How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who bringeth glad tidings – Isaiah 52:7
I can’t ever quit looking at it.” – Bill Layton
Charlie and I took the southern route on I-10 to California. This route took us about thirty miles south of Mount Graham which we could see in the distance. The sight inspired conversation about dad and our memories of the mountain. Lately I’ve thought of the mountain often because Charlie gave me a lovely oil painting of it that was always in our family home. We both knew that it was painted by a relative but we were neither one sure who. We’d ask Nancy when we got to Hemet CA.
It was nice that Charlie gave me a turn with the painting. It reminded me of our last time with Dad. He took us up on the mountain, which was teaming with fungi due to the summer “monsoons” that brought steady rain around the summit. We had a hilarious time with the mushrooms, in particular a large cauliflower fungus – the first I ever saw – that managed to soak us both trying to clean it with a garden hose. Dad died the next year after that visit. I wrote an article for the Prairie States Mushroom Club newsletter about Mushrooms on Mount Graham, which I’ll post in a separate blog. Now I need to report on the picture.
Nancy did indeed know who painted the picture of Mt. Graham. It was painted by Dad’s great Aunt Virginia Lee, his grandfather’s sister. Lee was her married name. Nancy found her in our Great Great Grandfather Christopher Layton’s Autobiography. Christopher was one of the original Mormon settlers and Virginia was his daughter, one of many. She and her husband had a ranch at the foot of Mt. Graham. She painted extensively and apparently had quite a following. I wondered how many Layton hands it went through before it finally came to our family.
Our discussion of the painting turned into memories of the mountain which led to memories of 8 mm home movies of eight year old Nancy and four year old Dave – a scallywag to be sure – since the movies contained evidence of me throwing rocks from a ledge I shouldn’t have been on and throwing bottles of coke into a rocky mountain stream when I saw other folks carefully placing their bottles there to chill. Fortunately the movies didn’t show Nancy’s encounter with a rattlesnake. Maybe she’ll share a little more about that – or not; for I’m asking her to share her own thoughts of Mount Graham at this point, Possibly Charlie will also write about dad, Arizona and Mt. Graham in one of his upcoming vacation blogs.
From Nancy:
Well, okay, here it goes. First a minor correction to what Dave wrote about the painting. Aunt Virgie painted that specifically for Dad, knowing how much he loved coming back to “the great mountain”, as she referred to it.
I recall remnants of the day we went to her place to pick up the painting. I recall a hot, sunny glassed-in porch off one of the sides of her ranch home. A very old woman “of a certain age”, she still lived where she and her husband had run cattle at the foot of Mt. Graham. The ranch sat sort of in the shadow of the mountain, caught the morning sun but not the baking sun of Arizona afternoons. I remember driving down a dusty gravel road with lots of pot-holes that were still holding water from the last summer monsoonal rain that had blessed the desert. I remember being a bit scared to go meet this old woman, but my cousin Cathy pulled me out of the car and smacked me between the shoulder blades to “get a move on”.
Aunt Virgie was very specific about what Mom and Dad were to do with the painting because the oils were still “wet” and she was concerned about us kids “putin’ yer dirty hands on it.” She and Grandma Layton and Dad scrounged around and found some cardboard and tape and secured the painting for travel. The painting was to be hung so that it did not catch more than a “glance of sunlight” during the day. Wherever Mom and Dad lived after that trip, the painting hung proudly over the living room sofa.
The mountain is easily recognized in Aunt Virgie Lee’s painting. It’s as iconic an image as the mountain my husband, Rick Foster, and I lived on for sixteen years between owning a computer business and moving back down to “the flatlands” due to Rick’s difficulty breathing at a mile high. Our mountain, Mt. San Jacinto, also sits pretty much by itself above the desert floor where Palm Springs is located. From our vantage point, now living in Hemet, the mountain is totally recognizable when viewed from the distance we have from it now. Sixteen years of life in a small mountain village, Idyllwild, was both idyllic and fraught with challenge. The first and most constant challenge was keeping enough firewood on hand to keep our little house warm in the winter. I’ll share more about that and our mountain escapades in a blog we’re working on: Mushrooms on Mt. San Jacinto. Now Dave mentioned something about a rattler, so let’s segue back to that.
Yes, my cousin Cathy was I think maybe five years older than I and dragged me around like a puppy when she went on dates and to parties during our summer visits to her parents’ home in Safford, Arizona. Uncle Charlie was Dad’s next younger sibling, Dad being the second oldest of eight. Charlie and Aunt Mary’s home was comfortable and accommodated our family quite well when we came to visit. Cathy and I shared her bedroom, Mom and Dad had the “guest” room and my brothers slept somewhere, probably on the floor.
My older brother Jim loved to go rock hunting with Grandma Layton, out on the mesa just outside of town, so they went a lot. My Uncle Roy, Dad’s youngest sibling, was back at Grandma’s house, since his college took the summer off. He drove and the three of them had a great time.
One morning our parents announced we were all going to pile into various vehicles and make the trek up the mountain for a picnic. Oh, boy! For us kids, that meant climbing into the back of Uncle Charlie’s pickup truck and covering our faces with bandanas for the part along a gravel road. Once on the asphalt of the state-maintained highway it was really fun. Charlie took the turns pretty fast because he was used to driving the road, having lived and worked on highways around Safford all his life, except for his time in the Army during WWII.
As soon as we arrived at the picnic grounds we kids headed for the clear, ice-cold water of the creek that ran alongside the picnic area. Grandma also began taking armsful of beer and soda pop down into the water to get it chilled. The two married couples lounged around on the tables, billing & cooing, or whatever adults did then when they were still in love and in a setting so beautiful it’s hard to describe.
Cathy and I went for a walk along and in the creek, both of us barefoot, and totally ignoring Grandma’s and Charlie’s warnings about vermin about the place. My feet were nearly frozen when we returned so we found a sunny spot and were letting our legs warm up when I spotted something interesting – you know “something shiny”. Well, not shiny, but interesting. When I got closer I saw what I thought was an old rag lying between a rock and the rock wall of the picnic table area. I was leaning down to pick it up when…. the danged thing moved. And, out popped its gnarly head! And, then, it started shaking its tail to warn me away. Uncle Charlie yelled at me to back up, slowly. “Just take a couple steps straight back then get the hell away. That’s a Rocky Mountain Diamond Back, you silly girl!”
The three men – Dad, Charlie, and Roy – quickly found a couple big sticks just as the rattlesnake began slithering out from behind the rock. It was huge! And I was way too close! Grandma Layton had moved down the creek when she heard the hissing of its tail and was right behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder and turned me slowly around, then hit me on the butt to run fast away. I did, right up to where the tables were. The men killed the snake, against Grandma’s and Roy’s wishes. She knew how valuable they were to the ecology (that word hadn’t even been invented yet) and Roy wanted to add the big guy to his snake collection he kept in a series of cages in Grandma’s front yard. “Nope,” Uncle Charlie insisted, “we’re not even gonna try to take this ‘un home or out into the wood somewhere. Nope, nope, nope!”
How’s that for a few memories of mountain adventures?
