All good things must come to an end.

I better get on with it and finish up blogging about the trip. Put it to bed. Long trip, too much to share and poignant moments already slipping into memory's wastebasket.

I thought about driving back to Flag from Chinle but was tired and decided to stick around instead. Got a room at the Holiday Inn which is actually very nice.

Drove over to Denny's and had a club sandwich, not having eaten all day. Lots of navajo kids running around, all the locals very nice and friendly.

The first time I was in town, well over thirty years ago, there was only a Kentucky Fried Chicken, now long gone. I remember they were out of chicken, potatoes and biscuits the night I was there. Was I interested in a piece of corn?

I got up at dawn and drove to Antelope again for some sunrise shots that really didn't take. Then back to Spider Rock to see how it looked with the sun to the east.

Looked pretty good. One of the things I like the best about the Cañon is that unlike Chaco, it isn't a dead place, it is a vibrant and living place, long inhabited but in no way despoiled. I once took a horse twenty two miles into Cañon de Muerto. Wild horses, farms, all sorts of signs of life in balance. Looked in a way like a thirties regionalist painting.

I bought a lot of little tidbits from the local vendors. I had just made a bunch of money selling Indian stuff in the big city and felt it was time for a little karmic payback. Least I could do.

This chap sold me a lovely painting on a rock for five dollars. But it was what else he said that got me thinking. After a brief description of the iconography, he said that it was for people that required healing and to put it in a place where they could feel its power and effects.

And I thought, hey I could use a little healing. Never know in what form the sage will come, pays to keep an open mind about such things.

And since I am on the subject about loss, I was greatly touched talking to Jay in Santa Fe, who lost his beautiful wife last December. Jay's grief is barely under the surface. Mel lost his wife ten days ago. Many people are feeling sorrow from a loss or certainly will if they live long enough.

I was personally touched by the words of all the promotors and their staffs concerning the loss of my brother, Terry, Marcia and John. John mentioned his name in the brochure and I teared up looking at it.

I took my leave from the Canyon, thoroughly enjoying my solitude and experience there. I headed down the road and decided to find the 264 and see what happened from there.

I drove through the hopi res, past Keems Canyon but didn't tarry in the mesas. Drove past Moenkopi, the western most Hopi outpost and towards Tuba City.

Love the colors of the reservation desert. Loved a month with no news and little politics, no computer, no chatter. Love seeing how people who possess so little and endure so much, live with such grace and manage to walk in beauty.

Jeez, it was taking me a long time to get home. This return trip was going to set a new record for me. But what the heck, I was so close, might as well see what was up at the Grand Canyon. Drove a few more hours and stopped at the first overlook to the Little Colorado, always a good stop.

The park itself was a zoo, such a contrast to the relative isolation and intense peace of Cañon de Chelly. It was cloudy and drizzly and I would not be getting any great shots this day. Mostly watched asians taking serious risks with their lives taking selfies from precarious positions on the ledge.

Grand Canyon is a place of wonder but humans really screw it up. I get the same sick feeling sometimes that I get from Niagara Falls. Too many humans. Still... can't protest too damn much. Awesome even on a shitty day.

You know, I don't claim to be some great photographer or artiste, at least publicly anyway. You like my stuff, fine, but a well trained chimp could quickly gain the same proficiency.

In any case, I got a call from a photographer friend a few weeks ago that was a real beauty.

You are almost ready to take good shots, young Quanchin Caine.

Excuse me?

Your shots are almost good.

Well shit, I don't know what to say.

We talked again the other day. "You should have taken the telephone pole out of that. Your sunset is too dark. Too bad you didn't stay and take more angles of that one, I would have (I did).You're never going to be a real photographer until you start selling more work. Why are your daytime shots so dark?"

The point is, everybody can set their own rules for what is aesthetically appropriate. I am comfortable with mine. I rarely take unwanted objects out of shots. Cartier Bresson wouldn't even crop. Telephone poles are an aesthetically distressing fact of modern life. I like things as they are and not overly romanticized. I typically shoot my night and evening shots darker than others do. Why?

Because that is how I like them. You do yours any way you want to. Capiche? I of course, have been known to have an opinion and criticize. Feel free to tell me where to jump too. I am simply never going to take pictures the same way you take them. And I never will. What would be the point?

Photography is simply a means of recording and communicating visual images. I will communicate my way, sometimes knowingly imperfectly and I can live with that.

Saw a bull elk tearing down a tree by the side of the road. He was being mobbed by fools. Much like the french tourists petting the cow elk last time Ken and I were here.

I got my long lens out and kept a safe distance.

I snapped off a bunch of shots, I am sure universally almost good.

I left the canyon a little bit queasy. Pushing the play portion of my return a little too hard, not ready for the sudden rush of humanity. Leslie found me a nice hotel in Williams, an hour away, the Grand Canyon Railroad Lodge. It was pouring rain when I got there. Had their excellent although expensive buffet.

Next morning posed a real problem. I could shag ass home in eight hours or so or I could go up to the canyon and give it one more college try. It was the solar eclipse, first since 1979 and who knew what it would do to the canyon's light and chroma?

In for a dime, in for a dollar. I stayed. Got up at 3:30 a.m.. Williams time is different from reservation time, the dineh stretch into four states and they want life to be uniform for them. I drove in darkness, trying not to hit a deer or elk and arrived at Grandview Point before dawn in a light rain and heavy wind.

Pretty glorious sunrise. Worth the price of admission and the extra two hours in the car.

And the day only got better. Many fewer people this day, no one being stupid. And looked to my left and lo and behold, a double rainbow. I suddenly felt a deep and powerful connection with my late brother, perhaps he was pulling strings for me from the other side?

It was getting pretty wet by this time and even with an umbrella I got some water on my lens glass. Oh well. Still very spectacular.

I headed east, only a couple hours until the totality.

Caught some pics of first light in the canyon.

One of the amusing moments this day was when a guide told an indian woman that the oldest rock in the canyon was six thousand years old, within an arms length of a sign that set the date of the super rock at a 130 million.

I couldn't help it, I snorted and she gave me a death stare.

Later I saw another tour guide from Phoenix say the same basic thing and I got scared.

Checked with Kerry, yes there are creationist tours of the canyon now, free from such pesky trivialities as the fossil record, which everybody knows was faked.

Tried to engage a ranger but he went bible too, giving me a lecture on the length of one of god's days. Guess there are selling creationist material in the gift shops now.

Headed for  the Desert Watchtower, the incredible creation of one of my very favorites, if not my favorite architect, Mary Colter. Note the metal drum hanging from a tree, which a real artist would surely photoshop out of the picture.

The eclipse, at 68% of totality, had a less than major effect, at least from my view.

The interior of the tower is something to behold. It was decorated by the great Hopi artists Fred Kabotie (my favorite) and Fred Greer.

If you haven't done so, do climb the tower. If I ever had in the past, I have forgotten it and it was so lovely.

I left at 10:30, which was the eclipse peak, starting the long ride home. Almost croaked a few times, from sheer exhaustion. Rolled in very late.

Good to be back. Long ass trip.

Cañon de Chelly

So Santa Fe ended up good. Money in my pocket, some great meals in my belly, courtesy of Harry's, Mucho Gusto, Rio Chama, Tune Up, Jambo and elsewhere. Yucks, friends, gelt.

Found a hipster coffee shop that was cool, Ikonic. Not the trust fund kid coffee shop, of course every imaginable demographic now has their own place to brew.

It was time to head home. But not before I see my lawyer, rabbi, pedal steeler, swing bandleader buddy John Feldman in Albuquerque.

I reckon John knows more about early twentieth Century swing music than anyone else in the whole dang world. A genius and I don't use the term very often.

Played me a lovely passage on this incredibly rare guitar. John has a picture in one of the most recent editions of Fretboard Journal. Much like Barry, I wish we lived closer. Seldom meet anyone of his mental capacity, not to mention the coolest studio on the planet.

And then I was off. Or was I? At the last second, somewhere past Tohajali, I got the idea that I was driving to Chinle or at least the 264 to cut across the Hopi reservation. One of my favorite roads, much more beauty and dignity than the interstate. Anyhow I ended up at Canyon de Chelly and went north instead of south and got Antelope, Mummy and Massacre Viewpoints.

Now I had been there before of course, many times in fact, first during what I like to call, the epoch of the awful wife. Who got in touch with a friend of mine recently and told him that I wasn't such a bad egg but she was worried about me at the time because I liked high end audio and computers and we all know about the terrible dangers of electromagnetic radiation.

If only I had known, a tin foil body armor and hat assemblage would have been so much cheaper than my divorce. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway I had a cheap dime store epiphany at Canyon de Chelly. You might visit a place, once , twice a few times but you don't always know a place. You miss shit. I did. Discovered things at the emerging place of Spider Grandmother that I never remember seeing before.

Met a nice navajo family from Crown Point. Hiked my ass off.

And finally made it to Spider Rock. Took lots of pictures, then again the next morning. Such a wonderful place. Largely had it to myself, just a few tourists and natives.

(to be continued...)

For what its worth

Del McCoury and friends, must listen.

Third time is the charm.

While I had a couple great sales this year, all in all it has been pretty bad. There are several reasons I could assign, or blame if you will, for my dwindling bank account, I won't, but the reality is that I just didn't have the focus or drive necessary to excel at my business.

Sow/Reap.

Albuquerque didn't work for me this year. I normally equal Santa Fe receipts at Albuquerque but don't think I made expenses this month and certainly didn't if you count cost of goods. Had a few be-backs that either walked by with other dealer's bags and refused to even make eye contact or evaded me for the rest of the shows all together.

Part of the game, part of the deal. I have won, I have lost, this sort of stuff happens. Luck of the draw.

But when the bad streak continued into Santa Fe at the Whitehawk Show I started sweating. I used to be the king up there and I was pretty much striking out. Had my day in the sun come and gone? Was I now merely yesterday's news?

I brought beautiful material. If I had a dollar for every bloke who said it was like walking into a museum... And that is the problem. You can approach the game by buying dirt cheap and taking advantage of the muggles at the front end or you can do what I have traditionally done - pay a fair price for the best material, with the understanding that somewhere down the line someone would be willing to step up for quality and pay me a little bit more.

Well, that's over.

We antique merchants are serving a bunch of octogenarians who are more interested in talking about hip surgery and soup than expanding their collections at the moment. There were more classic and late classic navajo blankets available than I have ever seen at a show in over twenty years.

Why, you may ask?

Because the aging owner sees the writing on the wall too. He better liquidate now for his family trust because a) the kids want no part of any of it and b) the kids want no part of it.

Now you can bash the millennials all you want and I certainly do but let's look at it from their perspective. Many are dead broke. If you add up the phone bill and the cable bill and the two thousand a month rent and the car payment...They are talking about pop up jobs now, one or two years max. They know fully well that their possibilities for advancement have shrunk due to factors such as globalization. Dave won't hire a programmer from the United States to code for him because it will cost him 150k a year and he can get a PHD from Hungary or Rajahstan to do the same work for 70k.

They don't collect, they live in ikea designed environments with all the warmth of lab rat colonies. They have next to no art, art history, music history or plain old history education in school and most couldn't find Mexico on a map if you spotted them Canada and Guatemala.

So we purveyors of culture, ethnic art and regular art know very well that the clock is ticking. You don't see many people at the shows under 30, and most of us won't hold our breath. We've been through this all before. Putting all my money on tattoo removal.

*
Still that ain't going to cover this month's bills, which are considerable, and I was waking up during the middle of the night the first two shows having panic attacks about life clutching its bony fingers around my throat and everything closing out on me.

Michael said I should bring a gun to the show and I decided to leave the wheel gun with my wife as revolvers are pretty bulletproof. That left me with the 380 calibre automatic. I confided to Barry at breakfast that in the worst possible bad show scenario I would blow my brains out at Meteor Crater on the way back.

The 380 is a notoriously wussified round. My deputy friend Frank Adams shot a biker in Harbison Canyon with five bullets from this gun and the guy didn't flinch and kept on coming. Barry pointed out that in such an event I wouldn't even be able to beat myself to death with the butt end of this weapon. I saw that this course of action would just leave me horribly disfigured and only able to eat pureed items for the balance of my tenure on earth and finally decided to table the whole thing.

Barry is a funny guy. He was a comedy writer for years, with Phyllis Diller, Rodney and Rickles among others but he doesn't have an attitude. He laughs at my jokes and we laughed for three weeks. People were taking us out and buying us drinks to hear us riff and we tore it up. Next year Morty and Shecky will be appearing at a Holiday Inn near you. Seriously I never knew the benefit of having a guy around me capable of delivering a decent straight line now and then. And vice versa.

We were good. And he liked my new plan for promoting the venerable New Mexico School of the Death. I got ideas of placards and bumper stickers, honk if you like the New Mexico School of the death. No? Guess you would have had to have been there.

And then there was the packrat. Steve has a pet packrat. Big, cute, very cool. But when I turned the car on and I got these strange warnings that my parking brake was on I knew I was in trouble.

While we were galavanting all over the land of enchantment in Steve's Hyundai, said rodent was helping himself to a healthy repast of electrical wire and insulation in my engine compartment.

I ended up going to Brakemasters for some rodent triage. Steve had some noxious fox urine lying around for just such an occasion. I left the hood opened and pissed a protective occult symbol around the front of my van every night. Problem solved.

John Morris gave me a great deal to do the Indian Show. I couldn't lose. So nice to be back in the fold with my good friend. He likes to take me to dinner because I can talk to practically anybody and provide entertainment if he is beat. Anyway I did his show and I killed. People loved me again, they were throwing money at me, I got word from up above that the curse had been lifted.

Beautiful and just in time.

When judgement's trumpet sounds no one evades its mortal din.

Faces of the west

Before I get into the sordid bits of the shows, which are akin to sausage making and not always the prettiest of pictures I thought I would indulge you with a few portraits of New Mexico.

The actors in this movie have a lot of character and wrinkles and have earned every single one of them.

And all in all, they are some of the nicest people you will ever meet.

Pecos view with mushroom cloud

Sweet Dreams

New Mexico viaje

I am back from the trek to New Mexico and back. It was a really long trip and a very tough trip but I made it. You know my motto - Survival is the new victory. This one took me right to the wall.

Stayed in Flag the first night. Leslie was kind enough to book me a room, not at the usual place. I got out of my car and exchanged suspicious glances with a crew cutted Oklahoman with an NRA cap and a Love it or leave it t-shirt. The room stunk of a serious overuse of household cleanser but it was okay for a night.

I asked the bored man at the front desk if there was a place around that they recommended for food? He said that the diner next door wasn't too bad, McZips. I walked over and overcame an instant flight urge and momentary case of hackles and stupidly asked for a menu.

The waitress said that the breakfasts weren't bad and that no one ever died yet with the chicken fried steak. I looked up and saw the navajo cook give me a somewhat sinister look.

I guess I was destined to be the first fatality. I got a sorry looking hammered corpse of unidentified origin that was encased in a mushy batter and then covered with what appeared to be a generous helping of thirty weight motor oil. Inedible. I took two bites and then quickly pulled the money out of my pocket, settled and literally ran.

When I hit the room, the cleanser smell instantly got the better of me and I just had time to eject the contents of my stomach into the sink and miss the fine looking pine green carpet.

Bad move.

Turned out the sink plunger was broke. As in, no drain. I got the paper cup off the coffee maker and started carefully transferring the puke to the toilet bowl, chicken fried chunk by chunk. I have gotten very sensitive to funky smells in my old age, won't be stopping by McZip's again anytime soon. Felt like I had hit some ceremonial nadir or serious point of negative demarcation in my life. The place they call rock bottom.

Made it to Albuquerque the next day at the usual time, without difficulty. Dropped my stuff off at the show. Checked into the hotel and ran over to Little Anita's for a bite of Mexican food. Literally, a bite was all I could eat, the place now battling McZips for the annual Sommers' Bizzaro Bocuse bottom of the barrel culinary award. Perhaps this trip was destined to be the forced start of a new diet, if not death by food poisoning.

Show sucked for me, and the food got worse. Do yourself a favor, don't try that hip little Columbian restaurant on Silver. Ever.

Dane and I (fellow victim at Colombian dinner) walked around Knob Hill, one evening, than crashed an art opening with some pretty mediocre prints from a woman's trip to Asia that I was utterly charitable and complimentary towards.

My weird luck and karma continued.

That night my toothbrush thigamajig holder decided to launch itself in an unprovoked, thoroughly unpredictable and very incongruous leap into a urine filled toilet. I retrieved it somehow and cleaned it as best as I could but sort of lost the taste for brushing my teeth the rest of the trip. Warmboe took mercy on me and brought me a new toothbrush at the show two days later.

The second night I went to a memorial for John and Jay Evetts at Terry's. Ron Munn got up and told a good story. People were very nice, I was still bruised from my own heartache but it seems to be going around. Couldn't help but notice that we were all getting considerably older and that we had all known each other a very long time. Big old gypsy family, mostly brilliant, eccentric and unemployable. Thank god for traders.

*

El Dorado Sunset

Show and suffering finally ended and I headed up to Santa Fe to hole up at Steve's hideout at El Dorado. Got lost and ran into this pretty mud puddle and sunset at the end of the road.

Steve used to have a real job but since he retired he lost his structure and sleeps a lot so I have to kick his ass and get him outside. We take a side trip every year between the shows. This time we drove out to Watrous and then up to Mora.

Had never been to Watrous, lovely place, got there by accident. Like driving through time. Beautiful large ranches, undisturbed by the national cacophony.

Lots of birding. Saw a beautiful unidentified hawk, maybe a Swainsons.

Passed a beautiful low crest of rocks, caught a yellow warbler of some kind out of an eye corner. Whole area is so lovely. Would love to go back and do some serious birdwatching some spring.

Continued up to Peñasco, took pictures of old churches, then down to Chimayo. I said a prayer to the resident deity at the church, which is rumored to be a place of miraculous healing. The old priest I met on my last visit has passed away, after a half century there. Little guy. Very nice man.

We left the famous weaving village after a good lunch that we happily shared with the bees at Rancho De Chimayo. I had trout. I was starting to overdose on green chile. It is monsoon season and was beginning to rain.

The next morning I met a friend of Steve Maras named David Halpern at the Counter Culture. David is a noted and celebrated photographer, he is the current artist at residence at Bandolier and has held a similar position at numerous other National Parks. An affable southerner from Nashville, he currently has a two year exhibition up at the Gilcrease Museum - The Essence of Place, Celebrating the Photography of David Halpern, Gilcrease Museum (Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art), Tulsa, Oklahoma, November 22, 2016 through December 31, 2017.

It was a joy to run into David and swap stories, techniques and philosophy with him. I hope to shoot with him one day in the future.

Later that day Steve and I drove back out to Pecos Pueblo, one of my favorite structures to photograph on this earth. The atmosphere at Pecos never lets me down and this day was no exception.

I love New Mexico, the farther away from town the better. Have been making the migration for over twenty years and discover something new every time.

We finished this day at Monastery Lake and topped it off with a trip to the dairy queen.

The next day I set up the show at Whitehawk and had an opening in the evening. Took pictures of clients and old friends, like this lovely lady I shot last year.

I swear she knew I was coming...

Billy Schenck

Tad

Terry

I will post more show pics later probably. Went out one night with John Morris, Myra Nakashima and John Yarnell of furniture fame and had a great meal at Santa Cafe. Namedropper.

Got home late that night to see a raging lightning storm over the Pecos. Snapped shots for an hour.

Tomorrow is the birthday of the two most important people in my life, my wife Leslie and my late mother Adelle. I need to acknowledge them both. My mother, while eccentric at times, was a brilliant writer and editor who had a curriculum vitae and life experience that was unparalleled.

She taught me so much and instilled a love for so many things, and a reverence for the written word. She loved my writing, photography and my painting (an output that I unfortunately can no longer share with you) and was a great supporter of my creativity from my infancy. Gave us the freedom to be very different. Had her peccadillos but loved her kids.

My mother saved my life on at least two occasions. I have still never really dealt with her passing in an emotional way and one day I know that the roof will simply cave in. She was so extraordinary, her gravity shifted every person and planet that was lucky enough to wander into her orbit. An absolute genius.

Thank you mother.

Leslie, I can't thank you enough for hitching your life to my sometimes creaky wagon. Twenty seven years and counting, with your unwavering love and devotion, there is no obstacle that we can not surmount. Once again, thank you for hanging in through thick and thin. You have been the greatest partner a man could ask for and do more than your fair share in keeping our life together.

You are such a unique combination of love, beauty and wisdom. The best partner in the world. Awesome person. Total package. Wishing you a great birthday and a wonderful year. Thank you honey. I love you.

(to be continued...)

Patrick Sky - many a mile