Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hidden where you would least expect it.

The window to my world broadened to my own back yard this July.   My family and I were invited to an annual Fourth of July get together in a place I had never been before.  It was a get together of many of the local ranchers and their extended families.  Many of the extended family come in from parts around the world for this.  We joined the caravan to get to this place.  When they "top out on to the Mesa" they stop and walk around a little and look around before continuing on.  Just before turning in to the actual place we were going, looking to the left, this is the sight we saw.  The name of it is Wind Mountain. 

 
When we got there, our friend, immediately started out on the first part of the hike.  This side of the hike showed  us rock markings through the ages.  Petroglyhphs , the signatures left on the rocks by travelers on the Butterfield Trail, the signature of the Texas Ranger who used a cave there to stay in while dealing with issues in the area. 
 
 
 
 
As this is on private land, it is not picked over and you can still find completed arrow heads and many pieces of unfinished ones.  There are places that the family of the ranch says were ancient Metates, holes in the rock that were used for grinding their corn.  Some of the deeper ones I belive were similar to the Indain Wells, a few miles from there. 
In one of the cave areas was a cistern that had been closed in for safety sake.
After Lunch, a hike took place around the OTHER direction.  The short version of the story was after a climb over the granite rocks, to the top of the "mountain", thinking of the harshness of the terrain, not for us who were there as visitors, but for the people who made a life here over many, many years.  The heat, the sun, the dryness, all the while my new friends were promising me the most amazing sight in the world....
Up off the desert floor, climbing and climbing to the top of the formation.

Up, and up and up. 

And around the corner, we come to.......
Paradise in the middle of the desert.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Faces of Summer 2014

About halfway through our summer.  Faces tell so much. 
Read for yourselves.....
 
 
 
 
 
 
“She simply converted an average face into beautiful face and a beautiful face into an angelic face.”
 
I love photography.  Something about it is very fulfilling to my heart.  I am completely untrained but just enjoy the sometimes very surprising results.  If I could set out with one goal in what I do, to someday know this quote could apply to me would be beautiful, not for myself but to give future generations a glimpse of the goodness, the energy, the ups and downs of the life we are living in THIS moment in time. 
 
 
 












“Our faces will become works of art that our grandchildren will treasure.”
Adriana Trigiani, Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers

Sunday, July 6, 2014

July 4th

     I was just posting a comment on a friends blog this morning when I realized that this summers
independence Day celebration was a bit off.

     I have worked very hard over the last say 4 years to maintain our family traditions inspite of things changing in our world. 

     In the last 10 years we have begun the process of loosing the elders of the family, which moves all the younger ones up.  The younger ones have begun creating the next generation to replace us.  This is "the circle of life" and as it should be. 

     My circle of elders included both of my maternal grandparents, and my parents.  Then there were my 2 siblings, each one a brother, one older and one younger.  I had also had an older sister but she died from Lukemia when she was just 6 and I was 2.  Then those who came after included my husband and  my own 4 children,  my older brothers 2 children, my younger brothers daughter.  3 of those have brought spouses into the mix and my nephew has brought 4 children in to the fold, my oldest daughter has brought 2 in and my niece has brought 2 in for a total of 8 in the next generation, to date. 
     Over the years, this has made for a raucous time at holidays, some of it very good, some of it not so good, some of it downright BAD.  But all interesting none the less.

     Then on the upper end of the line, change began to happen.  October of 2003, the Patriarch of the family was called home, leaving quite a hole in the knowledge base around us.  The man was so very knowledgable of the world around him and we forgot to ask some questions of him before he left. 

     My grandmother passed on, in June, only 9 months later as so often happens.  She was the keeper of the family recipes and homemaking knowledge.  She made it so effortless that we honestly didn't understand how much she knew until she was gone and I found some things in her belongings that shed great light on what we should have paid more attention to. 
Both of my grandparents were 91. 

     Then, very unexpectedly, a couple of years later, my younger brother passed from this life  He was only  in his 30's.

     In September of 2010, Jim Sanders, passed away rather unexpectedly and yet we knew.   He had been diagnosed as terminal in July of that year and given about 6 months.  We all know that those dates are kind of nebulous but still.  However, the end of September, he fell, broke his femur and in a week was gone.  This loss, for those of us remaining is what is known as "THE BIG ONE"  This is the place that all the change really began as he was the Partiarch, The one we all looked to for training, advice, example, steadiness, you name it.  He was it.   When we lost him, we lost our anchor. 

     July of that next year, 2011, my older brother also passed away.  We received a phonecall from the hospital 200 miles away telling us that if we wanted to see him, we should hurry.  We did,

     Somehow, my mother now was the oldest remaining member of the family, and I was next in line. 
She is now 81 and has never been excited about being in the limelight, so the "Keeper of the family" job has been handed down to me.  I tell you now, I am not worthy of the title, nor have I really ever truly wanted it.  There are those in the remaining family who will tell you that they did not appoint me in this roll.
      I had a doctor a number of years ago who told me that he called this roll in the family, "the family hero".  He recognized in dealing with my extended family that this was my roll whether anyone else knew it or not and he honestly talked to me over a few years worth of visits and in some way helped me prepare for this time in life.  No, he was not a psychiatrist or psychologist, of all things, he was my OBGYN. 

     That back story brings me to today.  I realized as I was posting on my friends blog that this Independence day was different than I think it has ever been in my life time.   The attendees were, from top down, my mother, my nephew and his four kids, my niece and one of her two sons, my daughter who was home for a short visit, my two sons who are 17 and 21 and still live at home, and myself.  For various reasons, there was not a spouse in attendance.  My mom is a widow as we discussed, both my husband and my daughter's husband are in other places working, my nephew is in the middle of a separation and divorce, my niece and my sons have not been married.  That, I realized this morning was just odd. 

     I have been going back through my own blog posts from the last year and have realized just how much is different than this time last year.  Most of the changes we really didn't even see coming, quite honestly.  Some have been very good, some have not been so good, but all of them have been hard.   Some of them are far enough down the road, even, that we are beginning to see the results of and what the next piece of the puzzle is.  

     I am not, nor have I ever been good at change, flux, reorganization, movement with out definite purpose that I understood the reason for at the beginning.  But here I am, in some way in the middle of some huge changes.  I will spend some time either here, or inside my own head trying to digest and make pathways to where we have gone in the last year and where the future is headed.             


Join me, or not, its ok with me either way.