Today we drove almost 40 miles out from Elephant Butte to see Chloride. Rimmed by mountains and rolling, folded, extruded grass land/ranch land, Chloride is billed as a ghost town. That isn't quite right though. In the late 1880s a muleskinner discovered silver (chloride) and although he and his party were killed by Indians about two months after they filed their claim, word of the discovery spread true to cliche, and the place was swamped by men, and the usual saloons and general merchandise stores sprang up. Women who answered the invitation to settle there were rewarded with a building site. The father of the first baby born there was enticed with the same reward, "if they could figure out for sure who the father was." Chloride had a newspaper, photographer, supplies, assay office and 3000 people when the government inadvertently lowered the value of silver (and the town) by putting the country on the gold standard. By 1900 it was a quiet village and the mine was closed.

Today, as Dona Edmunds says, they have a population of six, with a co-op Gallery and the Museum, and a potential restaurant waiting for a cook. Next to the Museum, attractive state-built modern restrooms and picnic tables intrude on the aura of time travel.

At some point in the last 40 years, people moved to the town and began restoring buildings. After hearing the history of their falling down home, Don and Dona restored it by tearing it down board by board, and rebuilding it. They also purchased and in the 1990s over three years restored the General Store which had been closed for 77 years, its remaining contents shared by rats and bats. Today, the store is a museum, and all the treasures inside originated on-site—except for the objects belonging to two long-time citizens who they felt deserved a place of honor.

So I am mulling over what little I have seen and been told of Cassie Hobbs. She was a true pioneer girl who didn't live in a house until she was 14. Traveling from place to place, living in wagons and tents, she didn't have the opportunity to attend school. All her life she fearlessly and endlessly created, and Dona and Don, who bought her home and workshop, were enriched by some years of her company and left with her things.

When he saw her workshop, instead of the modern tools he expected, he found a hand saw, hatchet and other simple tools. She knitted, made her own shoes and boots, clothing, dolls, furniture, painted, made frames from beer cans. And on and on. Her relatives didn't want anything she made, and Don and Dona thought at least some of her work should be seen.

In the photos below, Dona shows me everything she made. She was working on her self-designed boots when she died. The rose-covered dress and t-shirt were for the country's Bicentennial. The dolls, tablecloths, bent wood furniture, box—just a fraction of what she made. She was always beautifully dressed, her nails were long and painted, her hair beautifully done. You can see for yourself, in the picture on the Coors can frame. She lived in the house (b&w photo) and her workshop was in the stone house. In the peaceful town of Chloride.

In 2005, following the ailing motor home on a winding Missouri country road, I passed a cemetery where bright artificial flowers at each grave marker rose above the tawny winter lawn. A decade ago, artificial flowers were far from universal grave decor and forbidden in some cemeteries. Now, they’ve spread over cemeteries across the country. Stubborn weeds. Row on row on row, like the tiny flags in Arlington National Cemetery, they erupt from fence to fence, rigid never-dying blooms to companion the dead.

Despondent over this phenomenon, I contemplated writing about it; my outcry of despair at the ugliness of it all. I’m not without compassion for, or understanding of, those marking in this way a life lived. Still, it feels terrible to my eyes, for my spirit.

Over time, I thought of how I would begin to write, not knowing where I might end. I first heard my writer’s voice repeating, Rest in Peace. Rest in Peace.

Rest in Peace? That formerly consoling benediction mocked me.

Rest in Peace? Denied the serenity of the landscape overhead moving through its seasons? Surrounded by an eternity of garish fading plastic, or a litter of cloth petals fluttering on the grass? How could the body’s partnership with earth’s decay and rebirth peacefully commence while the distracting slower cycle of fossil to oil to plastic to trash persisted in one’s resting place? What a brutal visual joke.

Then I’d hear that resounding communal response, You won’t care, stupid! You’ll be gone. You’ll have entered black Oblivion or be with Creation and what does it matter? It comforts the living. That may be. Some of the living. But I’m heartsick. Give me real flowers—even nature’s wildest, weediest obliteration.

What triggers this melancholy is more than my sense of aesthetics. Those acres of plastic flowers metaphor the acres of storage units proliferating everywhere, monuments to the fact that you can’t take it with you, but we’re trying. Flea markets, tag sales and dumpsters full of plastics, roadways littered with it. I'm part of all that, minus the storage unit. And part of a culture that watches and listens, rather than participating in "real life." Bereft of more than a visual connection to nature.

In the past few years, I’ve come across cemeteries that explode with color and decoration. I’ve seen them in Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico and lately, in Texas. Most often Spanish-speaking or indigenous people are buried there, under dusty desert or grassy lawns. What I’ve noticed about these burial grounds is the intense personalization of each grave. Many of the rules of typical North American cemeteries and memorial parks are broken. In some places the soothing mathematical order of headstones, or the spacious vista in parks with ground level plaques is replaced by an anarchy of crowded white picket fences and crosses. These are constructed of wood or concrete, more accessible and less majestic than granite or marble.

Some sites are bordered with brick or stone; the white picket fence. Plastic and cloth flowers flutter in the wind, statuettes, balloons, angels and toys are arranged obviously as a loving tribute.

This winter I was drawn to the Cemeterio San Antonio De Padua, set back from the busy highway, in the South Texas Gulf. Information was printed on a container at the entrance to the cemetery.

CEMETERY VISITING
NO VISITORS AFTER DARK
CONSTRUCTION & LOCATION OF CURBS MONUMENTS TREES &
SHRUBS MUST BE APPROVED BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ORGANIZATION BEFORE WORK IS STARTED
WHEN CLEANING PLOTS PLEASE REMOVE YOUR OWN TRASH
CEMETERY PLOTS ARE $200
PLEASE KEEP CLEAN & KEEP OFF MEDIUM
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL THE FUNERAL HOME

Spread before me was an array of monuments marking passed souls. There, in abundance, were the flowers I so despised. There, in every direction, I was greeted by anything but anonymity and peaceful order. Instead, I felt the loving presence of families and friends. I saw grave sites marked by a simple rough cross, traditional monuments, and those built and bordered and decorated with such generosity of figures and flowers that I could feel the love of the living calling out to the dead. I could see their grave decorations reflecting the comforts of home. Welcome. Hi there...bye there. I moved from grave to grave, feeling stories from marker and furnishings, taking pictures, carefully trying to avoid walking on graves, some so close that it was impossible. The petals of cloth flowers were scattered underfoot, bright in the sun, glowing from the shade. Some marks of the lives passed remained simple. A rock, a cross, some gravel. No visible sign of great love or perpetual maintenance. But the tatters of cloth petals lift and move across all the graves, then lie fluttering in the wind.

I walked into the Chapel, and at the feet of the saint was a large black plastic bag. I noticed something emerged from the right side of the open bag. Something black-haired. I turned away and walked back to the car, imagining that someone had dragged the corpse of a lab-like dog to a sacred place. Who? Why? Who would be responsible for burying it? These questions remain unanswered, along with the image of the large black shape before the saint and child.

I understood that places like this could be comfortable to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Here, the interactions between living and dead were palpable. And the longing. The waiting chairs were testimony. I felt part intruder, part welcomed guest. I felt strangely soothed. Rather than seeing the hierarchy of the largest angel or piercing obelisk rising over the modest stone, I saw evidence that people were able, themselves, to control and decorate a small space to mark a large loss. That spirit of engaged participation I had needed time and again. After attending a funeral for someone beloved but inadequately celebrated, whose life story was less important than the connection to her church, I felt a fierce desire to—at the very least—throw some dirt down onto her coffin. In the end perhaps, the comfort of creation is to be found in the little altars at home, and in the heart.

Still, I needed to witness what these strangers had created without pretense, and to speak of how their efforts moved me. The last time I went to take more pictures, I felt grateful that I was alone in that pursuit, until I left, and saw the sign highlighted by a yellow square that I’d missed before. Smile, you’re on camera. Which reminds me again, I can see, I can speculate, but I can’t draw conclusions. I don’t know the whole story. My eyes, again and again, feed my emotions first.

“CEMETERY PLOTS ARE $200”

“HI THERE!...IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR SON, OUR PRECIOUS ANGEL...
DEARLY MISSED. BYE THERE!
THANKS FOR VISITING...”

The baby buried here died on his date of birth.

There is a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the tree here.

Yesterday we left the desert country of Roswell. In the distance there was one sharp peak on the horizon out my window. We speculated as to what it was, how far. Maybe it was near Elephant Butte, our destination. Then, after miles of expansive desert, it seemed as if we were slowly coming into paradise.

First there was the sign with the town name: Riverside. What followed was the fulfillment of what the name implied, reiterated in the small villages that followed. Recalling or verifying their names now feels like a detour, away from the bliss of entering a valley with trees drawing the curves of a river we couldn't see. Leafless lush branched Lombardy poplars arrow straight above the rest; horses, horse ranches, sunlight; bush-spotted mountains, shades of rusty reds and gray and gold, adobe structures, old bricks and stones. Textures of grass, fences, bushes, sharp sketched trees. Here, there, a small turquoise pond behind what felt like a homestead.

Signs announced that we were entering Lincoln Historical District, site of the Lincoln War. Something to do with a murdered merchant, then fighting ranchers, and Billy the Kid. Now, tree-lined streets, beautiful, rustic, old homes, highlighted by a round stone fortress with apertures for weapons. Everywhere traces of adobe brick, curves, stone, old wood.

As we continued to drive through this unexpected landscape, strong winds arose. I could see Andre working harder to steer. Over the miles the wind strengthened, and at one point was frighteningly intense. It battered us relentlessly until until it ripped out the rivets that held the tarp over our slide-out. We stopped by a park and as the wind lashed at him, Andre devised a way with wire and plastic ties to secure it. A couple stopped to ask if we needed help. Then we anxiously drove off again.

Before long, it was ripped away again, and again, in a littered truck stop Andre secured it, using a clamp, strong plastic ties, a short ladder, ingenuity and strength against the sandy wind. We set out again, the wind lessening after a while, back into open rolling desert, flanked by mountains. Nearing our destination, the blue lake of Elephant Butte in sight, we saw that the awning on the passenger side was blown loose, and upon our arrival, jerry-rigged that with plastic ties.

Today, it was cool and sunny. Chip came with his helper to re-rivet the slide-out tarp, re-align the awning poles, fix the parking brake, and will return tomorrow to do more. I drove to Truth or Consequences, played with my camera, ate a lovely lunch in peace. and returned to find Chip still working. Despite the wind, which just inspired us to retract the slide-out and endure confinement, with the strong sun, the blue skies and carefully groomed RV Park, with motor homes positioned over several tiers, despite the wind, there is a feeling of peace.

And yesterday seems like a dream of contrasts. The nurturing beauty of the landscape, the powerful imperative of the wind. Both monumental.

After seeing this fortress in Lincoln, and taking some disappointing shots of the house next to it, I set my camera on sepia, because of the colors of the sandstone. I tried that for a while, then switched to black and white—which brought me back to where I began with photography, in the seventies.

This place was a weaving shop, with drinks—I wanted to go in.

On the highway/main street in Lincoln

Outside Lincoln

Our first repair stop

On the road again

Our second stop

On the road again

Andre goes in to register at the RV park

Still windy. Dinner in Elephant Butte, NM

Truth or Consequences, NM, up hill.

Lunch in Truth or Consequences. Tasty and serene. The sun so blinding on my table by this window that I had to move

Back at the RV park