September 6 -- More Random Observations, Pulling Up Posts, And Another Faranuf Dinner...

I worked at Kaiser Hospital in Harbor City, a very busy urban section of Los Angeles, for 34 years. It was a good job, no more, but had its compensations like good workers that became good friends, and a park across the street that was a magnet for birds -- Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, to give it its official title. It was trashed out and harbored the homeless, but now it's being restored to at least a semblance of what it used to be in its native state. (Estimated completion: 2017.) I watched and chronicled a pair of nesting Red-tailed Hawks in 2005, their nest being on a ledge outside the building behind the one I worked in, and they (I named them Mina and Willie) successfully fledged 3 nestlings. Even the LA Times and a TV station sent people over to report it. But as with all big businesses the corporate mentality changed, so by 2013 I was longing to get out - and get a "real" life. So in April 2013 I retired, and traveled around the West in a travel trailer (a Lance 1685) that I'd bought in December 2010. Traveling solo isn't always what it's cracked up to be, so I had my ups and downs, but the ups were very good, and I saw a lot of the West that I'd never seen before, and re-visited places that were like old friends. But I came to realize that I needed 4 permanent walls, or at least a home base that I could call my own, from which I could take, say, week-long excursions in my Lance, so I was always on the lookout for an affordable home. That pretty much left California out -- though eastern California'a Owens Valley was an attractive possibility, especially as I'd had a history of backpacking the eastern Sierra there -- but in the end I opted for southern Arizona. I told of my interest, specifically in the Chiricahua Mountains of SE Arizona near the New Mexico border, to Helen, a real estate agent who's also a wildlife biologist with a long, exciting history of doing field work with her husband,  especially with raptors, and told her of my interest in birds and bird photography. Not to mention hiking and backpacking midst grand scenery, which the Chiricahuas have in abundance. So while I traveled she always kept an eye out on a place here for me. The first possibility I'm glad I didn't pursue as, well, it just didn't feel RIGHT for me. Then Helen, in the latter part of 2014, mentioned a manufactured home that had been for sale for over a year. I have to admit I wasn't too enamored of manufactured homes, thinking they were just one step above living in a mobile home, but I drove down to Portal from Overton, where I was spending the winter, to see the house. Well, after the deer got in my way just outside of Portal, and Tundra Uno died to save me -- I knew this place, Faranuf, was special. And after I examined it with Helen, well, I knew it was for me. True, there are things you have to sacrifice to live here in a somewhat isolated, rural community -- the closest shopping about 55 miles away, closest gas about 25 miles to the east, in New Mexico (and don't forget to set your clock ahead 1 hour when you cross the state border, as Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time), wearing headlamps at night (there are no street lights here) so you're  not surprised by a rattlesnake (2 poisonous possibilities here, Western Diamondback and Mojave), the closest big hospital over 100 miles to the west -- and those are only the things that I can remember right now. But this area's positives are many, and why PhD's and folks with Master's degrees come here -- abundant wildlife, much of it unique due to the Chiricahuas being one of the fabled "sky islands"; magnificent scenery that is some of the best in the desert southwest, if not in all the US; friendly residents who pretty much all have a lifetime of stories to tell, magnificent sunrises and sunsets; REAL weather, with monsoons, thunder, lightning, and gorgeous cloud displays (unlike southern California, which really has "no" weather); very little crime; night skies that are so clear there's a "village" nearby where astronomers live with an observatory right next to their house; hiking trails galore -- well, the list is nearly endless. So, to paraphrase Caesar -- I came, I saw, I stayed.  And it's probably the best decision I've made, well, ever. And Faranuf was "built" in 2007, and the heat pump installed in 2012, so pretty much everything is still new, and hardly used as the original owners were only here part of the year. My short-range plan is to spend one last month of winter up in Overton in my travel trailer (I bought a new, upgraded version of the Lance 1685 in January, complete with solar panels for "boondocking"), then bring it down to Portal and Faranuf where I'll put it under a canopy to protect it from the strong Arizona sun and weather, and take it out on trips from here. So from my viewpoint at least, I'm in this for the long haul...

Getting back to daily existence at Faranuf... Yesterday's sunrise was again one of those that was a bit wimpy in landscape mode, but when using my 100-400 f/5.6 lens was quite good --

Complete with "God's Rays", or "angel light", as someone on Facebook's Cochise County page called it. I've been itching to start work on Faranuf's back yard, after talking with my friend John about its possibilities, but I don't have the right tools yet, so I started off with something simple. There's a drip irrigation system with lines that lead -- nowhere. It seems like the original owners had planned to grow shade trees in the back yard, so had fenced-off sections of it to protect them from, say, Javelinas, but for some reason the trees never "took", and all that is left are fenced-in sections of the yard -- with nothing in them. So I'm taking the wire fencing and posts down with a shovel, pulling one or two sections out a day at a time. (As the Rolling Stones sang, "Time is on my side -- yes it is".)  Then I took a look at the weather station that was set up on the back deck. It's quite a setup -- there's a wind gauge measuring gusts and speed,  indoor/outdoor temperature, outdoor humidity, wind chill, 24-hour and total rainfall, dew point, air pressure -- and those are only the features I know of. But it probably hasn't been working for awhile, years in fact, but all the parts are there, including the indoor "weather station" which has all the readings, so I'll be replacing all the batteries, fire it up, and see what happens. It's just another of Faranuf's many treasures...Then I made dinner again, this time for the aforementioned Helen. Over wine, spaghetti, baked chicken thighs and brownies for dessert, we talked about a variety of things, and when Helen was leaving we took a look at the black widow spider living under the outside siding -- and Helen pointed out the much tinier male Black Widow -- then Helen set the trap for a possible rat on the property. All in all, just another memorable day at Faranuf... 

                                                       Closeup of False Portal Peak