Surprised by Beauty

After our last photo shoot outing a few weeks ago, my daughter and I decided to go farther afield for subject matter. Road trip! I had been wanting to see Paladuro Canyon again as I realized we had not been in about 18 years and Naomi was so young then she did not even remember it. (She sometimes doesn't remember things from last year so she is not a reliable witness). Anyway, it's only 90 minutes to get there, so armed with Starbucks coffee and a full tank of gas we headed north on I-27 for the world's most unscenic drive.

 The most important part of any trip is where to eat, so we pulled off the highway at Tulia and went to the El Camino restaurant, as recommended by two friends. I don't know how long it has been in business but it had that dark paneled, scratched booth Seventies vibe to it that my parents would have felt right at home in. We both ordered the chiles rellenos with enchiladas, floating peacefully in a sea of cheese. The waiter tried to bring us some queso on the side in case we needed cheese with our cheese. As it was, we were sinking into a lactose torpor and still had another 45 minutes to go, so we regretfully declined.

 I did however get in a nice shot of the bathroom stall before we left. Art is everywhere, right?

 From there we drove north to the town of Canyon (the Palace Coffee Shop on the square is highly recommended) and took a right to the canyon. If you have ever taken this drive you know what a wonderful surprise it is. For ten more miles there is nothing but the usual flatland, the fields, the cows, a windmill, a stunted tree or two that has been tortured by the wind for decades.....and then suddenly, bam! the earth just opens up and there it is. Paladuro.

After a few initial photos we stopped by the visitors center to read about the 200 million years of layers, from the bottom up, like a giant earth cake. I found out from the dioramas and clusters of bones that besides dinosaurs and mammoths, Triassic rhinos used to wander through here. Rhinos! All millions and millions of years ago (unless you're a Creationist and then that would be about 7,940 years ago). So off we set down the canyon on a lovely, cool Fall day to photograph rock and dirt so old it was almost as many zeros as the national debt. I thought we would be alone but it was an RV heaven down in the campgrounds. people looking for that one last long weekend out in nature, or at least out in their deluxe homes on wheels, some of which looked like there was possibly a hot tub and a dance floor inside there. The rest of the canyon was still, barely a bird call or a ripple of a lizard in the bushes. One deer stood looking at us from the middle of the road then ambled on. The light was so bright that every surface, every rock face and leaf gleamed in the afternoon sun. Here are some of my photos, no retouching on the colour.  The orange rock and cerulean sky really were that vivid:

 This is the place where Georgia O'Keeffe first painted the West, where she discovered those brilliant, earthy Southwestern colours that caught her imagination before moving on to Santa Fe. Paladuro hides itself in the flatlands, waiting to surprise and enchant those who discover it, showing the ancient, timeless majesty of what lies just beneath the skin of the world.
www.paladurocanyon.com

Itchy Fingers

I was at an event recently, in which it occurred to me, I did not belong there. I hardly knew anyone, and after a long day, I fell into my usual introverted self, and realized that just having to make the effort to 'chat' was exhausting me in advance. Not only that but I was getting itchy fingers. I needed to make something. I needed to create. This has been happening more and more: while shopping for groceries, while watching a less-than-inspiring movie, while pondering whether or not to vacuum the house (which I need to do right now were it not for itchy blog fingers). I look forward to my afternoons, my 'me' time, when I can go into my tiny studio and just lose myself for a few hours. I'm not even creating great art, although I hope one day it will accidentally happen when I am not paying attention. Most of the time I am doing something artsy fartsy, as opposed to what my daughter calls artsy snooty.  She ONLY does artsy snooty (see an earlier blog on 'cuteness' and how Naomi is missing that gene). Artsy fartsy doesn't require much forethought or planning. At least my version of it. It's goofing around, it's improvising, it's making a mess and then watching the dust, or paint, or thread, settle, to see what I have.

This week it was all about the colour, and the fabric, and the thread, and the texture, and the domestic Victorian girl skills. So I quilted and embroidered/beaded a strip of stripey Kaffe Fassett  fabric, and then I turned it into a cuff. It might possibly make an appearance at the next event I attend. Those itchy fingers are good for something.

Haboob Hub Bub

We all make chit chat about the weather. "Nice day we're having". "We sure need some rain". "Think it will freeze tonight?" But sometimes our weather gives us something so spectacular, so over-the-top that it becomes more than a topic, it becomes an actual experience that fixes us in time.
Our family moved to Lubbock in Fall of 1969 and was then greeted in the following Spring by the big tornado of May 11, 1970. After that I became nervous and edgy every time I saw clouds building in the sky, or sudden, high gusts of wind, so that I was ready to strip my mattress from the bed and roll it around me in the hallway in the blink of an eye. I had experienced a fierce storm at sea on a ship as a child (too young to think I could die), an earthquake in Utah, a hurricane in Florida, and an occasional shut-the-world-down blizzard, but tornadoes made me the most nervous. For years when I was anxious or stressed in my life my dreams would find me fleeing from one of those dark funnels. However I never feared the dust storms. They were just a major irritant of living in West Texas, especially as an art major, struggling from my car, walking across campus with an armload of paintings and drawings that threatened to become airborne at any moment. The dust storms back then were not quite dust bowl caliber but they definitely packed a punch. None so much as when the dust AND the rain arrived at the same time and, as if in some biblical plague, we were pelted with mudballs.

   For a few decades after that the dust died down. An occasional cold front would whip up some grit, some haze on the horizon, but nothing to comment on besides muttering that we had just washed our car. Then last Monday, after a summer of drought and dead lawns, and unplanted fields, the great Haboob rolled in, the wall of dust 8000 feet high that made jaws drop and cell phones whip out. The sky went from sunny blue, to firey orange, to deepest twilight grey within seconds. I had to step outside and view this mighty force of nature as it descended on us, and then retreat before I got a faceful of sand. We lost power shortly afterwards, so in the candle lit darkness we heard the wind howling around us, rushing the dirt of other states and countries on their journey south. I wasn't frightened or nervous, oddly enough, I just found it fascinating.
 Later there were endless posts on Facebook, photos, videos, articles, about the mighty wall of dust. One such article, from someone in another state, described it as terrifying. A bit hyperbolic. Even in the many cell phone video accounts, you can hear people saying things like "Holy smoke, here it comes" in a less than frantic voice as they gleefully watch themselves absorbed into the orange wall. Other posts from out of state people who used to live here repeated comments like: "This is why I am glad I don't live there anymore." Well, I wouldn't say this is the garden spot of the universe, but seeing that magnificent sight was, for me, a memorable event I was glad I experienced. Nature unleashed without the fear and the death and the major destruction. Just an incredible show. But as for sweeping up all the dirt in the aftermath? Not so incredible.

Looking With Fresh Eyes

After living in Lubbock since 1969 it's sometimes hard to see something new in the scenery. The common impression is that we are surrounded by unrelenting flatness, but even a ten minute trip north or east of the city will show you the canyon lakes area, a small dip down below the horizon, weaving in a long ribbon east to west. A little further out, a 40 minute drive east, and you come to the edge of the Caprock and realize why we are called "the high plains". Two hours north of here, after one of the country's most monotonous views, you are confronted with the beautiful Palo Duro Canyon, sometimes called 'the little grand canyon', which opens before you with enough suddenness to make you say something profound like: "Holy Crap!" And then you reach for your camera.
  Last week I trailed after my daughter, who was taking photographs on her fancy pro camera for an upcoming competition "High and Dry", looking for images reflecting semi-arid lands. (maybe we qualified as arid lands after the summer drought). We drove north and east of Lubbock looking for those interesting dips in the topography and also for that trademark flat emptiness. In our ramblings we discovered an old wooden railroad bridge after glimpsing it from the road. We had to park near the railroad crossing over the road then walk about 1/4 mile down the tracks. And then we were in high grasses, near murky green water, looking up at the wooden tressle bridge, a lonely outpost of the past, seemingly frozen in time but a mere half mile from the interstate. The water under the bridge was clogged with plastic cups and beer bottles, reminding us that if it wasn't a place to dump an inconvenient body, it was at least a place that wasn't so lonely after all.

I had my own camera along and just enjoyed the pleasure of photography: framing a scene, looking for detail and texture, sensing light and shadow, and recording a particular moment on a warm October day.

(photos by me)