My new life: Love & Light and everything bright...

23 Jan 2011

Updated June 23, 2008; adds McDowell Mtns: Farewell Hike...

Tombstone Shoot'em Up & Other Shenanigans

When whole town becomes a stage and residents actors, Shakespeare's "All the World's a Stage" gets reenacted over and over again five centuries later in a little Arizona dustbowl

SCOTTSDALE, June 22, 2008 - "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances," William Shakespeare wrote in "As You Like It." Well, there is at least one place in the world where that is still true - Tombstone, Arizona (click on above map to enlarge). Yes, the very same town that the 1882 gunfight at "OK Corral" made famous.

Today, as my date and I were passing through this little Arizona dustbowl enroute from Tucson to Bisbee, Tombstone's main drag was the stage, and its residents actors in a play of life that they designed themselves. Take a look...

This woman, riding high on a mostly white pinto (three left shots), is evidently the town's crier. She rides up and down the main street standing up, making the announcements about the next act in the continuous play called "Tombstone." Occasionally, characters, such as this saddled gunfighter in the rightmost shot, join her to make pronouncements of their own.

But the action is no less interesting on the town's boardwalk, albeit a little more subtle than on its main drag. All townsfolk are dressed in period costumes. Notice how this distinguished white-mustached gentleman in his Sunday finest black and whites and a black hat, bends down to kiss a very proper-looking middle-aged lady while she is in mid-sentence? The conversation pauses, like a still frame in a movie, while they engage in this little interlude - a moment of hot passion on a hot afternoon. And then action resumes, as if nothing had happened. :-)

Meanwhile, there is a mock hanging going on across the street. Ever seen a hanging victim smiling as broadly as this woman while her husband/partner/brother/sinner-in-arms is taking her picture? :-)

Not far from there, the local "Madam" and her girls are welcoming "strangers" who ride into town. "And what might your pleasure be, Sir?" she seems to be asking the cowboy on the left, meaning it both literally and figuratively. And as all "Madam's," when the going gets tough, the tough get going. In the right shot, she is trying to wrest a bottle of whiskey away from a drunk who is causing trouble in the middle of the street. Ultimately, the drunk fires his gun trying to hit a can, and the noise upsets the card game that's going on in the nearby "Saloon."

Verbal jostling ensues, guns are fired, and the upshot of the whole affair is that the drunk is shot dead in the middle of the street. I caught some of that gunfight on my video camera, and later posted it on YouTube. Take a look...

There were other shenanigans, too, but we didn't want to shoot'em all up on film. You'd better come to Tombstone yourself and see some live action on this world stage, live and throbbing with both life and death. :-)

SCOTTSDALE, June 23 - With only three days left before I take off for Peru, I felt I needed to do one last training push back home. My back lower is feeling better, and I thought I should put it through a desert stress test before the rigors of the High Andes take their toll on it. So biked to my Club through the McDowell Mtn foothills for about 45 mins; worked out

in the gym with weights for about 30 mins; and then tackled the McDowell Mtn hike. It ended up being a 2:45 hrs round trip in 110F temperature (43.3C). Oh yes, and I also had to bike home. Straight. Add another 20 mins or so.

I don't know how much in total workout time all this added up to. And I didn't care. I am sure it was "sufficient," as the British would say, to qualify as a stress test.

"You don't need to worry about surviving the Andes," a personal trainer and a fitness instructor told me at the Club just before my hike. "You're so fit you can do anything."

Well, that's an overstatement. Besides, I wasn't "worried" about the Andes. Actually, I am VERY EXCITED about communing with the Holy Mountains in Peru. But I do know that God helps those who help themselves. And getting physically and mentally fit

is my way of "helping myself" for such an experience. Besides, ever tried to tell a bird not to fly? :-)

Speaking of birds, yes, here they were again all around me on this trail. And they were doves again. Take a look at this one, perched on a saguaro's arm (left). Then he decided to move up to the top for the main course of his dinner. Yum!

Some of you may recall that a month ago, these saguaro flowers were white. The saguaro looked as if they had crowns of pearls. Now the flowers have turned to fruit, which is beet red inside. And as you can see from the right-hand shot, the saguaro come only in one size here in the Arizona lower deserts - GIGANTIC!

Anyway, back on the trail, as I was climbing, I was also snapping pictures of beautiful views... both toward the Valley of the Sun where Scottsdale and Phoenix lie, as well as of the McDowell Mtns themselves (middle left).

Once at the McDowell Mtn Saddle, the summit of my trail (where all three above pictures were take, the one on the right with my cell phone camera), I rested for a while. I then performed the four winds shamanic ceremony, and asked McDowell Mtns to let their mountain sisters in the Andes know that this son of the universe is coming to commune with them, and to receive their energies and spirits, so he can spread them to other people around the world.

And then, just as I was saying that during the filming of a brief video clip at the same spot, a powerful gust of hit me in the face. It almost knocked the camera out of my hand, drowning out my words. I figure it was a thunderous confirmation by the Spirit that the Holy Mountains in Peru got my message. Pretty darn incredible? For sure. But just in case you still have some doubts, it's all on film. Check it out...

The photo on the right was also taken at the trail's Saddle summit. The Thompson Peak, visible in the background, is the highest point of the McDowell Mtns.

On my way down, not far from the Saddle summit where I did my ceremony, I paused to take a shot of the rocks glistening in the reflection of the setting sun. When I later took a closer look at this picture at home, I saw this perfectly shaped oval blue translucent image. I have no idea what it was and how it got into that scene. Considering the prayer I had offered to the mountain spirits only a few minutes earlier, the blue light energy blob did send shivers down my spine.

SCOTTSDALE, June 24 - Call me a "Birdman," if you wish. For, I must have been a bird at least in some of my prior

reincarnations. I have been collecting clay roosters for years, for example, without realizing they were my Chinese birth sign. Birds have been also my mountain guides and messengers, as you have seen from my past stories about the hikes in Arizona and Montenegro (see "Hiking McDowell's" and "Return to Camelback" stories from April; and "Communing with My Mountain" from May). Last year, an entire family of quail emerged from eggs laid in one of the planters at my front door. I have had a personal relationship with an owl all through the second half of 2007 (see "An Owling Story"). This year, as well as last, a dove laid its egg and nurtured her chick to life on the wall in my back yard just under a citrus tree (see "Nesting Doves", Apr 2008). There are two white eagles atop the knight's helmet in the Djurdjevic family crest (right - click to enlarge). Etc.

Furthermore, all these birds seemed totally unafraid when I come near them. Which is out of character for that species in most circumstances.

And now, a new nest has appeared in my back yard (above). During the last week or so, I have been watching these little birds that look like woodpeckers build their nest in one of my cacti. One little twig at a time, they have managed to make it now twice the size of a human head. They burrow into their new nest at night, so that they are completely enclosed, as if in a cave. And again, they are completely unafraid of me when I walk by. My fake owl on the wall next to their new home didn't faze them, either. They only thing that scared them this morning was the electric blower I used to clean the flagstones on my patio from the fallen debris.

So there you have it, another "story for the birds" from the home of the "Birdman."