Arizona – Page 32 – On the road with Jim

The Big Clean Living With Royalty

When we returned from our Utah vacation, we unpacked and found a guest living in our house—a stealthy guest. We never saw him and only concluded that he was there because of his rude eating habits. Whenever he decided to have a snack, he chewed holes in food bags. He chewed through a bag of raisins, our pancake mix, and the last straw was a lemon Larabar that Queen Anne had brought home from the store the day before. We guessed that we had a rodent in our house and he had to go.

Monday morning we took action. Our first step was to tear apart the pantry to find and seal off all the exits. Anne emptied the shelves and I moved the freezer away from the wall. We got a flashlight and examined the back of the cabinets but never found the black half-circle hole cartoons lead you to expect. Instead, we found droppings—especially behind and in the freezer’s mechanics.

I made a bucket of detergent and bleach in hot water and began cleaning. The area behind the freezer came first and when that was done, I shoved the heavy white box back in its cubby, so I could start on the rest of the pantry floor. Before I started, I had to move all the crap that was in my way. That included the recycle bin, the can bin, the paper bin, a step stool, and two gallon-sized paint cans in plastic bags. Her Majesty had just finished painting the kitchen and hall and stored the leftover paint in the pantry for when she needed it for touch-ups. I grabbed the two bags of paint cans and moved them into the kitchen.

“Be careful carrying those cans like that,” she admonished.

As if it was the period to her sentence, one of the bags broke and the half-full can of paint slammed to the floor. It didn’t fall over, but—in a way that only a thick liquid can do when it rapidly accelerates then immediately stops—the can’s contents popped the lid and with a big gaaalooop the sand colored paint recoiled out of the can reaching the top of the white upper cabinet door. I saw the wave go past my nose and immediately remembered that I was wearing a brand new tee-shirt. I looked down, but it wasn’t covered with paint splatter, but the white cabinet, the black granite counter top, the stainless steel range, and the oak flooring were. I’m still amazed that so much of it got everywhere, but not one drop of paint landed on the wall of that color.

You know those moments when you know you’re going to die or be seriously injured? I didn’t have anything to say for myself because I already knew that I had just cocked a loaded gun and it was pointed at my head, so I did what any sensible man would do. I turned to her and with the most sincere voice that I could muster, just asked, “Why?”

It took another hour to clean up. It was lucky that I had a bucket of wash-water at hand. By keeping everything wet, we were able to keep the paint from setting. After getting it all up, I made a rinse bucket of vinegar and warm water and that cleared the remaining haze. The moral of this lesson is that you should listen to your wife … before she tells you what to do.

What about Mickey? Well … let’s just say that he’s moved on to that great magic kingdom in the sky. It serves him right—the little bastard started this.

Until next time—jw

Timberline Picture of the Week

The wind was warmer than I expected at this altitude. Blowing on my back, it seemed to help push me along the John Muir Trail in California’s High Sierra’s. The Mt. Whitney Trail was only a half mile further when I stopped to snap this photo of massive granite formations along the tree line.

I just made all of that up. My chances of hiking those famous trails have long vanished, but this week’s photo has a sense of scale that could work with a fictitious story like that. I took this photo I call Timberline at the Granite Dells along with the others featured this month. It’s the angle that fools the eye so that you think you’re looking at a craggy mountaintop. The trees also play tricks with your sense of scale. They’re actually shrub-size like they were scale models of ones that are much taller—bonsai versions if you will, and the sheer drop in the lower left isn’t the hundreds of feet that it seems. It’s only a dozen feet over your head as you hike the Flume Trail to the park’s northern boundary.

The reason I included Timberline in this month’s set is that it distills the Granite Dells into three simple elements; massive rocks, trees eking a living in hostile conditions, and the changing sky over them. The photo speaks of weight—or mass—and it shows a time contrast of a changing sky and momentary life against the permanence of the weathered granite. The sky changes hourly while the trees will be different in a century, but the granite will survive the next millennia unaltered.

You can see a larger version of Timberline on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we start a new set of images from a new location.

Until next time — jw

West of Center Art Show New Show Announcement

The inmates are taking over the asylum again. Each year at this time, the folks at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum take a vacation and before they leave town, they toss the keys to the Wickenburg Art Club. Like a bunch of teenagers hyped on hormones, we throw a wild party … well, we actually host an exhibition of local artists for three months. Nobody’s in town anyway, so why not?

This is the seventh year that the Art Club has put on the West of Center Art Exhibition and Sale and it’s really a big deal around these parts. The members each submit up to five pieces for consideration and a jury selects the best for the show. Year after year it’s a good show because there’s a lot of good talent in the Wickenburg area. The show runs from July 28^th through October 28^th at the Desert Caballeros Museum’s Learning Center at the northwest corner of Highway 60 and Tegner Street. The hours are 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. The store is closed Mondays. There are also art demonstrations on Saturdays from 1 – 3 p.m. If you can stop by then, we’ll learn ya somthin’.

Blue Mesa was my favorite shot from the Petrified Forest last summer. It was selected to be part of the West of Center Art Show this year.

The jury selected two of my submissions for the show this year and I’m excited to see them hanging. My first piece is a shot I took from the Petrified Forest last year called Blue Mesa. It’s a 17 x 10½ print in one of my standard black frames. You may remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about how I was having trouble printing it because of ink problems. Well, I solved them and I’m happy with the results.

For my second entry, I did something exotic (for me). I sent my image of Mud Arch off to be printed on a sheet of aluminum 15 inches wide by 20 inches high and when it came back it looked stunning. The colors and detail came out exceptionally well. Because the print’s surface is cleanable with a mild window cleaner, I didn’t have to cover it with glass. Instead, I float-mounted it in a rustic-finished walnut frame. Despite the extra costs for this process, I plan to keep this process in my repertoire.

I hope you get a chance to stop by and take in the show. I think you’ll be surprised by the quality of art on display. The Saturday demonstrations are interesting and informative. Last year, for example, Stan Strange’s talk on Cell Phone Photography turned into the basis for the photo classes the club put on this spring. After the show, put the top down on your hot-rod and stop by Screamer’s drive-in for a cheeseburger and shake.

Until next time — jw

Lime Lichen Picture of the Week

In last week’s post, I wrote how the Granite Dells boulders weren’t just bare rock, but they’re covered with living organisms which gives them color and texture. As you hike along the trails and take a closer look, you’ll find lichen, moss, fungi, and things that only a botanist could name growing there. Although they resemble a plant, lichen is a relitive of algae. They don’t put down roots, but instead, they get water and nutrients from the air. Lichen has a surprisingly long lifespan, but they don’t handle pollution well. When we were landscaping our Goodyear home, Anne and I specifically picked out some boulders that had a green specimen growing on them. Within six months, all the growth vanished.

There are two predominate colors of lichen in the Dells, an orange and another that is light green—seafoam if you will. Occasionally there’s a patch of a bright green specimen that catches the eye, and that’s how I happened upon this shot. The green was a small part on the larger rock surface, so to make it stand out, I moved in close enough and made it the subject of this photo. I like the way the bright green dominates the other muted colors. In all, I count four species growing in this shot. Because there’s not a structure in it, the abstract image is about color and texture. I call it Lime Lichen.

You can see a larger version of Lime Lichen on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week and see more from the Granite Dells.

Until next time — jw

Orange Boulders Picture of the Week

A this week’s featured image shows, the trails of Granite Dells City Park provide diversity you wouldn’t expect to find in a massive formation of slow-cooled lava. This week’s featured image shows a small example of that. It comes from one of the Flume Trail’s spurs. Instead of walking around a ridge, this option climbed over it, before it descends and rejoins the main path on the other side. I’d call it a shortcut, but since it added a climb, it didn’t save any time.

On the ridge, the view opens, and since the granite pile tops were exposed to weathering longer than below, so more of the car-sized boulders lay scattered on the ground. If you’ve only driven by The Dells, you’d get the idea that the rocks are nothing but dirt. As you can see in this image, they’re actually covered with lichen of various colors. Here an orange species grows next to a green varietal. Up close, they give the rocks a velvety texture.

I stopped along the trail to capture this image because this tumbled pile of rocks stood apart from assembled puzzle stacks surrounding them. The distinct orange color caught my attention too. There are other colors that you’ll see as you walk along the trails. We’ll bee seeing some of those in other photos this month. Finally, I included a bit of the trail in this image to add a leading line and some perspective to the image.

You can see a larger version of Orange Boulders on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing my newest entry and come back next week when we show another photo from Granite Dells.

Until next time — jw