Tragedy in Etzatlan

 

Tragedy in Etzatlan

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Lest we forget. I tell this story lest we forget.

We have suffered a tragedy in our little community.

You are probably tired of hearing me celebrate every raindrop. The rain that makes this mountainous country look like the green, green, green of Ireland, wears the familiar comedy/tragedy mask, same as any country with arroyos and gullies. Water will wear and tear channels through mountains, valleys and hillsides.

Last week the rain turned its tragedy cheek toward our town.

Etzatlan was established by the Spanish in the 1530s as a major shipping point from the gold and silver mines in the mountains above the town; from the mines to Etzatlan, to Guadalajara, to the Gulf Coast and across the Atlantic to Spain.

One of the bigger mines, El Amparo, the ruins of which still stand, is located just a few short kilometers above our town and was still being mined as late as the 1930s. A handful of people live at El Amparo, in homes near but outside of the old mining buildings. The actual mines, the area around them, is huge, as you might imagine an area mined for 500 years.

For the rest of us, it is a fun place to explore, to walk the trails. For one family in town, a place the area had become their camping mecca. My gardener, Leo, knew the family. The young man, 35, and his wife 32, two children, girls 12 and 8, were neighbors. Leo told me the young man was a hard worker, a good man. The family didn’t have much money but they spent many weekends together, tent camping and exploring in the hills, the ruins, the old mining areas at El Amparo.

This is not a cliché. It truly was a dark and stormy night. Lightning flashed and crackled. Thunder crashed and boomed. Rain poured from the sky as from a bottomless, never-ending, tilted bucket.

We will never know the details. Did our family go to their pickup truck for shelter from the storm? Was it the next morning, searching for a better campsite? Did they get caught in a flash flood, as a wall of water roared through the arroyo while they were crossing? Did they misjudge the depth and strength of the waters?

I tell you this story because every community in Montana has a similar story. Any country riddled with canyons, arroyos, gullies, with creeks dry most of the year, or gentle rivers, until the rivers are not gentle. It is easy to forget, to not pay attention, to misjudge the dangerous strength of water.

A couple days after the stormy night, the family pickup truck was found in the river with the bodies of Dad, Mom and the younger daughter. The older daughter, the 12 year old, was nowhere nearby.

Immediately, the grieving community came together to search the area, which encompassed numerous side streams and a huge burn from last year. The National Guard, the Army and Navy were all engaged in the search along with Police from all the communities around us.

Four days after the storm, the body of the other daughter was found and brought to town to join her family for burial. This sadness, this grief, touches all of us, even those of us not native to this place. We all feel the loss of this young family.

Take care. Be vigilant. We may not live at the bottom of a coulee but we either live in or drive through lands prone to flash floods and surging waters.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 1, 2024

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Threw a Party

 

Threw a Party

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It was not the usual party. Bear with me while I paint a picture for you of the background that led to this strange, but not unfamiliar, party.

First thing, Baby Marley, my great-granddaughter, who spent the winter in the hospital NICU in Billings, who is still fighting the effects, came down with Covid. Oh, yes, the whole family fell ill, one by one, like a standing-on-edge row of dominoes.

Every morning I’d check in. How is Marley? How are Kyla, Leilani, Tate, Jessica and Damon? How is Grandma? Whew!

The whole week I lived in a cloud of worry. That fog dominated my senses. I knew I wasn’t thinking straight. But I couldn’t seem to shift gears.

I even managed to work myself up into a couple days of my own minor illness, mirroring my family’s symptoms without benefit of Covid.

During this time, three of my friends, three of the other homeowners here, flew in for various periods of time. Every day they were off gadding about, doing fun things. I succumbed to a tinge of envy.

Now, these three women have known each other all their lives. Two of them are here for a short period of time, will be back come winter. It is only normal that they would cram in every minute of fun that they can.

Of course, they don’t invite me. They know I am saving every peso for truck rental when I move, maybe in two or three months. I turn down every invitation.

Doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t go with them. Doesn’t matter that “no, thanks” would be my decision. I still felt left out. Feelings are so weird, not to be always trusted, eh? I didn’t say this was going to be a pretty party.

Then, while purging and packing a cupboard, sorting through posters from plays I’d been in or had directed, I caught a bad case of the “remember whens?” and that, on top of the aforementioned,  led me to my degeneration into a pity party, one lone party pooper attendant, my own self.

To have a really good down-in-the-dirt pity party, one must feed it. What better food than comparing one’s insides to other people’s outsides. I always come out of this comparison feeling “less than”. If you have a need to feel badly, I guarantee this method works.

Fortunately for me, I felt myself hit bottom. Whoa. Hold your horses, woman. Let’s turn this team around. We don’t really want to stay at this party.

I would love to tell you that we left the party at a gallop. Party over! Well, it didn’t work that way.

For a good hour, I had to self-talk my way back out of my slump. It was hard work. There is something in my mind that gets a payback from a little self-pity and it didn’t want to let me go.

What I can tell you is that once I got my Tigger-bouncy mind calmed down, I was able to take that pity party in a strong grip, gather all my energy, plant my feet firmly, knees flexed, windmill my arm in my very best caricature of a baseball pitcher, and throw that party as far away from me as I could fling it. I think it flew over the mountains plop into the ocean.

That’s how I threw a party.

My family is in various stages of sick and getting better.

Baby Marley is still snuffly but has the “energy of a horse”.

My friends are packing their days full of adventures.

My mind has settled down to appreciating the wonders of the day.

Mangos are in full ripe juiciness. Life is good again.

Invitation to a party? Uh, no thanks. I’m partied out.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 25, 2024

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Homer gets a make-over

 

Homer gets a make-over

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Poor Homer. He started to look disreputable. Rather down in the mouth, long in the tooth, rusty around the edges.

Sadly, I had reached the age to consider procuring a companion. While Homer is not exactly a cabana boy, I was attracted to him the first time I saw him. His price was mind-boggling. It took me a good year of back-and-forth trips to Tonala, home of huge artisans bazaars, before I made the purchase.

This was back in the first couple years I lived here, when each trip to Tonala was a treasure hunt for fun and artistic touches for my casa and jardin. Every year I visited that corner shop and gazed on Homer with wanting.

Homer. I’d better explain further. He’s made of metal, same as the tin man in “The Wizard of Oz” but distinguished looking. Homer, a skeleton in a tuxedo, complete with spats and a top hat, cigarillo in one hand and a cane in the other, stands about 7’ tall. I do like a man to whom I can look up with admiration, especially one who doesn’t argue with my decisions, who lets me go about my business with complacency.

Still distinguished, but, yes, time has taken a toll, Homer looks a bit disreputable. He might be no longer welcome among the snoot-and-loot crowd.

I suppose it’s my fault. I let him live outdoors with nary a care for the elements. I began to think about giving my man a make-over.

My first thinking would have made Homer something of an art project. While not envisioning a face lift and hours at the gym to bulk him up, I was considering a complete paint job, adding tiny silver conchos with a touch of turquoise to gussy up his pant legs, though Homer’s legs are awfully skinny. And teeth. Poor guys teeth are more stained than mine.

The sheer work (and cost, all those colors) involved in a complete make-over seemed daunting and I managed to put it off, again and again.

I’m glad I did. Three women friends, Ana, Michelle and Susan, were over for a visit and we were standing around Homer while I told them our story and my plans for a paint job.

“NO!” they exclaimed, in unison. “Homer is wonderful just as he stands.” “Nothing looks worse than glaring white teeth in an old man’s mouth.” “He is aging the same as we are!” “Every ding and dent tells a story.”

Well, that’s me told. I listened. I looked. “I think you are right.” While more than willing to give up the hard work, I saw Homer in a different light. Aging along with me. I like that.

Michelle then said, “Why not just knock off some of the rust. Put some Coca-Cola in a spray bottle, spray the rusty spots, wait a few minutes, brush it off with water. When he is dry, spray him with varnish.”

 Yes. Why not indeed. I asked Leo to buy me some Coca-Cola, the national drink of Mexico, and here you thought that was tequila, and please pick up two cans of spray varnish for my metal man.

I got to work. I didn’t remove every speck of rust, but the process made me glad I’ve never been a big soda pop drinker. When I do want that fizz, however, I generally chose Coca-Cola. Notice the past tense usage there.

My big fear is that if I put any more magic remover on Homer, I might render him nude. Enough is enough, I decided.

I’ve never been a whiz with spray cans of paint but I gave it my best go, and voila, a new man emerged. Newish. Sort of newish. Cleaner, at any rate. Spiffy. Ready for the next phase of our lives.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 18, 2024

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Drop the Paint Bucket

 

Drop the Paint Bucket

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One of my Montana classmates, who has chronic problems with her back, sometimes to the point she cannot walk, told us the story of what happened a several years ago that caused her to resort to hanging onto her walker this week.

Cheryl was on a ladder painting the eaves of a new-built garden shed. She needed to move the ladder, started down, slipped and landed on her bottom, broke her tailbone and crushed several vertebrae, but, by golly, she hung onto the paint bucket.

Does this sound familiar? 

Paint splattered everywhere, changing the color of flowers on the bushes, her clothing, the ground. That’s not the point. Had Cheryl dropped the bucket and grabbed the ladder, she undoubtedly would have saved herself years of excruciating pain. But, her hand gripped the bale of the pail, all the way to the ground.

Are you relating to this?

When my friend told us the story, I immediately recalled several of my own. If you are of a certain age, raised in eastern Montana, no doubt you are nodding your head and reliving your own stories.

It’s a cultural thing. We were taught this. We were taught, not with words, but in more subtle ways, or sometimes, in some families, not so subtle ways, that things were more important than our bodies. Stuff, property, inanimate objects were more important than our human selves.

You might fall from a ladder and break bones, but you don’t drop the tools. You might get run over and gored but you don’t let the bull out the gate that might lead him to the highway. You might skip Christmas, birthdays and meals, but you hang onto the homestead. Extreme stories? You tell me.

When I was eight years old, helping my cousin wash dishes, I broke the lid on a candy dish. Shirley’s first words, “That was a wedding present.  Mom’s going to kill you.”

Sobbing all the way, I managed to get to the barn where my Aunt Mary was helping with the milking. It was all I could do to drag the words out of my mouth, to tell my Aunt what I had done, sobbing so hard that my stomach muscles ached.

My Aunt hugged me and said the dish wasn’t that important. Years later, when she asked if I’d like any keepsakes from her home, please choose anything, I took the candy dish.

We lived down a mile-long gumbo lane. I ended in the ditch more than once. “Is the car damaged” Since I was standing there telling Dad I’d slid the car in the ditch, driving too slowly, he told me, I suppose it was obvious I wasn’t hurt. Still, a smidgeon of sympathy would not have gone wrong.

The most terrifying job Dad ever put me on, unpaid, of course, was driving the D-2 Cat while cleaning drain ditches. I lived through it. My muscles still tense up just remembering, afraid to the point of nausea that I might slip a track and land the Cat in the bottom of the ditch.

If you think I’m exaggerating the effects of growing up in a culture of things, stuff, property, being more important than people, go park on a street near a crosswalk and just watch a while. You will notice that anybody over 45 years old limps or shuffles or shows some signs of physical abuse. We do to ourselves as we were taught.

When my own children broke anything, I don’t care how precious it might have been before it was dropped, slipped or crashed, my first words to them were these, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I wish I could go back and redo a lot of things with my kids, I messed them up regularly, but I got that one right. I hope I never gave my children a hint of an idea that any kind of “stuff” was more valuable to me than they were.

It may be that you have no more business than I do climbing up a ladder to paint. However, if you climb up and you start to slip, if you remember nothing else, “Drop the paint bucket.”

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 11, 2024

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When almost a tsunami

 

When almost a tsunami

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Rainy nights. Sunny days. Moderate temperatures. “I could live in this season forever,” I said to a friend this morning.

If only. Right? Nope, we get to experience all things.

We got to experience a mountain-storm almost-tsunami the other night. A right whopper.

A few days prior, during a lighter storm, I lay in bed thinking about geography. I’m at the foot of mountains. If a phenomenal rainstorm, something much more than the ordinary, were to burst forth, we could be flooded. Water still flows downhill, mostly, right?

Somebody has to imagine these things.

Next day, I told Leo about my night-time meanderings. He laughed at me. “That cannot happen here,” he said.

And then it did. Rain fell so hard it looked like a solid wall.  I could neither see my brick wall nor anything closer than the wall nor anything such as the tall trees beyond the wall. A solid wall of water. Impressive, oh, yes, most impressive.

Rain, just as in my imaginings, gushed down the mountainside. By the bottom of the hills, the water had become similar to an ocean wave and like a tsunami, a giant wave, the wall of water rushed across the highway into the fields beyond, carrying trees along with parts of buildings, old tires and all manner of debris.

I didn’t see this with my own eyes. I got the report the next morning. My yard, my home, had no damage. The main thrust of the deluge was about a quarter mile beyond us. I heard sirens off and on all night but had no idea what was happening. The Policia were out all night, clearing pathways so traffic could move through in safety.

This was the storm, the water-wave that Leo assured me could not happen. Trees uplifted. New gullies dug out. Entire hillsides, rearranged. Lowlands under water. Nature being creative.

At the same time, tornados in Montana! We surely seem to be experiencing a lot of “never happen here”.

Once the dread heat dome lifted, we have had rain storms nightly, just like that, no transition, no go gentle into the night. Fortunately, most of most of our rains have been just that, gentle into the night.

Part of me is a huge-eyed child, wanting to ask Mother Nature, “What next?”

The superstitious, I admit it, part of me clamps a hand over my lips and whispers raspy in my ear, “Don’t even think that thought. You do not even want to know what could happen next.”

About this time every afternoon, I go out and scan the sky. I watch the black clouds roll in from seemingly all directions, the mountains, the valleys. I listen to the distant rumbles. Know that if it were darker, I’d see flashes of storm to come.

Back in the house, I put the rain-towels onto the window sills, lay another rug along the door to soak up water that comes inside when the storm lashes windy. Within an hour, it is dark. Some nights, I hear rain hit the roof and watch the storm move in, around, and onward. Other nights, I wake to thunder and flashes electric, rain on the roof and trees, roll over in bed and hope we don’t get another “mountain tsunami”.

May the Fourth be with you.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 4, 2024

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Saying the Long Good Bye

 

Saying the Long Good Bye 

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I am packing the long packing. I am saying the long good bye. I am readying myself for the big move, the great distance of ten kilometers, all the way to far off, exotic Oconahua, a move which is months away.

I love where I am living now, this place, this small house, all my plants. Nobody would ever question my love for this place. And this place has loved me back, big loves.

Everybody’s financial and personal situations are different. We who live on the rancho are a varied group indeed, varied in background, varied in life experiences. My friends here are appalled. “How can you even think of moving?” “You have made your home so beautiful.” “What will you do about shopping? Medical care? If you need help?” “You will be alone.” And, “How can you leave us?”

You’d think I’m moving to the moon at people’s responses.

Alone. To the moon. I find it interesting that I am the only person living here without a partner. Interesting, that. And most of my friends are here only two to six months at the most.  Hmmm.

My reality is that it gets harder every year for me to keep this place up, financially and because of my own physical creakiness, age, past surgeries, arthritis, the usual suspects.

We live on private land. We “buy” the house, lease the land on which it sits. Any improvements I’ve made are for my own comfort and pleasure. Except for what is actually attached to the house, many of these lovelies will move with me.

To Oconahua. Ten kilometers. The house I will rent is being built on a corner of property owned by my Oconahua friends.

Hence, the packing.

Ah, yes, the long packing. I don’t have a lot. Some days I pack a box. Some days none. Pack and purge and clean, all at once. Thoughtfully. Hence the purging. 

I have come to the realization that I could get by with one plate, one bowl, one cup, and one set of eating tools. I could. But I’m not ready to live that simply yet. I am very aware that these simple tools could be reduced to a begging bowl and a spoon. I’m not there yet either.

Since my moving date is undecided, I make decisions based on season and time. I ask myself, will I need this or can I do without this for the next three months? Winter bedding is lodged in big black garbage bags. Should I need them, I know where they are.

Other decisions are more problematic. Already, I’ve unpacked and repacked a basket of cups and drinking glasses. At the time I packed the basket, I knew I should give that particular set of cups to Crinny, who likes them and will use them. To me, they are pretty but I never use them, preferring my rustic Mexican clay cups.

Some items, like towels, get used to shredded uselessness, rags. Cups breed. I’ve reduced my paltry supply of cups to less than one half of what I had before packing. They breed. I don’t know how. In the sink. In the cupboard. In the night. I shall never run out of cups.

Everything comes under my critical decision-making eyeballs. Throw away. Give away. Pack now. Pack later. A box yesterday. None today. Two tomorrow, maybe. And so it goes. When moving time arrives, I intend to put my bowl and spoon in a basket and wave good bye.

Which brings me to the long good bye. Good byes are harder. Not to people. I’ll still see my friends. Ten kilometers, remember.

How does one say good bye to that beautiful double ruffled red hibiscus at the corner by the clothesline? Or the mango tree? Or the giant philodendron-like plant that often stops me in my tracks, it is so breath-taking? Or the way the morning sun filters golden through the Fresno trees on the campground next door? My list of good byes is long.

Ten kilometers. I’m going to meet a long list of new “hellos”. New plants. New trees. New beauties. New people. Old friends. It’s all good.

Did I say the heat dome lifted? One day the high is 98. The next day, just like a snap, the high is 71 with rain. Every day is delicious, tidbits of delight, tasty morsels of perfection, yummy bites of cool pleasure.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Half year gone by

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