The River's Confluence
Amelia and I traveled light to Silver City, NM this weekend in the Miata. With just a tent, sleeping bags and a little food, I wanted to get out of the heat, hear some blues, and to see how my friend's new life there was shaping up. In retrospect this weekend was a confluence of many rivers.
My friend and I have had strangely parallel jobs for close to fifteen years. We both hired on with Harris in Omaha in the early 90s, but I didn't actually meet him until we were both transferred to Las Cruces, NM. There we worked in and explored the most desolate reaches of southern New Mexico and had many adventures. When I quit the NASA job to work with the Stealth fighter he followed a year later to work for another company doing F-117 support. After 4 years I quit that job, left the land of enchantment and came to Tucson to build F-16 training. He quit Alamogordo only a year later and came to Tucson with Raytheon. A few years later I joined that company. An unusual silent period followed that I only recently understood. He's quit the job, in the midst of a dissolved family, to start his life over. I envy his plan to trade Tucson's white heat and corporate ethics for the cool green and small-town sincerity of Silver City.
I realized driving home from the pinon-juniper forest of Silver that I had met more people in three days than I've met in Tucson in five years. That's not really true, but it feels that way. It was the commonality, quality, and sincerity of the people I met that made the difference. Our hostess was Tony's new friend Paula, a sophisticated yet very approachable local artist who kindly offered her house as an alternate to my tent. She gave us a tour of the community TV station then walked us back to her house for a premiere party of the show she had made. Her beautiful casa is a half-block off main in the historic district, and is said to be the second oldest in town.
There were only a few degrees of separation between my life and the eclectic folk that gathered to watch the premiere. First was Dave, who works for "the smallest division of Raytheon" half the year in Antarctica. I didn't know the company had such. When I was in the Navy I toyed with the idea of volunteering for Operation Deep Freeze. It's a civilian operation now, but Dave received the same medal the military gets if they "winter over." Why did I want to go I wondered? Just to say I did it, probably. He actually did, and now has the bragging rights I never will. John was the cane-wielding septuagenarian with the rapier-sharp vocabulary, sipping vodka from Paula's tiny demitasse teacups, her mother's pattern. John is her video editor and came by several times to work on her productions on the computers in her studio. The next person I met is a lawyer from Las Cruces who knows my old neighbor, the one who is perpetually trying make a break into the old west politics by running for judge.
The most unexpected connections were musical. I have moved beyond blues the past ten years, but when I read about the lineup for the tenth annual blues festival I saw Dr. Mojo & The Zydeco Cannibals included Mike Purdy, the musician who taught me the mandolin and teaches my son guitar every week. The festival had street dances and a nice venue at the park, just a short walk from Paula's house. The connection that didn't tangibly occur was when I suggested dinner at the Buckhorn Saloon in the Pinos Altos hills above Silver. As we sat eating our buffalo burgers Paula told me that the last time she was there Iris Dement was sitting at the bar near the Indian that always occupies the corner spot and sat there that night. I don't know what I would have done if she were there that night, but Tucson seemed like a distant planet.
Had Amelia and I camped in the Gila National Forest near the Buckhorn as originally planned, the sound of rain would have eased our transition to sleep. Instead, effervescent fish tanks brought about our slumber on solid hardwood floors. A broken teacup in Paula's pattern hid fish in the gravel of one of the tanks. As the rivers of life flow inextricably toward an unknown sea, the small headwaters gather downstream, combining their common experiences into one flow.
My friend and I have had strangely parallel jobs for close to fifteen years. We both hired on with Harris in Omaha in the early 90s, but I didn't actually meet him until we were both transferred to Las Cruces, NM. There we worked in and explored the most desolate reaches of southern New Mexico and had many adventures. When I quit the NASA job to work with the Stealth fighter he followed a year later to work for another company doing F-117 support. After 4 years I quit that job, left the land of enchantment and came to Tucson to build F-16 training. He quit Alamogordo only a year later and came to Tucson with Raytheon. A few years later I joined that company. An unusual silent period followed that I only recently understood. He's quit the job, in the midst of a dissolved family, to start his life over. I envy his plan to trade Tucson's white heat and corporate ethics for the cool green and small-town sincerity of Silver City.
I realized driving home from the pinon-juniper forest of Silver that I had met more people in three days than I've met in Tucson in five years. That's not really true, but it feels that way. It was the commonality, quality, and sincerity of the people I met that made the difference. Our hostess was Tony's new friend Paula, a sophisticated yet very approachable local artist who kindly offered her house as an alternate to my tent. She gave us a tour of the community TV station then walked us back to her house for a premiere party of the show she had made. Her beautiful casa is a half-block off main in the historic district, and is said to be the second oldest in town.
There were only a few degrees of separation between my life and the eclectic folk that gathered to watch the premiere. First was Dave, who works for "the smallest division of Raytheon" half the year in Antarctica. I didn't know the company had such. When I was in the Navy I toyed with the idea of volunteering for Operation Deep Freeze. It's a civilian operation now, but Dave received the same medal the military gets if they "winter over." Why did I want to go I wondered? Just to say I did it, probably. He actually did, and now has the bragging rights I never will. John was the cane-wielding septuagenarian with the rapier-sharp vocabulary, sipping vodka from Paula's tiny demitasse teacups, her mother's pattern. John is her video editor and came by several times to work on her productions on the computers in her studio. The next person I met is a lawyer from Las Cruces who knows my old neighbor, the one who is perpetually trying make a break into the old west politics by running for judge.
The most unexpected connections were musical. I have moved beyond blues the past ten years, but when I read about the lineup for the tenth annual blues festival I saw Dr. Mojo & The Zydeco Cannibals included Mike Purdy, the musician who taught me the mandolin and teaches my son guitar every week. The festival had street dances and a nice venue at the park, just a short walk from Paula's house. The connection that didn't tangibly occur was when I suggested dinner at the Buckhorn Saloon in the Pinos Altos hills above Silver. As we sat eating our buffalo burgers Paula told me that the last time she was there Iris Dement was sitting at the bar near the Indian that always occupies the corner spot and sat there that night. I don't know what I would have done if she were there that night, but Tucson seemed like a distant planet.
Had Amelia and I camped in the Gila National Forest near the Buckhorn as originally planned, the sound of rain would have eased our transition to sleep. Instead, effervescent fish tanks brought about our slumber on solid hardwood floors. A broken teacup in Paula's pattern hid fish in the gravel of one of the tanks. As the rivers of life flow inextricably toward an unknown sea, the small headwaters gather downstream, combining their common experiences into one flow.
posted by Garrett | 8:58 PM
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