Horse Camp, Days Two and Three
May. 27th, 2010 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaOn the second day of Horse Camp, we went out to Mission San Xavier del Bac to do some sightseeing.
Mission San Xavier is a beautiful Spanish Catholic mission established in the... seventeenth century, I think.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dancinghorse says it's also called the White Dove of the Desert, and I can see why. As we were coming up the road, we rounded a bend and suddenly there it was, bright beautiful white against the rusty-red earth and olive-green plant life.
Mission San Xavier had a feeling of being quite old. In some ways it reminded me of the cathedrals I saw in Europe, when I was a kid, although in other ways it was entirely different (being Spanish Baroque instead of German medieval and Renaissance). I didn't get many pictures of the interior, because I didn't want to use the flash inside and also because I wanted to stay respectful of what is, after all, still a living church, but I did get this one:
In addition to the beautifully restored chapel, rich with carvings and paintings (and painted carvings, and so on), there was the museum, where I got to see a huge sheepskin psalter, beautifully lettered. Afterward we went out to the plaza and did a little shopping. I picked up this year's Christmas cards, which feature the mission, and then a little carved Great Horned Owl. (The owl is an animal of particular importance to me. I've always loved owls, and when I was a teenager trying to blend into a fairly hostile environment, the subtle silences and alert watchfulness of the owl were... well, they were important to me. That's why it's so awesome that I'll get an owl at my wedding.) The carved owl is going to be the thing I hang onto when I'm having trouble with wedding planning stress, to remind me of all the good things.
Afterwarddancinghorse introduced me to frybread. I'd heard about frybread from reading Sherman Alexie and watching Smoke Signals, but I'd never had it. It's delicious! It's almost the perfect snack: a good-tasting dough, flattened, fried very hot, served just a little greasy and covered in honey. (Well, we had it covered in honey, although you could also get it with powdered sugar or cinnamon or a few other options. Judy says they're also sometimes sold as frybread tacos, with a savory filling, which sound delicious.) I wound up happily full with oily, sticky fingers.
We ate the frybread out in the plaza, and I got some pictures of local plant life.
A blooming cactus:
I don't know what kind of tree this is, but I love its shape:
Some lovely star-shaped flowers, beginning to dry out:
An incredible thorny evil-witch of a plant with a single shockingly pink flower:
Look at those blooms:
We took the long way home, circling the south end of the Tucson Valley, and I got a good look at the desert. Apparently this has been a particularly mild and wet spring, so many of the cacti were still blooming, including the saguaro. (There was a saguaro forest on the hill across from the Mission and reservation. Amazing!) I saw one saguaro on the reservation that had so many white blossoms on the top that it looked like it was wearing a crown.
The rest of that day was just relaxing. I went out to say hello to the horses, wrote a little, read a little, had an excellent dinner, and went to bed.
Day 3
On day three it was windy, which is apparently normal for this time of year in Tucson. I didn't go out at all. Instead I sat inside and watched the trees blowing out the window, and wrote.
I wrote ten thousand words.
That gets its own line, because by my lights, that's a LOT. A thousand words is a good, productive day for me. Five thousand is a really, really productive day. Ten thousand words? Unprecedented. Granted they were very, very first-draft-y, but still, words are words!
Apparently the part of my brain that does fiction woke up and decided it was READY, damn it, and who was I to argue?
So, ten thousand words, after which my brain felt as empty as if I'd scoured it out. I ate heartily, said very little on account of having poured all my words onto the page, and slept deeply, and late.
Mission San Xavier is a beautiful Spanish Catholic mission established in the... seventeenth century, I think.
dancinghorse says it's also called the White Dove of the Desert, and I can see why. As we were coming up the road, we rounded a bend and suddenly there it was, bright beautiful white against the rusty-red earth and olive-green plant life. |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
Mission San Xavier had a feeling of being quite old. In some ways it reminded me of the cathedrals I saw in Europe, when I was a kid, although in other ways it was entirely different (being Spanish Baroque instead of German medieval and Renaissance). I didn't get many pictures of the interior, because I didn't want to use the flash inside and also because I wanted to stay respectful of what is, after all, still a living church, but I did get this one:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
In addition to the beautifully restored chapel, rich with carvings and paintings (and painted carvings, and so on), there was the museum, where I got to see a huge sheepskin psalter, beautifully lettered. Afterward we went out to the plaza and did a little shopping. I picked up this year's Christmas cards, which feature the mission, and then a little carved Great Horned Owl. (The owl is an animal of particular importance to me. I've always loved owls, and when I was a teenager trying to blend into a fairly hostile environment, the subtle silences and alert watchfulness of the owl were... well, they were important to me. That's why it's so awesome that I'll get an owl at my wedding.) The carved owl is going to be the thing I hang onto when I'm having trouble with wedding planning stress, to remind me of all the good things.
Afterward
dancinghorse introduced me to frybread. I'd heard about frybread from reading Sherman Alexie and watching Smoke Signals, but I'd never had it. It's delicious! It's almost the perfect snack: a good-tasting dough, flattened, fried very hot, served just a little greasy and covered in honey. (Well, we had it covered in honey, although you could also get it with powdered sugar or cinnamon or a few other options. Judy says they're also sometimes sold as frybread tacos, with a savory filling, which sound delicious.) I wound up happily full with oily, sticky fingers.We ate the frybread out in the plaza, and I got some pictures of local plant life.
A blooming cactus:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
I don't know what kind of tree this is, but I love its shape:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
Some lovely star-shaped flowers, beginning to dry out:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
An incredible thorny evil-witch of a plant with a single shockingly pink flower:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
Look at those blooms:
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
We took the long way home, circling the south end of the Tucson Valley, and I got a good look at the desert. Apparently this has been a particularly mild and wet spring, so many of the cacti were still blooming, including the saguaro. (There was a saguaro forest on the hill across from the Mission and reservation. Amazing!) I saw one saguaro on the reservation that had so many white blossoms on the top that it looked like it was wearing a crown.
 |
| From Horse Camp, May 2010 |
The rest of that day was just relaxing. I went out to say hello to the horses, wrote a little, read a little, had an excellent dinner, and went to bed.
Day 3
On day three it was windy, which is apparently normal for this time of year in Tucson. I didn't go out at all. Instead I sat inside and watched the trees blowing out the window, and wrote.
I wrote ten thousand words.
That gets its own line, because by my lights, that's a LOT. A thousand words is a good, productive day for me. Five thousand is a really, really productive day. Ten thousand words? Unprecedented. Granted they were very, very first-draft-y, but still, words are words!
Apparently the part of my brain that does fiction woke up and decided it was READY, damn it, and who was I to argue?
So, ten thousand words, after which my brain felt as empty as if I'd scoured it out. I ate heartily, said very little on account of having poured all my words onto the page, and slept deeply, and late.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:38 am (UTC)Frybread's dangerous. I have yet to encounter one in Tucson that I could resist eating all of. And only in Tucson does that happen....
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 05:13 am (UTC)Lame? Very! But I just had some phenomenal garlic ramen, so I don't care ;->
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 09:40 am (UTC)Ten thousand words is amazing! I think the most I've ever written in one day was 7,500.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 11:06 am (UTC)