Butte, Montana

 

Butte, Montana.

Although Butte was on our list of places to stop—Mark has always wanted to see the Berkley Pit—I did not expect to drive into down the historic district with my mouth hanging open in shock, awe, and a disconcerting sense of déjà vu. Butte is the quintessential city of my northeastern childhood, shifted 2000 miles west and on the edge of an open pit mine, rather than blocks of closed factories. It looks like Manchester, and Haverhill, and Worcester, and all of the other post-industrial towns of the 1970s, before some of them were rediscovered and remodeled and others fell apart. Butte hovers on that edge; I was at home.

It’s not a huge town, although it is surrounded by the commercial sprawl of the interstate, abetted by a large “shop-shed” and the proximity to some amazing natural scenery.  Coming in at ten at night, looking for a motel room, we were watched by a 90 foot tall Virgin Mary perched on a hill and lit from below, glowing in the darkness. We crashed into bed on the fourth floor of an over-priced hotel, after glancing out the window at the city lights, and headed into town the next morning, searching for breakfast and the open pit mine, still foggy from a 450 mile drive the day before.

The edge of the old part of town is working class housing, surrounded by empty weedy lots. There are fourplexes built before that was a term—squared off shoulders, porches on the first and second floors, all of the doors lined up off of the first floor porch, a few chairs to sit and have a smoke, and a couple of old cars in the driveway or on the street. It looks like Haverhill, I thought. I have seen those houses—and those empty lots—before. Right next door were small single family houses, old windows, peeling paint, funky design with something added on as the family grew. A few of the houses were well maintained, with flower gardens an cheerful paint jobs, an some looked like grandparent’s houses, where the occupants cared, but were limited in what they could still do. Not all of the housing was working class; there is a lovely street lined with solid middle class houses built for the mine managers and the businessmen who ran the downtown, as well as a few amazing houses built for and by the very wealthy. Several spires from Catholic churches dominate the skyline. Familiar patterns.

As we climbed the hill into downtown, which was, according to a roadside sign 50 miles out, the largest historic district in the country, the buildings changed. Three and four story brick buildings, still surrounded by the empty lots, rose up. On their sides were old advertisements for hotels and diners, targeting a population that was in town to make a deal or do a job, not settle down forever. On the sides of other buildings, you could see where something once was, but has now come down. There were not so many gaps in the built environment in Butte’s heyday.   Some had windows for second and third story apartments, and curtains blew out from them and tough houseplants balanced on the sills. I know those windows, I thought, they have not changed in 50 years.

Downtown still held signs of the glory days of the mines, when Butte was the wealthiest city between Chicago and San Francisco. Elaborate facades from the late 19^th century, when turrets and carving were popular, lined the streets. Banks, hotels, businesses, dance halls, social organizations—as well as labor unions—all built and inhabited these glorious buildings. There were stairs dropping down to basement establishments. Apartments and rooms for rent on the upper floors.  Amazing. But, the upper stories were, for the most part, boarded up and empty. There were occupants for most of the first floors—which is a positive sign, unlike some other downtowns we have seen on this trip—and there were going concerns…a couple of new coffee shops, banks, stores. But the streets and town were built for a much larger population than we saw on a Friday morning in July. This was a town that once had  money—a lot of money—that has left the area.

And it was that feeling, more than anything else, that haunted me as we drove the streets, looking for breakfast (which we did find) and then wandered around, staring at the beautiful old  buildings that were all empty upstairs. We walked by a mission and a collection of people waiting for it to open, the first group of clearly down and out, if not homeless, we had seen since Oakland, two weeks and 2,500 miles before.  There was once money, jobs, union activists, families, and now, there is not. Butte in a northeastern city, 2000 miles west.

The Mother Road

 

If Highway 66 is our Mother Road, the United Sates is in deep economic trouble.

The little towns all follow the same pattern: economic activity right off the interstate, with at least one hotel and a gas station/convenience store where everyone buys cheap snacks and iced drinks when they stop for gas, then Business 40, route 66, which swings through the old empty downtown. Along the road, small houses are rotting into the ground, cracks in the stucco, dead cars in the driveway, overgrown weeds in the yards. The vintage motel signs are still there with glimpses of their neon glory, but they are no longer lit at night and the motels are closed. In Winslow, every motel door had a red sign posted on it—four closed motels in one small town. In other places, the buildings were just…gone, leaving behind a concrete slab. The downtown buildings remain, on neatly gridded streets, but they are all closed, boarded up, businesses long closed. Gallup took the problem one step further and had bars on all of the doors and windows, like an urban ghetto. There may be a Dollar General near the interstate, but there are no diners, no banks, no grocery or hardware stores, no dentists or doctors, no local economic activity. As you loop closer to the interstate again, there is another gas station, another hotel, another truck stop.  And the pattern repeats.

Tucumcari was one of the starkest contrasts between what was and what is. The town  was once a glory spot along the Mother Road, where motels and bars lined the street and flashed neon lights into the desert darkness. When I came through 25 years ago, the businesses were not all open, but the buildings were still standing strong. Now…they are gone. We spent the night in the Blue Swallow, an historic landmark and a glory of unchanged motel, complete with neon sign and chenille bedspreads, tiled tiny shower and windows that open (unto the neighbor smoking a cigarette in the early morning). There was a small cluster of three old restored motels left in town. But we walked down the street to the grocery store and then through the old downtown and the rest of the town was, literally, falling apart. The sidewalks were crumbling, the roads were breaking into asphalt chunks, and there were no businesses open for the three blocks along Main Street.  There were some amazing old buildings, but nothing in them. And no one. The town, off of the main highway, was silent—half the population of the late 1950s, when it peaked.

 In contrast to the small dying towns, a few places are booming. Flagstaff’s population has more than tripled in size in the same time. The downtown is packed with people, with shops and places to eat, with well-maintained sidewalks and streets, lined with expensive new cars. They even have a vegan Indian restaurant. It is clean and orderly, with a nicely updated land development code that encourages mixed-use development and ADUs, signs of wealthy communities everywhere. There is no dead zone driving into Flagstaff; the sprawl is lively with businesses of all types and new housing. All of the economic development along Route 66, for Needles to Amarillo, is focused in Flagstaff.

John Steinbeck saw it coming in 1937, when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, sending the Joad family, tractored off their land by big agricultural corporations, onto the narrow highway west to California. Remember, the Joads—and many other sharecropping families—were not done in by the Dust Bowl but by the industrialization of agriculture, the ability of a tractor to do the work of twenty men and not require food or wages when it was not in use. He also describes the small independent gas station owner, trying to stay in business against the fancy new stations nearer the towns, with their snazzy new pumps and freshly painted signs. Even then, no one wanted to shop at the small, dusty local dealer. The proprietor and his wife were thinking about moving west themselves. Results, not causes, he observes. The restlessness, the desire to move on, is the result of some deeper cause, which he is struggling to understand. He never does, quite. Maybe history would have been different if we had not had a World War that pulled us out of the economic depression propelled us into a long period of prosperity for many, although not all of us. Maybe we would have confronted the causes of this inequality sooner, rather than later. Maybe we would have been a better country if we had.

But here we are. Mark and I are driving across our country, remembering its vast beauties and even vaster inequalities as we loop through small towns, visit museums curated by Native Americans and African Americans, considering how history changes depending upon who is telling it. And we are asking a few big questions: What has happened it our country, to our Mother Road? And is this road symbolic of our country as a whole, where we are going as a nation? Can the American Dream, founded on the ideal that everyone can have enough, still be reached? And, if so, how?

 

Reducing Weed Loads

     

Weed loads—I have been pondering weeds lately as I face the daunting task of bringing the school garden into some sort of order. It’s hard—a focused group of three to five people, working for a couple of hours every week would whip it into shape in no time, but…we all have lives- -and gardens-- outside of school and commitment is difficult. Especially when it comes to blackberry brambles.  It’s not like the garden is a weed patch; the actual beds are in pretty good order, weeded, mulched, and irrigated only around the crops. It’s the edges and paths, and the unique challenges of nut sedge, a lush green grassy looking weed which has a nasty little nodule that needs to be removed to kill it, that are a challenge.  I find myself making little lists in my mind before I fall asleep.

Weed Suppression techniques:

1.       Weed and mulch with cardboard and chips: Very effective in the short term and looks really nice when done. However, I have a deep and abiding suspicion that, long term, I am creating a really nice bed for some deep rooted weeds.

2.       Mowable paths: Looks nice and is pretty easy to maintain. Do the weeds creep into the beds more easily? Probably.

3.       Dry and trampled paths: This happens naturally over time with heavy foot traffic, especially during mud season. It is cheap and easy to maintain, once the irrigation is set up, but does it look very good?

4.    

   Preferred invasives: I used this one a great deal—plant things I like to push out what I don’t. Or don’t weed out what is spreading. Calendula flowers. Mints. Mustard and amaranth. Lady’s Mantle. Sunflowers. Fennel. Pollinators love it but it can get out of control – but is it worse than the nut sedge?

5.       Densely planted perennial beds: Similar to method four, this method depends upon crowding out the plants we do not want in favor of ones that we do. With drought tolerant herbs, this can be very effective, but takes a few years to establish.

6.       Constant weeding: Deep sigh….needed, but takes a great deal of time and effort. Should be saved for focused areas.

7.       Weed-whacking: Improves the area in the short term, but does not eliminate the problem. And that string is a pain!

8.       This is a food farm, not a flower garden: Rethinking expectations to match the area. I do this at home. Everything does not have to be perfect to be beautiful and productive.

Four of Wands, Reversed

   

     The Four of Wands, reversed. Every cross quarter day, I pull on card from the tarot, using it to guide the coming six weeks. On May Day, I pulled the four of wands, which is a celebratory card of people dancing under an arbor of flowers. It looks like a wedding, but it is open to interpretation. Even reversed, it is positive, just more low key. And this has been the tone of the last few weeks, as Benton County moves slowly, cautiously, out of the pandemic. Over 69% of the eligible population is vaccinated, so we are able to gather safely, in quiet celebration.

High school classes have been in person for a month and students are smarter and more focused, even as the entire class is vaccinated and they begin to slip snacks under their masks, pound each other on the back, and stare at the same computer once more. They gather outside for lunch, perching on the bleachers like flocks of birds, all talking at once. We had an outdoor choir concert with senior solos, Mary’s Peak in the background, on Thursday night and graduation on Saturday morning. Together. There were hugs. Shouts. Laughter. Some tears. Small celebrations.

At home, we have been visiting with friends, botanizing prairies and peaks, riding together in the same car.  We have eaten meals together—outside, still, but outside in June is beautiful.  There is talk of a pie social, of gathering to work on bike codes, of being together once again. The library is opening up for browsing on the Summer Solstice. We can see faces when we go for walks. Once again, small celebrations.

We will not know the total losses from the year- -from the isolation, from the pandemic, from the wildfires—for a long while. I expect to stumble over our losses for at least a year; a trail or business closed, a friend’s family member lost to the virus, an acquaintance   to the culture wars…losses we do not know now. So, moving onward, there is no huge celebration, like I imagine there might be after winning a war. We did not win this war, we merely survived. That, however, is worth a small celebration.

Memorial Day Morning

 

Memorial Day morning—sunny and quiet. The chickens are roaming in the run, the cat asleep on the bench, the rabbit nibbling a grape leaf. There is tea and toast for breakfast and the light is on the dining table.  We traditionally stay at home on this weekend; the outdoor world of campgrounds and lakes is packed with families gathering together, making a joyous racket late into the night.  Instead, I make my Aunty Marilyn’s macaroni salad, with the gherkins and tuna fish, red onion for a bite, maybe grill some tofu and zucchini, and prepare for the last push of the school year. It is a quiet time, this last weekend in May, nostalgic, as another senior class gets ready to head out the door. We remember the past.

My juniors are reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien this week, discovering his musings on the nature of war, and friendship, and story—what is true and what is real are not always the same thing. It is a good way to end this long, strange, difficult year, thinking about story. What will we tell each other about this time of disease, racial and political strife, and discontent? What have we learned? What will we take out of this dark time, moving forward?

“Stories will save us.”

               

Summer Signs

   

 It has been a warm and dry spring. We both love it and feel nervous about it at the same time. Wildfires loom in our minds. This last weekend was the time to move our lives outside.

1. Planted the rest of the garden beds in summer crops.

2. Emptied the greenhouse of garden plants and moved some house plants in for better light.

3. Mowed the yard and trimmed.

4. Cleared the sidewalk garden of bulbs that have gone by.

5. Arranged the firepit area.

6. Cleared up the compost corner.

7. Set up the outside shower with towels and soap.

8 Moved the chickens onto the summer range. 

9. Set out the dining table and ate dinner there.

10. Drank our evening tea under the arches  and solar lights-- in the shape of bees-- outside.

Finley Wildlife Refuge--- plant list

 

                There is a lovely peacefulness in a botanizing hike. The mileage is less, the stops more frequent, the pace slower as we watch for bright spots in the deep green woods and fields. Mid-May is the perfect time for late spring flowers in the Willamette Valley, so we returned to Finley Wildlife Refuge again this weekend, this time with the books. We know most of the flowers and where we will find some specific old friends, but there are always a few that need to be teased out. Mark, long ago, discovered the two best ways to increase the count: pay attention to those tiny little white flowers and become familiar with the different varieties of some common species. He was trying to work on his checkermallows today.  We are still a little confused.

Woodpecker Loop to Mill Hill Plant List:

English Daisy

Hawthorne—not native (thorns!!)

Dandelion

Poverty Clover

Field Madder

Shining Geranium

Native Blackberry

Yellow Avens

Spring Beauty

Fringe Cup

Small flowered buttercup

Sweet Cicely

Trillium

Bird’s foot buttercup

Camus

Cleavers

Mariposa Lily

Cow Parsnip

Hop Clover

Iris

Wild Rose

Red Lotus

Sheep’s Sorrel

Parsley Leaved Lovage

Strawberry

Rose Checkermallow

Speedwell

Buckthorn

Stinky Bob

Nemophilia (small)

Columbine

Prairie Star

Western Starflower

Gorse

Larkspur

Footsteps of Spring

Yellow Paintbrush

Waterleaf  (there were two)

Thinmbleberry

Bleeding Heart

Scarlet Pimpernel

Shasta Daisy

Clover

Blue Eyed Grass

Serviceberry

False Dandelion

 

Meadows by the road:

Popcorn Flower

Monkeyflower

Lomaium Nudicalum

Another checkermallow, bigger and paler

Flax

Cinquefoil

Madrone

Wild cucumber

White Lupine

White Larkspur

Field Bindweed

Bittercress