RAVENLEA'S EXCELLENT(?) (INTERESTING?) (INSANE?) ADVENTURE

Ok. This one is going to be mostly just pictures again, but I resized them before posting them, so hopefully the page will load more quickly. I'll try to go back and redo the other pages this way too.

But about Snowflake. It is up in the mountains about 3 hours outside of Mesa. My friend Michael came out from New York to work with a lady who has a healing center. He had hoped he might be staying in the area. That part of things didn't work out - at least not yet, but Alice (her name is Alice Penrod and she's a very amazing lady) offered us the opportunity to go stay at the center for a couple of days - which then turned into 5 days.

The Center is still a work in progress. The house is there, but it is not in active use at all times. Each time she talked to us, Alice would drop some small piece of information like, "Oh, by the way, there's no hot water..." or "Well, we're out of propane right now, so the stove won't work..." or... well, you get the idea.

Since neither Michael nor I drive (New Yorkers!) Alice's friend Diane, who is also the land's caretaker gave us a ride up there. It was 110 degrees in Mesa the day we left and Diane's care doesn't have air conditioning, so it was a bit toasty at first. But with open windoes and plenty of bottled water (my original plan was to drink it, but I wound up pouring a lot of it over my head), we made it fine. And of course as we got higher in the mountains, it got cooler too. And it's such a beautiful ride...

HEADING FOR SNOWFLAKE

I wish I had some pictures of the road from the town of Snowflake (named after two Mormons, believe it or not, names Snow and Flake). It's an adventure all by itself. The rains wash it out, but it's barely there to begin with. No way you can use this road with anything but four-wheel drive and even that's no guarantee. Sometime we were at a tilt that was at LEAST 45 degrees... Amazing.

AT SNOWFLAKE

Diane and Mike were our guardian's and guides at the Center. They lived in a house right down the hill from us. They were very good to us. Fed us a number of meals, tolerated our occasional failure to remember that you can only keep one or two lights on at a time or you blow out the power (theirs and ours). They went and got extra propane so we could have hot showers and introduced us to some wonderful people who live nearby on a place called Pongovi. But first let me share some pictures of the land. Unfortunately, I'm still not ready to do a lot of hiking, so I mostly just sat and basked in the beauty of the place. Which was a very nice way to spend time after years of imprisonment in a New York City apartment.

Did I say this was going to be mostly pictures? Sorry about that. Can't resist talking.

Pongovi, Diane & Mike's Garden, and Miscellaneous Other Things

Diane and Mike have a wonderful, huge garden which they tend with tender love and care. Although you can't tell from the pictures, it actually covers several acres! One of the many interesting things I learned during my stay is that lightening strikes are good for the soil as they add nitrogen in it's purest form. Isn't that amazing? The plants actually have a growth spurt after a lightening strike. Mike showed us around the garden one afternoon along with a fellow names Sweet Medicine. Sweet Medicine is from the Hopi people and is travelling around the US and Canada exploring. He made a medicine pouch for my friend Michael in exchange for a reading.

My first visit to Pongovi was at night. Grey Wolf and Devaki have been living at Pongovi for 27 years. I think Grey Wolf used to be a college professor but now he makes moccasins because he thinks that people need to reconnect to the earth. Their land has a Kiva Sweat Lodge and is used for Vision Quests. We were in Snowflake for the full moon before the Solstice and they invited us come to the land for the rising of the full moon. There was a wonderful campfire, lots of glorious clouds, lightening to our left and right and of course the rising of lady moon. She only made a brief appearance unfortunately, but a lovely one. Alas, there are no pictures, only good memories of good people, songs around a campfire and the beauty of nature.

On my next visit I brought my camera and took a few pictures - not enough - but at least you can meet these nice people and see a bit of Pongovi. The first photo is Grey Wolf, Diane, Devaki, their daughter Navani, and, as a sign of how much I liked these people, me. I cut out a lot of the picture because, well, there's so much to cut out and I'm not completely over this shame thing. The second is Grey Wolf's workshop and the third some of Devaki's beautiful flowers. I wish you could really see how magical Devaki is. She's physically tiny and the beauty of her spirit radiates out from her. It's kind of like meeting an angelic elf.

The next couple of pictures are back at the Healing Center. Michael and I spent one glorious morning painting rocks. Wish I had taken more pictures of some of the results. Some of Michael's were quite beautiful. Afraid the artist gene skipped me, but I had a good time anyway and took a picture of a couple of my creations. We did our painting in a wonderful breakfast nook which looked out over the land. My favorite room in the Center.

That's just about all there is from Snowflake. I forgot to take pictures for most of the trip home. The scenerey is so beautiful and we had wonderful storm clouds the whole way. Passed through an area where it had SNOWED! and when we got to the Scottsdale area just before Mesa, we found ourselves in a monsoon - torrential downpour so heavy you couldn't see the road. Interesting. My only picture from the trip home is this one of rain clouds over the mountains.

Packing Is Not My Favorite Sport

On the Road

My Arizona Home

Snowflake