Off to the Sun: An Unlikely Oasis for Thoroughly Covered Ladies

Interior of St. Anthony's Church - note "standing room only". Only children and the elderly sit during a service

My friend Michele took the lead on my last day in AZ and drove out to a most unlikely oasis: St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery in Florence, about 15 minutes outside of town. Miles of sand, dust, scrub punctuated by the occasional saguaro gave way to a place that appeared to be air-lifted whole from Greece. The plantings, the fountains, the chapels, the acres of citrus in full bloom - it was almost hallucinatory. 

The latest in Ortodox fashion

After pulling into the parking lot, we walked under the arch and filed over to the gatehouse where attentive Greek women (covered head to toe) dressed us up over our garments, making sure that 1. all pants and legs were covered by skirts, 2. no bare arms or neckline were on view 3. hair and neck were completely covered and 4. no bare feet were exposed. I have to give them credit; from a trunk of skirts, scarves and shirts, they managed to put together some semblance of a matching outfit for every female visitor. Naturally, male visitors just breezed right through (though long sleeves and long pants were required). We ladies were warned to not look at, photograph or speak to any of the monks, and to avoid them whenever possible.

Though the requirements for entry seemed excessive, they were merely hot (it WAS over 80 degrees), and so worth it. The grounds were like a fairyland of semi-tropical plants: flaming bougainvillea, palms of all sorts, jasmines and more all anchored by pleasant sitting areas and a variety of fountains. The citrus fields were in full bloom, scenting the air with each breeze. The grounds were also home to St. Anthony's church and six different chapels, each dedicated to a different saint, all unique in materials and decor. It was here that I adopted two more saints (I'm already a big fan of St. Jude, patron saint of impossible causes). Welcome St. Nectarios the Wonderworker and Nicholas the Wonderworker. Who could resist a few wonders worked?

Icons everywhere

This was a special treat for me, as my grandmother was Orthodox (though from the Russian branch), and I recognized both the style and identity of many of the icons in the chapels. I always thought the babushka (headscarf) my grandmother wore most of her life in public was a fashion statement, not a religious requirement. In Russian, babushka is another word for "grandmother".

 

The Monastery was founded in 1995, when several monks were brought from the Philotheou Monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece. They built the main church, living quarters for monks, a dining hall, and guest quarters. The Monastery has since expanded to include the chapels, gardens, citrus and olive orchards. The monks and novices hold all things in common and follow a strict daily schedule of prayer, work and spiritual reading. Orthodox guests are invited to the Monastery to spend a few days in contemplation. The front "wall" of the church and chapels (pictured at left and in the top picture) is actually a screen - the priests perform sacred parts of the religious ceremony behind it during the service.

Chapel ceiling

Speaking of Mt. Athos, after our visit to the Monastery, we stopped at the Mt. Athos Resaurant in Florence, keeping with the mood of the day. Started by a family of New Yorkers who fled west after 9/11, the food is quite good - especially the traditional Greek dishes. It was a bittersweet goodbye to Florence, Arizona - the next day I was boarding an American jet to San Diego.

St. George chapel's resident pussycat

All images by Joanne Orion Miller unless otherwise noted

Off to the Sun: Paint, Pour, Pour, Pour

Climbing up to 83 degrees on April 3rd. Ah, spring in the desert

It's not all fun and games. Wait! It is! After our astonishing night at the Desert Botanical Garden, we needed to (sort of) rest. So the next day it was off to Paint-N-Pour, an event put on all over the area by a couple of local artists at the Windmill Winery in Florence. The winery is set in a very cute little farm and pours wines from all over the world, though the website is a tad misleading - lush as it looks, it's in the middle of miles of desert. The $35 fee included our first glass of artistic lubricant, and a good time was had by all. Completed artwork included interpretations of Native women in blankets, crazed yurts, surfboards, deranged hot dogs, and in one case, "My Mother's Apron".

Image courtesy of Paint N pour

 Our creative senses alight, we went home to sleep it off, and to prepare for the next day's two-and-a-half-hour drive to Karchner Caverns State Park south of Tucson.

 At home, Coco patiently awaited the unveiling of our new works of art, slated to be hung in the world-famous garage gallery. Or was it dinner she was waiting for...?

 All images by Joanne Orion Miller unless otherwise noted

Off to the Sun: a Day of Art in Scottsdale

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art  (SMOCA) Moon viewing installation

 Thank goodness for friends in far-flung places. When the dampness in Northern California results in a fine layer of mold on things that should never see spores (and it has been one rainy winter!), my thoughts stray to sunnier climes and my good friends who are smart enough to live there. And who are willing to put up with me for a few days...

First stop on this trip: Michele, who lives just outside Florence, AZ, midway between Greater Phoenix and Tucson. Florence is one of the oldest towns in Arizona, a typical dusty desert town, I always thought it didn't have a lot to recommend it; but on this trip I learned how wrong I was (more on that in a later blog).

Michele picked me up at PHX (also known as Sky Harbor), and we hit the ground running. Or rather riding. Scottsdale is one of several smaller cities that has been encompassed by Greater Phoenix, but retains a distinctive identity, and one of the coolest things about Scottsdale is the free trolley that buzzes around Old Town, where a lot of the museums, galleries and shopping extravaganzas mix with dozens of restaurants and cafes. It runs every 15 minutes, and yes folks, it's free. So we parked and picked it up, taking in the big art pieces that dot the landscape


Our appetites whetted for more visual candy, we hopped off the trolley  and walked a couple blocks to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (better known as SMOCA), currently celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of world-class videos.






 
The museum is a success story in every way. Resurrected from an abandoned, run-down warehouse, the space is gorgeous. Sleek modern architecture surrounded by sensitive desert plantings abound in Scottsdale, and this is another fine example. The high ceilings make for vast installations that wouldn't look right anywhere else.

I've never been to a museum where the docents (who look nothing like the typical idea of a docent, by the way) are so enthusiastic about the art, they can't help but share their excitement about the artworks and the artists behind them - definitely an education in contemporary art.

The objects in this picture may look like giant pushpins, but they're actually chairs that rock from side to side - a little disorienting at first, but then, it's a party!

After our contemporary art tour, we drove down to the Desert Botanical Garden in Scottsdale for a truly magical experience.

All images by Joanne Orion Miller unless otherwise noted.

ROAD TRIP! Wild Coast

image: A.N. Smith-Lee

Dragging ourselves out of bed the next morning, we went down to a pleasant continental breakfast and headed out Rhododendron Drive to the jetty. The weather had become more of what we expected: windy, cold and wet. It was beautiful, and wild. We walked out the jetty, comprised of hundreds of massive stones to protect Florence harbor. A man I talked to said the sand covering the rocks was seasonal – In midwinter, it’s blown off, leaving the rocks bare for shell hunters; in spring, it begins to blow again, covering the rocks and causing the dunes to shift into high gear for the summer. Fishermen cast off all along the jetty; a lone surfer in full wetsuit came in from the cold. We retired back to the Bridgewater for a bowl of their fish stew (highly recommended). Then, off to another marvel – the Heceta Light. If you’ve read any of my books on Maryland, Delaware or the Chesapeake Bay, or the blog on lighthouses in Marin County, you know lighthouses are one of my passions.

image: A.N. Smith-Lee

 Twelve miles north of Florence on US 101, we crossed a magnificent iron bridge over a pale sand beach and turned onto Heceta Head. Named for Don Bruno de Heceta, the surveyor who traveled the Oregon coast for the Royal Spanish Navy in 1775, Hecata Head became the site for a light station in 1892, Stone from the Clackamas River and bricks from San Francisco were brought in by ship, ferried into the beach, and carried hundreds of feet up the side of Hecata Head to build a 56-foot lighthouse, housing for the head lightkeeper, two assistant lightkeepers and their families, a barn and two kerosene oil houses. The first-order (largest) Fresnel prism lens –the only one still operational in the US, created in Britain by the Chance Brothers – first illuminated the night in 1894. It continues to operate today, producing 2.5 million candle power, one flash every 10 seconds, reaching to the horizon.

The light and remaining structures are surrounded by trails and forest. A fresh, insistent wind billows out jackets and caps. Before electricity, there was a path with a chain-rail from the lightkeeper’s cottage up to the light itself; the rail was to hang onto in the black and windy night when a shift change was called for; you can still see part of it on the trail. Volunteer guides give an excellent accounting of the life of lightkeepers and the history of the light itself.

Lightkeeper's cottage B&B   Image: A.N.Smith-Lee

The assistant lightkeeper’s cottage still stands, and is now a bed andbreakfast. As they say, “…fulfill a fantasy,” and live the life of a lighthouse keeper for a night or two in this gorgeous setting. Did I mention the air here couldn’t be fresher? It’s almost alive.

Back to Florence to turn east again, through the luminous mist and clouds of country along the route from the coast to Junction City. A friend had lived a very contented life there 20 years ago, and my image was of a small country town. Incorrect. Junction City is now a miles-long highway strip mall along Rte. 99 with tire dealers, smoke shops and the occasional gentlemen’s club. I could see, from the main drag, an older part of town that once charmed those who lived there. Time doesn’t just march on, sometimes. It stumbles, scrapes both knees, and doesn’t bother to clean itself up.
I ended up making a phone call in the public restroom of the Junction City Safeway to our hotel for the night in Eugene, the Valley River Inn. Most accommodating, they were able to change our reservations to one night earlier.

We headed south on Hwy. 5, and pulled into the Inn, at the base of a large shopping center, Macy’s et al. The hotel was vast, as was our room, which looked out onto a pleasant vista: a branch of the Willamette River. Dinner that night was cross-your-fingers: we drove in the dark to a place in the newish north east part of town, Pho the Good Times – kinda corny name, but good noodles, and popular with the dinner crowd. Google Maps got us there and back, and so to bed.

Unless stated all images by Joanne Orion Miller

ROAD TRIP! Up Country on a Sunny Day

We turned west at the little town of Sutherlin. Like California, Oregon legalized recreational marijuana use, so dispensaries are everywhere. Sutherlin undoubtedly won the most obvious advertising category. How can you hate a place that has a joint the size of the American flag?

The drive west to the coast was glorious. The day was unusually sunny (we actually had sunny weather continually on our trip to this point); we passed forest and meadow, and an elk preserve dotted with dozens of mothers and calves dozing in the sun. We decided to gamble on the night’s lodgings by not booking until we reached a place we wanted to be. We landed in Reedsport, a town that definitely appealed to sportfishers. No room at the inn there, so we drove up to the next town of any size, Florence, and cruised around for a while.

The entrance to Florence was through a historic iron structure, the Siuslaw River Bridge. Built in 1936, its graceful curves can best be seen from old town Florence (more on that, later).

The weather had turned cloudy and windy, and we were definitely looking to book a stop. Good old hotels.com led us to the Landmark Inn, which, due the odd configuration of streets off Hwy 101 combined with roadwork, we had a difficult time finding. When I asked at the desk, I was told it was “a newish place made to look old,” an apt description.

The Landmark Inn

Not fancy, but certainly worth a night– clean, smallish rooms, very comfortable beds, and away from the highway, where trucks rumbled ceaselessly. Lovely, extremely helpful people at the desk for check-in. We were directed to the town’s good restaurants (don’t eat at the ones on the water), where to see the dunes, and Siuslaw River Jetty (quite an engineering feat) without crowds (the end of Rhododendron Drive).

At the Landmark’s suggestion we had tasty and very fresh fish dinners at Bridgewater’s/Zebra Bar. It’s set in the original part of Florence, a charming street below the Siuslaw River Bridge leading into town. On the way back we were pleased to see the Inn’s very steep driveway lit up like a runway – much easier to find in the dark.

A sign in downtown Florence in the evening