Tradition

I believe in tradition. Fortunately, Jim does too. We've been together for over 20 years and in that time we've built up many traditions. When something works especially well for us, we tend to repeat it, practice it, hone it.

One of my favorite traditions is my birthday hike. My birthday is in late May just as the desert heats up and the mountains beckon us. For many years now, we have driven the 24 miles up the mountain for my traditional birthday breakfast and hike.

Mt. Lemmon used to have several restaurants but since the Aspen Fire in 2003, the only restaurant left that serves breakfast is The Iron Door at the ski area. It has always been popular but has become THE place for a sit-down meal.

Lots of motorcycle and bicycle riders stop at the restaurant before heading back to Tucson. Lines of motorcycles can be seen parked outside the restaurant or several tables of folks dressed in bicycle gear may greet you inside.

The Iron Door is where tradition dictates that Jim treat me to breakfast. I order the pancakes with sausage, he orders the eggs with hashbowns. He gets my sausage and I get some of his potatoes.

Tradition dictates this.

After breakfast, we walk across to the ski area and check out the condition of the slopes and shops. This past year was a good one for Ski Valley. The area had lots of snow and the slopes were open for many days. Some years, Ski Valley doesn't open at all. Snow can be fickle this far south.

We had decided to hike the Sunset Trail from Marshall Gulch and then do part of Butterfly Trail. Marhall Gulch is a piece of paradise. It's at the end of the main road in Summerhaven, the village at the top of Mt. Lemmon. The picnic tables are almost always full on summer weekends and water usually flows in the creek that wanders through the grounds. This is where we catch Sunset Trail. The trail is short. It travels through forest and over rock formations with spectacular views of the surrounding peaks from many outcrops. It ends in an area of cabins, most of which survived the fire.

From Sunset Trail, we cross the Catalina Highway to catch Butterfly Trail. The trail leads to an area that used to be shaded by tall trees. Following the trail was like going down, down, down into a deep forest lost in time.

That was before the Aspen Fire. Lots of heavy burning took place in this area and, for awhile, the trail was simply gone. It's been restored now and again is a favorite for hikers.

The devastation brought by the Aspen Fire can be seen in this picture of Jim. Previously, views of other mountain ranges were few and far between on the trail because of the dense forest. Now, other peaks are visible during most of the hike. The ferns, however, remain as thick as ever.

On the hike back we took a different route. Well, acutally, we missed the trailhead. But Jim has a knack for finding a lost trail and eventually he led us over a hill and right back to where we needed to be.

As always, we had a great time and plan to keep up the tradition of my mountain breakfast and hike for a long time.

65

I have turned 65.

I remember my grandmother at 65. At 65, she was old. I am not old.

I can see her across from me in a chair, her breasts in her lap. She never wore a bra but rather a soft shirt under her slip so her breasts always sat near her waist. My breasts don't sit anywhere unless I cross my arms to make a shelf and push up. Occasionally I still look at large, perfectly shaped breasts with envy. Then I remember my grandmother. Her hairstyle never changed. It was long, thinning gray hair, wound up in the back into some kind of knot. I saw her hair down only one time and was amazed that it came to the middle of her back.

As a child, I sometimes spent time at my grandmother's house. Everyday except Sunday, she wore a cotton house dress, usually belted at the waist. House dress was an appropriate term  because that's where she spent her time, in the house.

When she was a younger woman, living on a dairy farm, she worked hard.  But later in her life, she hired a cleaning lady who came twice a month to do the heavy work. Grandma cooked, dusted and did the laundry but saved  the other chores for the cleaning lady. She figured that at her age she had earned that luxury.

My grandmother had simple needs For breakfast she had the usual, cereal or eggs. Nothing fancy. Plain white dishes. She made coffee, "strong enough to paint with," my dad said and that's the way he liked it. Sometimes she served rusks, a hard biscuit, with butter. The dishes were washed immediately after the meal and the chores of the day followed. For lunch, we usually had buttered bread with slices of some strong, aromatic cheese. Maybe a piece of fruit.

In the afternoon, she napped or watched T.V. About 3 p.m., we drank tea with milk and sugar. Store-bought cookies were usually put on a plate and set on the table. Grandma wasn't much of a baker.

Her house had a peculiar odor. It smelled like false teeth and Grandma absorbed that odor. Whenever she came near, she smelled like her house. Or maybe her house smelled like her.

While dinner was being prepared and eaten, the T.V. was forbidden but after the dishes were washed, dried and put away, the T.V. was allowed on again. Her favorite was wrestling. She loved Gorgeous George and would argue with anyone who suggested that the matches were rigged.

My life is different. I spend time outdoors - walking in the desert, hiking in the nearby mountains, skiing in the winter. I read several hours a day. I buy local produce and experiment with Indian and Thai recipes. My house smells like spices or incense. I have a partner but don't need to marry.

I admire my grandmother for many reasons but am glad I live at this time.

I am lucky. I am fortunate. I am contented. How many words can I think of that mean blessed?

They all apply.

Praise for the Common Ant #2

Last year the ant apartment was vacant again but I didn't rake or smooth out the area that winter. I left the hole alone. However, because of wind and rain, the opening pretty much filled in and disappeared.

This is year 5 and, once again, I have ants. I wonder about the 2 year cycle - ants one year then not the next - but I haven't been able to find any information related to it.

These ants are very small, different from both of the other colonies. I first noticed them when they, like the first group, were marching north across the yard, up and over my 5 foot cement block wall. They, however, didn't go to the north wall and into my front yard; rather, they scrambled over the side wall. Again, I went around, curious to see where they were headed. Once over the wall, they traveled east into my neighbors' yard. I don't know where they ended up because, first, I couldn't just enter Terry's back yard without permission and, second, the ants only made the trip a few times. The traveling stopped before I had a chance to ask Terry if I could follow these guys.

They never resumed climbing the wall but,  for all I know,  the new colony might have been settled  The remaining tenants, while not lazy, are certainly less passionate about their jobs than other ants. I rarely see them although I know they are there because the hill is visible. It's not the greatest looking ant hill since they don't work on it much, but it must suit their needs.

When I do see them trying to clean up their area, I've noticed that they aren't particularly skilled. If an ant is carrying a grain of sand up and out of the entrance, he often doesn't make it to the top. He usually picks the steepest route and falls back down. And I don't see him trying again and again to best that wall. Once he falls, he usually disappears into the hole. These guys aren't as ambitious as my other ants but they seem to be surviving just fine.

Then last week, I discovered another hill in the alley behind my wall. These are red ants. Lots of red ants. And their ant hill isn't really a hill; it's more of a cave. There appears to be an overhang, perhaps protecting the nest from the strong sun in our hot summer months.

Most of the ants coming back to the cave carry something in their mandibles. These guys scurry around in the morning but have enough sense to get out of the heat during the hottest part of the day.

What fun these fellows have been to watch. I've developed a great respect for the ants, creatures I used to consider just a nuisance, something to get rid of. Now I feel protective of these insects. 

Who knows, maybe cockroaches will be next.

Nah.

Praise for the Common Ant # 1

Five years ago, I found an ant's nest at the rear of my backyard. My immediate inclination was to get the bag of Ortho Ant Killer and pour large amounts of granules down the ant hole. But they were located far from the house, not doing any damage, so I decided to take a wait-and-see attitude. If the beasts entered my kitchen or attacked my apple tree, I would annihilate them. Otherwise, I would let them be.

A few weeks later, I noticed the ants again. I was in the yard checking plants about 8 a.m. in late May. I started watering the Bougainvillea when I saw streams of ants marching north from the ant hole  Not a few ants but an army of ants. A couple of brave souls led the parade but many, many ants followed. All were headed north. I saw no ants travel back to the hole and none held anything in its mandibles. They all just marched on their little legs across my yard, steadfastly north.

A 5 foot wall surrounds my yard and when they reached the edge of the yard, these tiny creatures climbed the wall. They just rolled over that 5 foot wall and  into my front yard. Where in the world were they going? Why the long trek from the rear of my yard, over the wall and into my front yard?

I went around to the front to investigate.

The Acacia tree. That's where they were headed. In my front yard, I picked up their trail and followed them to my Cat Claw Acacia tree.

The ants were climbing up and down the trunk, up and down the branches then disappearing under a bricked area next to the tree.

I Googled the situation and discovered that ants and acacia trees have long had a symbiotic relationship. Ants have taken over a defense role, protecting the acacia from herbivores and pruning away competing plants. In return, the tree supplies the ants with protein from its leaflet tips and carbohydrate-rich nectar from glands on its leaf stalk.

Okay. The ants can stay. Every morning I watched the ants make their way from the hole, over the wall, across the gravel in my front yard to their new colony under the bricks.

As soon as the weather cooled, the ants disappeared. Hibernating, I supposed. However, they didn't reappear the next spring. I missed them but, hey, que sera sera. I took the rake to the ant hole and smoothed it out, virtually making all remembrances of the traveling visitors disappear.

Year three, there was some activity with the ant hole. I told Jim I might have new tenants. I had seen some ants cleaning out the hole. I didn't hold my breath but was hoping I might have another summer of traveling ants.

It was not to be.

New ants had moved into the old apartment all right but these ants were much bigger and they didn't send homesteaders over the wall. They seemed more interested in architecture than travel. Early in the morning, ants struggled up the steep sides of the hole, each carrying one grain of gravel to a location where it wouldn't roll back down. Each ant placed his one grain in its perfect place then returned down the hole -  to pick up another grain, I assumed.

What patience!

But it paid off. Soon the hill was high and rounded. And I hoped the inside of the apartment met with their approval.

I watched other members of the colony struggling with a seed or some morsel two, three times as big as they were, dragging their treasures to home base. When they tried to maneuver their finds up and over the hill into the apartment, the ants resembled drunken carousers, leaning this way and that, trying to negotiate the item into the hole. 

One guy's prize was too big to fit. He had made it all the way across my back yard, had bested the pile of sand but couldn't fit the kernel into the hole. He gave up and went off to other adventures. Of course, his prize blocked other work that needed to be done. Soon two other ants were onto the problem. They pushed and pulled but no success. Then a few more ants appeared. These chaps started whittling away at the kernel and eventually, after a long time working, it slid into the hole.

Amazing!

They Called Him Slim

My father was a handsome man.

He immigrated from The Netherlands in 1918 when he was 7 years old. His family worked a dairy farm in Holland but they didn't own their own land, and that became their American dream - buy land, buy cows and build their own farm. My grandfather was never a healthy man and Dad was expected to help build the new life here so he had to quilt school at 12 and do a man's job. He always regretted not finishing his education. He particularly liked biology and wanted to become a mortician. In that job, he could learn about the human body and perform a service. But he wouldn't have to graduate from a college or university. He could become an apprentice to get the training he needed. That, he thought, might be achievable. Going to a college or university was something my father couldn't imagine for himself since he had so little formal education, and money for schooling was nonexistent.

He never was able to go back to school or get any other kind of formal training, and he remained a dairyman most of his life.

As he got older and developed a belly, he told me that folks used to call him Slim. As a young man, he worked hard and couldn't keep any weight on. He had a picture of himself when he was about 13 that showed him with skinny legs and arms. Throwing bales of hay into the troughs for cows, hauling cans of milk to the processor, shoveling out the manure from the cow pastures was all tough work for a boy and his body became thin and wiry.

In my dad's mid-teens, his father developed tuberculosis and was never again able to do the work of a farmer. Dad's younger brother was allowed to stay in school and that meant most of the farm chores fell to my father. But his mother was a hard-working, determined woman. When the family first arrived in the U.S., they bought a few acres of land with only an out-building for pigs. My grandmother cleaned out that building, the family patched the holes in the walls and around the windows, and they lived in it while they saved money for more land and more cows. After my grandfather became ill, with help from his mother and advice from his father, my dad made the dairy work.

Eventually my grandfather died and his mother remarried. The couple moved to a new house and my father took over the farm. He married my mother and moved her from Minnesota to the dairy farm in California.

I look at his pictures now and appreciate what a good looking man he was. I also remember some of the stories my grandmother told me about their life during the first few years after their immigration. That early pig building? It was in Minnesota. I can hardly imagine the cold in the winter, and I wonder how they survived.

But their frugality brought them to a larger farm in California with a house that had indoor plumbing. That was a treat, my dad said.

Ripe

I am ripe in the desert. Like the apple on the tree in my backyard.

I could have said

I am fine in the desert

or

I am mature in the desert

but

I am ripe in the desert

holds truth for me.

According to Webster's Dictionary, "ripe" means full-blown, plump, developed. That's true but it's not what I'm looking for.

Thesaurus.com comes closer. If I am ripe, I am accomplished. I am sagacious. I am prime.

That's it.

To become ripe, you need time.

Time to try out a turtle pose in yoga.

Time to watch the ants.

Time to read the books and walk the trails.

Time to discover that Tai Chi is the best thing since sliced bread.

Reaching  ripe means standing next to a saguaro and feeling life when you pass your hand over its cool skin. It means knowing you could make a fool of yourself and getting out on that dance floor anyway. It means reading Calvin and Hobbes. It means  recognizing that, even with my gray hair and  a few wrinkles, I am intelligent, humorous, fun loving,

still excited about life.

I am ripe.