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| Driving north on Mockingbird. The Marine base glows in the distance. Photographer Ben Gould. |
The Copper Mountain Mesa Community Center had its second movie night Saturday. The movie was the Inferno, from 1953. Mary Helen and Steve Tuttle, the backbones of the Center, were away so everything fell on the shoulders of the volunteers – me, Ken, Kip, Annelies, Suzy and Patrick. Ken worked the kitchen with Annelies and I worked the snack bar, mostly by myself. Suzy worked the thrift store. Kip worked the projector and Patrick picked up the slack.
Everyone came at
once. The gourmet hotdogs with potato salad and watermelon were a big hit at
$2.00. Mary Helen made zucchini and lemon muffins which we sold for $1.00 each.
There was popcorn with homemade garlic butter, and Halloween boxes of movie
candies.
When the movie started I was watching the front by my
lonesome. At one point I turned and saw a tarantula on the wall, which was very
exciting as it was my first sighting. It was about three inches long and looked
like it was made of black pipe cleaners. It was fortuitous as next month’s
movie is Tarantula and I had a giant spider I bought at Home Depot sitting on
the table.
I was sitting at the
front of the patio alone. A group of about three little brown bats must have
seen the spider. They kept flying in, looping past it, and sizing it up. I put
on my hat. It was desert dramatic and passed the time as I waited for the movie
to end.
James and Ben, two friends from Los Angeles, visited this weekend.
They walked across the BLM land to get to the Center and braved walking back
the same way in the dark. It was only two blocks but it was a moonless night
and we hadn’t left any lights on at the cabin so at one point, when they felt most
lost, they were actually standing right by the house.
Ben took some amazing photos of the house and the cabin and
other wonders and I’ll post some of these as he sends them to me. I asked about
the camera and when I looked it up on Amazon in the morning was dismayed to
find it cost more than some of my friends spent on their properties last
month. I tried to console myself with a little pep talk about my natural sense
of composition and that maybe I’m more of a photo journalist than an art
photographer. I thought of going back to a brownie, or pinhole photography.
There are options. But when you see these photographs I think you’ll agree that
they are quite spectacular. It’s not all the camera, Ben has a great eye and
proper skill, but a righteous tool doesn’t hurt.
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| The cabin at night. Photographed by Ben Gould. |
On Sunday morning our neighbors Denise and Mike Myers
dropped by and I helped her with her online marketing. She does psychic
readings and even though I’m not much of a believer I’ve been helping design
and market her website at angelreader.guru. I’m also doing the Copper Mountain
Mesa website at coppermountainmesa.org.
After that we all piled into cars and drove to pick up
Patrick for breakfast at the Palms. Patrick lives near Surprise Springs – where
people used to get their water before the city put water lines in. The turkey
buzzards were migrating and the sky was filled with what looked like a dust devil
of them swirling around the mesa. Ben took photos and James picked up some
feathers.
The Palms was wonderful as always. Laurel and Frank were
there from the Glass Outhouse Gallery; Molly Katelbach from Radio Free Joshua
Tree; Almut and Jill were busy working on a campaign to prevent a new tax hike
in our portion of Wonder Valley. At first it didn’t sound like much – about $4.00
a month, but there are a lot of people out here living on the margins and $4.00
is not just one latte less a month, but a chunk of their food or gas money and
that little chunk just keeps getting chipped away at. Breakfast was delicious
as usual and it’s always a delight to see Mary, Laura, Jimmy Sibley and little
Punkin.
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| Turkey buzzard on migration. Photographed by Ben Gould. |
We stopped by the new Wonder Valley property and gave our
guests the nickel tour. Then we drove to Laura Sibley’s new cabin and labyrinth
and Patrick and James walked it while the Ken, Ben and I rested in the shade.
When Ken and I returned to our cabin on the Mesa we fell
into a deep sleep. We’re both very social introverts and there’s a point at
which we cannot take any more conversation and we had reached our limit for the
day. When we woke we sat on the edge of the patio and looked at the mountains in
the distance.
