Strawberry Crossfade

A wavering of the flux capacitor of pandemic time left this post lingering a long time, not even as a draft in WordPress (I almost never leave drafts), but in my mind.

In November of Covid-19 Year Zero (aka 2020) I sold the little house in Strawberry Arizona that was my home from 2008 to 2018. This was both easy and not easy as I had much attachment to the place that in the beginning healed me and I poured my energy into literally remaking the landscape with rocks and plants found within.

But in a summer camping trip with Cori, the question bubbled up as to how we would use the place. We had in mind making it our eventual winter retirement spot, and in between, using it once or twice a year for a vacation.

In fact we made a vacation trip there for a 10 day trip in mid-February 2020, aware of the rising concern worldwide of the virus that pivoted everything. We enjoyed the quiet, the walks, a trip to the Grand Canyon, visiting local friends. The plan was for maybe a summer trip but more likely a Christmas holiday one.

How naive as to what March would bring.

On that summer camping trip, sitting around the campfire, I suggested the possibility of selling Strawberry. We were paying for a place we could not go visit (I had rented it the year before, and that was not viable at all economically plus we spent that February week doing a lot of cleanup). But even moreso, as we talked about what a retirement might look like, it occurred to us that we would be mostly tied to going there. And what was more appealing, was the idea of retirement being nomads in a small camper, going many places.

Cori tried to talk em out of it. We let it go, came back to it, several times, but the feeling stayed with me that It Was Time to Let It Go.

Last fall was an opportune time. Properties on the Mogollon Rim were usually popular as summer escapes for people in Phoenix, but the word I got from friends in Arizona was that demand was insanely higher under the pandemic. Many people from Phoenix wanted to escape the dense populations, I heard the forest campgrounds that usually emptied out in late August when school returned were still full into late September.

It sold, as is needing paint and cleanup, on the first day it was listed to the first viewers. Yes you can sell real estate remotely.

We did a video call with a very good friend who walked through the house so I could list the items I wanted shipped. A lot of books, my vinyl collection, old school stereo, a lot of framed art, a cow skull named Herman, a giant gourd, a metal sculpture of a guitar, windchimes, tools, my Dad’s hand made metal dustpan, my slides and papers from my MS thesis, blankets and two key pieces of furniture were packed and loaded into a U-Haul Ubox.

This place was important to me. I nurtured the trees, grew and spread some award worthy irises, got transplanted cactus to thrive, planted lilac and shrubs and plum trees. Oh the rocks I moved. I went a little crazy with my rock art.

I left some beautiful slate tile my friend Jack laid in the kitchen back in 2008, and the blue cabinets my sister and brother-in-law helped paint a while back. There was the “vintage” wall texture for a place built in 1977. I recall a video call in maybe 2015 with colleagues in the Netherlands and how Maarten could not get over the wood paneling. He busted out “Alan, you are living in the 70s!”

There was learning from my former and late neighbor Jack, who built his house from a kit, that my house was from the same kit- O’Malley’s Easy Do. As it turns out, Jack’s son-in-law Jim was a colleague I knew from Glendale Community College. And my neighbor Leo who took me out in the forest and taught me how to cut and salvage firewood.

None of those memories or connections requiring holding on to a house. A house itself is just an inert physical object.

I do get some odd looks here in Saskatchewan when I tell people I moved here from Arizona. “Why?” That answer is easy and swift “I fell in love”. It’s because She Said Yes.

Yes, I had a neat little solitary life in that wood paneled house in Strawberry, but that just fades in comparison to my life with Cori.

We will return to Strawberry next time as visitors, visit friends, hike the trails I worked on, explore the Mogollon Rim, have brunch at the Randall House, pizza at Old County Inn, lunch on the patio at THAT Brewery, shop for fun things at Moose Mountain antiques. It will all be there.

But home and heart are here, fuller, wider, more spectacular than the colorful, wide prairie skies I have grown to love

So the editor puts a long cross fade transition on that 10 year scene in Strawberry but you will have to wait to see where it goes from here.

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Featured Image: A bit of a fade effect applied to: