The impressions of a place have a lot to compete with as we grow older should we have collected a lot of memories that we wish to hold on to. The obvious fix to that dilemma is to grab permanent reference points along the way that allow you to return when physically doing so is not possible. So, in leaving a place, we take out a kind of insurance guaranteeing at least some access to memories that will likely fade with the passage of time.
The door to the right leads to the room Caroline and I have stayed in before, and it’s also where we are staying on this visit. It is the Library Room and if you are interested in seeing it, you can visit this breadcrumb from January 2020 I left on my blog so we revisit it from time to time. This works out great because maybe I failed to capture an image I’m satisfied with on this visit to the Simpson Hotel here in Duncan, Arizona.
As per the routine that seems impossible to break free of, we are up with the sun and out the front door before anyone else has begun to move, including the cats.
Yesterday, we went north; today, our walk turned south out of the hotel door. Maybe because it’s Sunday, it feels quieter than on other days, though this could just be a layer of my desire to create a more romanticized moment. Walking away from the Gila River, our path took us past some of Duncan’s churches on Main Street. We’re not looking to attend services, our goal is to continue our aimless wander through life.
This meander into the unknown might have lasted 5 minutes before a sign caught Caroline’s attention; it told of a nearby jetplane. Up the hill with million-dollar views occupied by the poorest residents of Duncan, we aim to go see that airplane monument that, I already know from a previous visit sans Caroline, is sitting on the ground decaying.
Like the old Air Force fighter jet in the background, the park is run down, and the community pool between this swingset and the plane is dry and as neglected as everything else up this hill. While you can’t see it from here, the fighter is on blocks with its wings tossed to the side; somehow, this all feels appropriate for the neighborhood.
Having grown tired of the dogs barking viciously at us as we tried exploring the area, we were quickly back on Main Street, seeing the churches from the other side. Typically, this shouldn’t matter as it’s not like we were looking from the perspective of hell, but it was what was on the backside of the sign of the First Baptist Church of Duncan that perked up our senses. As it may be difficult to make out in my photo, it reads, “Discerning of Spirits, Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues.” All of a sudden, the idea of attending service feels intriguing, though we’d both be reluctant to step in as we’d be certain that the parishioners would see right through us, identifying the interlopers as the Satanic tourists we are.
It’s rare that I feature photos of food on these pages as they never really capture the charm or essence of what they represent to us; the exception is often in the form of donuts or ice cream. Breakfast from Chef Clayton was an exquisite concoction of eggs in the form of quiche, three small gluten-free corn-like griddle cakes, five radicchio petals with one wonderfully savory Kalamata olive, a small bowl of fresh fruit, and hot coffee. Breakfast here at the Simpson is consistently a standout affair that deserves commemoration. Time to leave this place.
Hello, new place down the road, we are here. This is not new, like new as in the first time here, but new as in new to us today. But it’s not the same as before; things are different. An abandoned, decrepit old house that I documented here and here during different visits now has a fence around it with a No Trespassing sign posted. The adjacent fifth-wheel mobile home is now gone; for that matter, it seems like more of the Welcome to New Mexico sign is on its way out, too.
Still sitting in the field awaiting harvesting are sporadic patches of cotton. In between this sentence and the previous one, a period of about 15 minutes passed where I was researching why cotton produces all these fibers. I suggest you read this paper about the life of the cotton plant and these bolls; you will finish it in astonishment. Those fibers grow out of the plant’s seeds and are hollow tubes that fill with cellulose as they mature; what’s behind all of this and the variables to get to good cotton blew my mind. I thought geology was extraordinary; just read about this plant that clothes us.
There’s a cliche that says women love flowers. Well, that cliche never met my nerd wife who’d rather be gifted a tuft of cotton, fleece shorn from a musk ox, sheep, or alpaca, or even fiber collected from a passing animal that is shedding its winter coat.
Boo! Tomorrow is Halloween, and I think this farmer is ready with this great roadside treat. After this pièce de résistance, there was only one thing left to accomplish on this day, aside from picking the pecans Caroline collected around the corner, that was to race back to Miami, Arizona, for our second encounter with Guayo’s El Rey Mexican restaurant for another kind of treat. Not bad for a weekend of staying in place and accomplishing our version of doing nothing.