Quatro Alamos Update 2014

Transcription

1 Quatro Alamos Update 2014 This was the worst year of my life. I lost the closest friend of my entire life, Bunny Martin. And we lost the person who s spirit still lives in every part of Quatro Alamos, Kazumi Kitamori. That said, my mother brought me into this life to live it. And Kazumi I m going to live until I die would have wished the same. So we continue. We begin, as always, with our overnight stay at the Historic Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari (My Review)

2 Shortly after our arrival at Cuatro Alamos, we were Greeted by the worst forest fire by which we were fiercely threatened more than at any time during all our years there.

3 The Forest Service severely screwed up with this fire! Our house is the one in the middle. The initial Forest Service notice said that the fire was less than 10 acres, contained and that they were going to do a controlled

4 burn = translation: It s controlled until the wind changes and then it becomes a multimillion dollar catastrophe. It could have been snuffed out in a day or two and cost a few thousand dollars. Instead, it burned thousands of acres at a cost of millions. It s a slightly different view but this is how our front yard normally looks.

5 We were forced to evacuate and this is how it looked that day.

6 First we spent a night in Cuba and the decided that waiting and worrying was pointless so we went to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. I hadn t been there for years and had forgotten what a great place it is. Masako had plans to take her girls there later so we did a little recon. It has the world s deepest hot springs and is quite spectacular.

7 It s only a couple hours north of us and beautiful at any time of year. When we were finally allowed to go home, I was confronted by power problems.

8 I had to completely rewire all my panels. This involved taking them all down, inventing and building a continuous conduit, buying a new controller, replacing big, very heavy, batteries etc..much technical mumbojumbo.

9 Unless you re rich, Off Gird living (NM Off Grid) means that something like this comes up about every 6-8 years and it s a giant pain in the butt. That s me on top of the house, with the pith helmet. Roof work is like having broken ribs. There is no comfortable position, it s all dangerous, roofs are not made for lounging around and watching TV and I m getting too old for this.

10 We also had to replace our antique water heater plumbing and more technical mumbo jumbo. But the new one works great!

11 Gary and Cassandra arrived earlier and stayed longer this year.

12 And they got a lot of work done on their house. During that time, our first guests, Dave and Akimi arrived. Dave is an electronics engineer, works for Fujitsu and was very helpful with my electrical solar mess.

13 We did some sightseeing. We all had a good soak at the Jemez Springs Bathhouse.

14 Dave and Akimi were delightful visitors..both very helpful and enthusiastic about everything.

15 We sorry to see them leave. I got in some work on our Water Tower. See Cuatro Alamos Water Tower Here. We only had to use the spring for a few days (before monsoon) and we used only rainwater for the rest of the season.

16 I even had abundant water to water my garden. Accept for the corn, the garden did well this year.

17 I had found a type of Peruvian corn that was supposed to do well at high altitude. But it turned out to be a disappointment.

18 Last year, I had an ordinary Wal-Mart corn that did very well until some kind of animal (deer-elk?) jumped the fence and ate the entire garden. So this year, I raised the fence and installed an electric fence around it. naturally, I got shocked at least once.it s very effective. We ate the corn anyway.

19 In spite of our technical problems (which screwed up a lot of my plans) we had plenty of neighborhood parties. Rural mountain communities make good neighbors. Regardless of politics etc., there is a kind of (we all need to

20 help each other attitude) unanimous community spirit. I have lived in various such places all over the world and this is always the case among (specifically) mountain people. Also, mountain communities (as opposed to desert or plains) are always immaculately clean and well maintained. I built a new deck this year. Whenever doing garden, or similar work, (digging) I always encounter interesting critters. We have a family of red horned toads that have been with us for years. They actually follow me around to catch the bugs and worms I dig up.

21 Masako s girlfriends (collage classmates) arrived. Getting older, some weren't able to come this year.

22 As planed, we drove up to Chama, spent the night, and road the famous Cumbres and Toltec Train. I first road (and have many times since) one of these old, coal powered, trains in Southern Spain when I was about 18. It was a grand adventure then. I ve become too old for the bumpy, smoke and soot, jostling around and now prefer the bullet trains. On the way up, we had a picnic at on of the many amazing anomalies to be found all over New Mexico the Echo Amphitheatre.

23 But the scenery was spectacular. Then, as planed, we headed over to Pagosa Springs. The girls did the works (soak, message etc.)

24 Truly an amazing place.

25 You have lodging and soaking options from, anywhere along the San Juan River (Hippie style/free) and, ranging in all prices, right on up to the grand palace.

26 We had Kazumi s memorial service.

27 Many friends in New Mexico knew and loved Kazumi. Not all were able to make it but it was a good service. Eventually, many others signed the book and paid their respects.

28 All good things must end. The car is silver. Here it looks white..it s frost. It s getting cold in the mornings (9000 ft.) and Masako has to get back to Dallas for some medical tests.

29 When there s ice in the wheelbarrow, it s time to get off the mountain. We re back in Texas now. The back yard is an overgrown jungle and there s a big mess to deal with here. You ll come see us next year.