JHFARR.COM

Just sharing some beauty from the weekend with this view of the Rio Grande at Orilla Verde in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. And actually, that may not be right. Since the Orilla Verde area was included in the new national monument, maybe it doesn’t rate a special designation any more. I’ll have to check the signs more carefully next time. But isn’t this grand? That’s a typical look for November, with the river reflecting the sky like that, and the other colors are amazing, too. We can get to this place in less than 20 minutes from our house, and it’s almost never crowded. How the hell could it be?

»Buy This Photo!«

Just look at those happy people! That’s a photo my grandmother labeled “the Farr tribe” from late spring many years ago in Chestertown, Maryland. In the main row from the left, that’s Granddad, Uncle Bob, Aunt Mary, my mother Helen, Aunt Elsie holding cousin Joyce, Granny, my father John, with me in the propeller beanie out in front, paying no attention to whoever has the camera. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine who that could have been.

There exists another photo of the very same people taken three and a half years later that would shock you with its emotional rawness. It probably follows a nasty family fight, by which I mean my father or his brother cursing out a spouse in front of everyone. I don’t know where that behavior came from, either, the hurt and anger and the lashing out. Certainly not from my grandparents, who just weren’t that kind of people.

I found these photos in one of the four large boxes of family artifacts I inherited from Aunt Mary, who died this spring at 99 years old (her mother lived to be 100). The picture albums, clippings, cards, and other mementos constitute a huge historical trove that will be incomprehensible to my younger siblings when I’m gone. As it stands right now, I’m the only one of the surviving four who has a clue about our origins and can name the people in the photos. One album features over a hundred scenes from Parsons, West Virginia from 1900 to 1905, and every one is annotated by my grandmother! Another album features images from the Farr enclave in Big Flats, New York. What strikes me about those are that so many of my ancestors were farmers and how similar the homes are to older places on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Also notable is how contemporary and playful my relatives appear when young. There are many, many pictures.

Consider too that with the death of my mother in April, 2012, I also acquired a similar store of photographs and artifacts from her side of the family in Baltimore. These are much less known to me for many reasons. Visits always favored my father’s relatives, not Helen’s, and we were an Air Force family that landed far away from the old ancestral haunts. But still, I have the records—from all indications, an extended, vigorous, accomplished clan. (Some of my older cousins from that side show up now and then to comment on this blog.)

For the last few years then, I’ve been deluged with physical evidence of the nature of the human beings from whom I came. To most of you, this must sound anticlimatic, as in, “Doesn’t everybody know these things?” It hasn’t been easy to look at all the photos, either. They’ve been known to rile me up real good:

[continue reading…]

Another dispatch from the terrible high desert! Behold the poor female mallards, forced to feed and find shelter on the banks of the Rio Grande. The water was running high and clear on Sunday afternoon. So much water going south, where everybody steals it. The ducks kept to the slow water unless they wanted to split without bothering to fly. In that case all they had to do was paddle out into the current and be whisked away.

That same day I received an email message from a reader commenting on this November 5th post. I don’t think he’ll mind my quoting it here:

“The way I put it at the time was, ‘It feels like I’ve come home.'”

I know the feeling.

In 1992, after visiting NM from NY, I bought a ketchup-and-mustard NM license plate key fob with the word “HOME” engraved on it. Four years later, we moved here. It’s been a mixed bag, but my initial feeling was accurate. It’s home.

I’ve stopped by your blog many times over the years, and I’ve always enjoyed your writing, more often than not, empathizing with your take on this unique place. Keep up the good work.

Regular readers know that “home” has been a preoccupation of mine since we landed here fourteen years ago. The worst thing on arriving was discovering how much less we could buy with our money here than back in Maryland at the time. That’s probably still true. At any rate, it was a shock, and yes, I was unprepared and under-educated, made every kind of “wrong” decision, and drove myself mad for years. I should have been a duck, that’s all. But fortunately, that’s all over now.

That reader may know more about me than I do. He paddled out into the current and got whisked six miles from the mailbox up into the woods!

»Buy This Photo!«

Almost eight thousand feet here, somewhere in el Norte, far from anything you’d call a road. Less than thirty miles from where we started, but it took almost an hour and a half. Four and a half million years ago, this was an active volcano. The ground is covered with elk poop, and no wonder: four thousand of them live here. People from the government count them every year from planes, so I didn’t make that up.

»Buy This Photo!«