing her team win. I also was pleased to fix my brother's family dinner one night. They are so gracious and giving when I come down and stay with them. They always feed me, let me do laundry, and make me feel welcome and at home. I was glad to give a little back by fixing them my chicken chili which they all seem to like so much. I also got a good start on what help I can be regarding Mom's stuff.

While I was there, I was really busy. when I got home I realized I could have been even busier had I remembered some things I had really wanted to do but thought I wouldn't be able to get to town for. One was a free Ravi Zacharias speaking engagement. Ravi Z. is a Christian apologist, one who intellectually "defends" the Bible and Christianity. He is a wonderful speaker and teacher. I would have loved to hear and see him. The other event was a reception for the release of the book, Bo's Cafe, written by three church friends/pastors, John Lynch, Bill Thrall, and Bruce McNicol of Leadership Catalyst/True Faced. The book was pre-read by Wm. Paul Young, the author of The Shack. As I understand it, he liked it so much he not only endorsed it with these words on the front cover, "Bo's Cafe is a treasure for all of us who harbor a longing to be authentic," he also wanted to publish it at Windblown Media. I would have loved to attend this reception, to encourage the trio of authors as well as get to meet Paul Young. (I'm not sure if he goes by William, Bill, or Paul, but I've heard him referred to recently as Paul, so that's what I'm going with.)

SNOW
We got our first snow around the 27th-28th of October, while I was gone. I missed seeing it come down but seeing it on the sides of the highway on the way back up brought a smile to both my face and heart. Though I hate driving in it, I really do love snow.

A DAY OF MAD CLEANING
I got home Thursday night. The house was still rather cluttered because, no, we still haven't gotten all the boxes unpacked and removed. But we were expecting friends up for the weekend and that's the best motivation for cleaning the house. I got a ton done on Friday, mostly moving boxes from the middle of the living room downstairs to every nook and cranny of our loft upstairs. I even UNPACKED a couple boxes AND put the contents away! Woohoo! It felt so good to have at least a semblance of my house back. I must have gone up and down the stairs about 40 times. I was whupped, but felt good in all ways.


FRIENDS UP FOR THE WEEKEND
Some good friends came up Friday night. I was pleased to have the dining room table cleared out from under all the photography stuff (and more) that had commandeered it for so long. It felt good to put candles on the table and sit down for a meal. We had a really nice weekend with our friends. It was beautiful outside but we never really even went out. We spent all our time engaged in wonderful conversations about dreams, the Bible, churches, ministry and ministry dreams, country dreams, Alaska dreams. We are beginning to dream together about something on our land in Alaska. We enjoyed sitting in the dark watching the fire and continuing our conversations. Saturday night we watched a movie. Sunday they came with us to the church we've been steadily visiting and we went to Mexican food afterwards. Mexican food after church: they just go together. (And yes, we ran into people we know in the restaurant. I do like that about a small town; you can count on running into friends and acquaintances around town on Sundays after church.)


BACK IN THE VALLEY
I'm back down in the valley for a couple days to see what I can get done to help my brother. Poor guy only has one day off a week in which to run his own business and try to be the executor of Mom's estate, which it turns out is a lot of work. I hope to accomplish some organizing, some phone calls, and getting necessary info to various people.

I hope to get back to blogging more regularly. I miss it.

Gettin' My Kicks

Guess where I was this weekend!

I was gettin' my kicks

on:

It's always hard to get away for a girls' weekend. The five of us can never seem to get away at the same time. This time we had 4/5 of us. And instead of a Girls' Weekend it was a Girls' Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. We had a wonderful time at our friend, Sherri's, cabin in Williams.

To get to Williams, I had to go through Holbrook. Beautiful downtown Holbrook. I passed the corny Wigwam Motel and decided it was worthy of a turn-around and a photo. Have YOU slept in a wigwam lately?


It was a turquoise car in front of a "teepee" that made me turn around.


They actually had several old (or outright junker) cars parked in front of the "rooms" as part of the nostalgic re-enactment.

They even had one of the teepee rooms open for viewing.


Not too bad for a funky, historic, nostalgic experience. There were real customers with their SUV's parked in front of their very own teepee.

After reading this sign, I realized with new appreciation that I was on the famous Route 66. I also realized I would be in Flagstaff and Williams on this trip, too, and that they, too, are Route 66 towns. I felt a blog post coming on. I had a lot of fun looking for photo-worthy scenes along the way.

Holbrook is not a very hip or happenin' town. (I would say that's a massive understatement.) It feels kind of like a 1950's ghost town complete with a Sinclair dinasaur and well, a teepee motel. Here's another Holbrook attraction:


Once back on I-40, running fairly parallel to Route 66, I stopped at some really interesting rock striations along the highway. The stone and earth were very crumbly, like sandstone.

The cool green veins looked and kind of felt like dry clay. The white made me think of quartz but it, too, was pretty crumbly.

I picked up a couple small pieces and two big pieces to take home. Did I tell you yet that I love rocks? The small ones will go on our rock sill and the big ones will go in the "yard". I'm wondering if they will melt away into a pile of mud if rained on.

I had planned to leave early and stop off in Flagstaff to visit the downtown shops and art galleries. I love the gallery shops there. They have glasswork, jewelry, paintings, clay, and other interesting things. Lori drove up with Jance and her husband who had some brief business to do there. We met up (after a grumbly convoluted escapade with the cursed one-way streets) and Lori and I took off for the shops across the street/highway/Route 66. There were lots of pictures I could have taken along Flagstaff's Route 66, San Francisco Ave., like the railroad station, the historic buildings and such along the street, but time was running short. We spent most of our time a block or so up from Route 66 and here's some of what we saw.

I just love the detail of old buildings. Today's architectural detail is so different. I am really drawn to the details of old and the natural materials they used.



We loved this sign and the metal branches that it hangs from.



(Anyone seen Jerry or George? Elaine or Kramer?)

I am a real textural person. I love lots of texture and surface depth. Like this textured stone work. I also really like the stone church in the background, too, even though it was rather pink. We didn't get very close to the church but something about it made me think it was more of a natural pink than a painted pink.




We arrived at Sherri's cabin Sunday afternoon, eventually. Let it be known that Lori and I, when we get together, well ...we can really talk. Now, take that fact, and add in a factor of We Haven't Seen Each Other in Weeks. Multiply it by We Haven't Actually Spent A Good Chunk of Friend-to-Friend Time In Months, throw in a dash of Not Thoroughly Transcribed Directions and a pinch of Not Paying Attention To Them Anyway, and you get .....a little bit lost. Not terribly, but we did manage to pass just about every turn we were supposed to make, including Sherri's driveway, and have to double back. After missing a couple turns, we were finally on track and supposed to take the second of two loop roads with the same name. We saw the road and passed it, looking for the second one. But then I said, "I HOPE that was the first road." We laughed and made fun of ourselves thinking "what if we did it again and passsed the first road without even seeing it?!" It would be unbelievable at that point.

You guessed it. We drove for about half a mile, never seeing a second loop road. We ended up in a dead end where we had to turn around AGAIN. The road we had seen was already the second road of the loop where we were supposed to turn. Then, we made the correct turn, kept on laughing at ourselves and drove right past Sherri's house for a long ways before we said, "Uh oh! Where's her house supposed to be?" We ended up driving ALL the way around the Loop right behind her property and emerging onto the main road from the FIRST Loop Road. Well, we quickly got to make the proper turn onto the SECOND Loop Road and realized the directions said her house was the second on the right. We were laughing so hard our stomachs hurt by the time we finally found ourselves in front of her cabin (for the second time). Sherri just happened to call my cell phone right at that moment. I answered by saying, "Do you see us driving around and around?"

What started out with a Lucy and Ethel escapade (we've had those before) turned into a wonderful relaxing time with dear friends. The cabin and setting was beautiful. Best of all was being with each other and having time to play" together, talk and reconnect. Sherri served us all weekend with wonderful meals she loves preparing. We ate dinner on the deck surrounded by 60 foot tall Ponderosa Pines with big ole tall trunks where the branches didn't start until about 30 feet up. I love that kind of forest.

It was a great time. Relaxing mornings. Beautiful views. Breezes through the pine needles. Teryx rides around the dirt road neighborhood. Walks. Talks. Reconnecting and catching up. Dinners on the deck. Cool evenings. Open windows. A nearly full moon. Going "into town" to visit the Quilt Mercantile. Seeing all the Route 66 nostalgia and tourist stuff on the main street.

...Stopping for a drink and sitting outside a nice little coffee shop.

The coffee shop we stopped at had these interesting stools. Grey metal welded together with brass solder. This was the second time I'd seen this pairing and mixing of metals

I really liked how the designer took a functional element that is always deliberately disquised - the weld - and intentionally made it design element of focus by using a different metal to weld with. In Flagstaff we had seen some glass jewelry cases that had brushed steel framing on the edges of the glass but the hardware and solder was all in brass.

...Seeing the old buildings and more decorative architecture.

...And elk spotting at night.

Elk spotting. Man, that was fun. The community's developer has a large parcel of land that includes a meadow and watering hole. The road into the neighborhood goes right through his meadow. Every night about 50 elk and deer come from the woods and graze for hours in the meadow. It was awesome! There was even a big bull elk with a huge mature rack. Lots of mamas and babies, too. And the deer...they were so sweet with their dainty bodies and faces, and their big ears. It was way too dark to get photos, but I sure wish I could show you what we saw. It was beautiful, exciting, amazing, and so much fun. We also saw a grey fox and a skunk.

There are selected moments of our time out there by the meadow that are emblazened in my memory. Like when we saw the bull for the first time. And the cow elk walking into the watering hole and hearing her splashes. And the whispered hysterical laughter that erupted in the van when I spontaneously and unnanounced let out my amatueur female elk call. (Yeh, but when the elk called back to me, I was asked to do it again.It was so fun hearing them call back. That's me, providingt entertainment on multiple levels. Actually that's NOT me. I'm usually too shy to do my elk call in front of anybody but it just came out.) But I think my favorite memory of our wildlife "shining" time was the deer bedded down for the night, just off the road and slightly uphill. Our headlights shined on her and she just calmly stared back at us, not moving at all. Since we made a circle on that road, we got to see her twice. She was so beautiful, so peaceful, so graceful. Mmmmm, what a gift.

The whole time was a gift. My friends are such gifts. Getting away with them was so good.