2019 letter

1295 Raindagger Drive       

Prescott AZ 86301  USA

December 15, 2019

Dear Family and Friends,

I am late in starting this letter for reasons explained below, so it will be short (you are allowed to cheer silently!).

NIGEL & DONNA

The big news at the moment is Donna’s hip replacement, which was on November 20^th.  It went well, but there were a few hiccups that are now in the past.  She’s taking it easy at home, going through the lengthy recovery process with a visiting therapist and nurse.  She’s mobile but it will take time before she is walking normally, and driving will probably be a couple of months or so.  I have been the main helper and housewife and chauffeur (a factor in the late start for this letter) – she is impatient to get back to normal. Her multiple myeloma, diagnosed in 2013, is still basically dormant.  Earlier in the year she’s been involved with church activities, handcrafting cards with her friends, and playing Mah-Jongg.

I have been leading my hiking group since 2015, but I’m retiring from that in January.  I still enjoy hiking but my pace has gotten much slower than the rest of the group.  My main hobby is writing a bi-weekly column in the local Prescott newspaper (the Courier) called “Amazing Places” – another time-consuming activity.  More on that below.

We are comfortable in our “new” house – not so new now as we moved in on Christmas 2015.  This December has been cold so we’ve had quite a few wood fires in our fireplace this month – I’m still a bit of a pyromaniac!  I do my own woodcutting, but had some welcome help from my daughter Becky and her son Andrew early in November.  Those big logs seem to get heavier each year!  Fortunately, my health has been good, considering I’ll be 78 in April.

This year we haven’t taken any major trips, though Donna flew out in April to see our two grandkids in Washington State. 

CHILDREN & GRANDCHILDERN

Stephen is doing well with his job in home improvement, basically self-employed.  He and Peg are still good friends, and he and her daughter Ava get on well together.  He bought a drone at the beginning of this year and it can take great photos.

The one on the left is one I took in February of the three of them when he invited me to see how the drone worked.  It was sunny but quite cold that day.

The second photo was taken on the same day at Wolf Creek Falls – lots of icicles from the spray and snow on a fallen tree trunk.

Becky recently changed her job -- her previous boss was a lawyer in Washington, D.C.  She’s still working in the gun industry, but now works for a company that makes Gatling guns for the military.  She knew the owner from her previous job and she’s enjoying the change. This photo of Becky is by the helicopter she’ll be flying in to see a demo of their Gatling gun. 

Abby is now 16½ – in her third year of High School, which in USA-speak makes her a Junior.  She has chosen to learn about being a vet, so some of her courses are at a local Veterinarian school.  Now that she’s 16 and has passed the driving test she can drive and has her own car. This makes it easy to get between schools, and means Becky doesn’t have to take her everywhere.  Being the parent of a teenager must be a little scary, but Becky is handling it well.  

  Andrew is 14½ and in his first year of High School, the same one as Abby, and settling in.  The photo on the right is of the two of them – they both still have their red hair.   Although he’s younger than Abby he’s an inch or so taller.  Both are going to the Homecoming dance.  Abby is dressed up as she is going with her boyfriend.  Andrew is casual, and going with a group of male friends his same age.  We don’t see them as often as when they were younger, but celebrated part of Thanksgiving with the three of them. That made a nice break, especially for Donna – she was bored being stuck in the house from her Op.

Michael and Liz now have their own homes.  Their children, Thomas and Jack (8 and 6 respectively), live most of their time with Liz, but every other weekend with Michael.  Michael is still enjoying his job with Mitsubishi’s airplane division.  He keeps very busy, so we don’t hear much from him.

    Liz is still doing well at her job in the medical clinic where she has worked for years.  Her hobby is working out at the local gym, and she entered a half marathon recently with some persuasive friends.

The boys are doing well at school and are both enjoy various sports.  Donna visited Liz and the kids in April, and the three of them came to visit us in July.  It is always good to see them.  I took the photo on the left of the three of them on a nearby hike in the Granite Dells.  Part of this hike actually goes beneath some huge boulders which makes it exciting.

LOCAL NEWSPAPER

If all of the following detail doesn't interest you, you are done!
  My first Amazing Places column was in August of 2017, so I have now written over sixty articles.  I have a few hundred readers – the actual number is impossible to know – and have made new and interesting friends as a result. We’ve lived in Prescott since 1996, so I know the area better than most, having explored extensively with friends and on my own.  The places and things I’ve found form the basis for my articles.  I have used my map-making skills to help readers find some of the Amazing Places (I still volunteer once a week at the County GIS group).  Here are a few more photos of places I have written about.  

The headwaters of Sycamore Canyon are west of Flagstaff in the high country over 7000 feet, so the melting snow provides a good flow as it melts.  The photo on the right shows the main waterfall, which is about 200 feet from top to bottom, and makes a spectacular shot.  There was a lot of snow on the road to get there, but my trusty Toyota Landcruiser had no problem – it's ten years old and now has over 200,000 miles on it.

This lonely grave is the burial of a fellow called Isaac Bradshaw who died on Christmas day in 1886, aged 67. Back then it was a long life, considering that his adventures included running a ferry across the Colorado River and mining in the Arizona mountains, which later were called the Bradshaw Mountains after him and his brothers.  The grave is in the desert, as you can see from the saguaros.  It is in the middle of nowhere, about forty miles south of Prescott.  I had visited it when we lived in Phoenix.  The grave with its white picket fence is kept in good repair by a group who volunteers to maintain historic graves. 

I don’t always write about places --­­ this photo on the right is of hundreds of ladybirds (or ladybugs for Americans). They swarm together on the tops of various mountains in late summer, for mating and for warmth.  I have come across these insects in half a dozen places in Arizona.  

I wrote another article about a strange caterpillar called a bagworm that I came across on the trunk of a ponderosa pine when hiking with a friend.  We happened to stop for a drink of water when we noticed movement of what looked like a piece of debris.

This photo on the right was taken by Stephen using his drone.  I needed an aerial view of the top of this hill, which had numerous protective walls, some were natural, some were man made.  The photo makes the hilltop look quite flat – it wasn’t – the sides were quite steep and hard to climb.  It was built as a refuge by the local Indians around 1100 AD.  Back then, different Indian tribes would raid each other, so defensive locations were needed – I named this place Fortress Hill.  Hilltop forts were quite common a thousand years ago.  To be able to write about historic places with accurate information I have worked with a number of archaeologists, borrowed books from the library or purchased books for myself.

Finally, here are some photos of Sullivan Lake, the start of the Verde River.  Arizona doesn’t get much rainfall, even less now due to a decade long drought.  But occasionally floods occur after heavy rainfall in a small area.  The lake in the photo was made by a dam, which is invisible under the floodwater, but has caused the raging waters below.   

   

In contrast, the canyon below the dam was cut over millennia by the river.  It is more usually as dry as a bone – 

see the two contrasting   photos. The one on the left shows the canyon in flood – taken the same day as the first photo in February 2005.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 
  love Nigel & Donna

PS: Below is a copy of my published October article about some mysterious graves.  This gives you a better idea of what I write.

This week we’re going to investigate a century-old cold case! I’ll tell you what I know and you will be the detectives.  There are three graves in a group on Mingus Mountain by Mescal Gulch.  

Three graves near Mescal Gulch on Mingus Mountain (Nigel Reynolds/Courtesy)

The first photo shows what looks like an adult on each side of a child.  Small white rocks, laid on top of the burial mounds, shape these graves.  [A little geology explains these rocks.  Much of Mingus Mountain was formed 350 million years ago in the Devonian period – a sea covered this area and limestone was deposited from millions of shells.  Limestone is mainly white but sometimes a little pink from various impurities.] Find this cemetery on the USGS topo map for Hickey Mountain.  The road that goes past the graves is FR 338 (east from Hwy 89A).  A good friend, Larry M, took me there.

It appears that in 1901 a family of three died and were buried together, BUT NOW THE QUESTIONS BEGIN.  Did they all die at about the same date and what caused their deaths? Was it a deadly disease, an accident, starvation, or even murder?  Who found their bodies and took the time to bury them?  The evidence that they were a family and when they died comes from the graves.  

Headstone and cross on the child’s grave (Barbara Marcel/Courtesy

Two of them had headstones engraved ”1901” and those same graves had small crosses.  The headstones don’t appear to have been made professionally but were rectangular pieces of limestone (one white, one pink) with the year roughly engraved. The crosses were simply made by nailing a cross piece to a vertical piece – see the photo (child’s grave).  The right hand grave had no headstone and the crude cross is just two twigs wired together – why so different?  

Go to the APCRP website (search for “neal dushane mescal”) and scroll down to the two photos at the bottom.  They were taken in 2010 by Barbara M – one of my readers! She’s been very helpful in sending me the rest of her grave photos – these extras clearly show the headstones and crosses on the two graves.  The cross on the child’s grave had been painted white originally and inscribed C JONES.   The inscription on the cross on the left grave was the word HUSBAND, which seems a strange inscription – why not his name?  Both wordings looked like they had been enhanced with a black felt-tip marker – perhaps the original wording had faded, or perhaps it said something else a century ago.  On my recent visit, the white paint and the black lettering on both crosses had faded away, and both headstones had disappeared.  When I compared my 2019 photos with Barbara’s 2010 photos, the white stones on top of the graves looked quite different, as did the positioning of the crosses.  It sounds macabre, but had someone dug up the graves for some reason?

Patty G, another good contact, found an interesting article from a July 1901 newspaper that describes the body of a middle-aged man found in Mescal Gulch, with a month’s growth of stubble.  The journalist thought the man had died two months earlier (in his coat pocket was a LA Times dated April 1901).  From the way the man had prepared the ground, he expected to die – was he ill or did he take a poisonous potion?  Had burying his wife and child up by the mines made him distraught?  Did both of them die in childbirth?  For a full copy of this article, detailed instructions on how to reach these graves, plus more items we saw, e-mail me (contact me if you have pre-2010 photos).

As detectives, what do you think about these mysterious graves?

Nigel Reynolds (nigelaz@commspeed.net) was born in England and has lived in Arizona for 40 years, and in Prescott for over 20 years.  “Exploring is in my blood,” he says.  To see today’s or previous articles with the photos in color, go online to“dcourier.com”and enter “Amazing Places” in the search-bar at top right – you’ll need to be a subscriber.

For readers who contacted me, I e-mailed them detailed directions, as well as two old newspaper cuttings as follows.  One of my new friends is an expert on finding old newspaper cuttings.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE, JULY 18th 1901 (from COPPER ERA newspaper, page 1)

 NOTE:  The Prescott Paper (Arizona weekly journal-miner) for 1901 was unavailable, though this cutting below was probably in that paper too.  

Regarding the body of a man, which was found in Mescal Gulch, a few days ago, the Jerome Reporter says the man was lying on his back in the middle of the gulch.  He had cleared the rock from under him and placed a rock under his head.  There were no marks of violence on the body.  He was a man between 35 to 40 years of age, nearly six foot tall, sandy complexion, and had about a month’s growth of beard on his face; wore a canvas coat and vest, with blue lining; blue overalls and hob-nail shoes.  In his pockets were found a silver watch, a small purse containing three five-dollar pieces and $1.05 in silver; knife, lead pencil and some matches.  In his coat pocket was found a Los Angeles Times of April 26, 1901.  From the date of the paper, and the condition of the body the man must have been dead nearly two months.

With so much mining going on here (see newspaper cuttings below), It seems strange that no one else had found this man’s body.  However, note that Mescal Gulch is a few miles long so perhaps the active mining was in a different area of the gulch.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE, SEPTEMBER 11th 1901 (from Arizona weekly journal-miner) 

 The following cutting appears to be related to the cutting above.

Read It In the Journal-Miner

In June last the remains of an unknown man were found in Mescal gulch, near Jerome, and account of which was published in the Journal-Miner.  The following letter of inquiry to Judge McKinnon of Jerome shows the Journal-Miner is read in Tennessee as it is in every state and territory of the union.  The letter is as follows:

Murfreesboro, Tenn. Aug. 30. – I see in the Arizona Journal-Miner that there had been found the remains of a man near Jerome.  Can you tell me who he was?  Was it J. C. Jamison?  If it was please give me all the particulars about it.  John C. Jamison was raised near this place; it will be four years next Christmas since he was here.  I think he went to Arizona in May; he wrote me the 9^thday of June and that is the last letter I got from him; he was at Prescott, Arizona, then.  The report has reached here that he is dead, that a negro killed him.  Now if you can give me any information it will be thankfully received. 

            Yours truly, 

Miss Addie Hutton