New Harmony

We've driven south on I-15 a fair amount over the years, for vacations and visits to my brothers and quick trips to St. George. I always look out the window at the small towns along the way, Kanarraville and Meadow and Enoch and so forth, and wonder what they're like and who lives there. There's never time or a good reason to stop (especially when the signs say "No services," which always makes me wonder even more what brought people to live in that town at all!), but I still like thinking about what those places might be like! 

This summer the children had so many camps and commitments that we decided we should just go on a quick trip somewhere close to home. And as luck would have it, I found a rental house between Cedar City and St. George in a little town called New Harmony. I love staying in houses a bit off the beaten path, and this one was on a ranch with animals, so it sounded like it would be perfect. And it was!

We deliberately didn't plan much to DO, because we all felt like we just wanted some rest! But we did venture out to a few things, like the temple in Cedar City, and a play at the Shakespeare Festival (which, I am sorry to say, was the worst play I have ever seen. It was "The Sound of Music" and they did it WITH MASKS ON! So we couldn't see the actors' faces or hear their words, but we could hear their heavy breathing and masks rasping on their mics, and they all looked like acolytes of some strange cult…and when Captain Von Trapp and Maria kissed each other it was like two albatrosses clacking their beaks together. I can't get the image of it out of my head! Ha!).

The town is pretty far out west of the freeway, and the house was up on a hill that looks across at Kolob Canyon, a place I'd never been but had seen on a map as part of the geological layer that also forms Zion National Park. From the deck you could see the red fingers of rock sticking up from the mountains to the east.

This was our first family trip without Abe, which was so strange! We missed him. But we got to talk to him twice while we were there (he was allowed to call on Father's Day as well as his regular P-day) and we walked him all around and showed him everything, so that felt almost like having him with us.

One of my favorite parts of being in a new place is going out to run by myself in the mornings. It's such a good way to explore (even though I don't go very far!). 1000 bonus points if there are bunnies…and there were! I saw ten of them one morning! Four on another.

Can you find the bunny above?

Here he is.

Distant bunnies (there are three)

A bunny standing nobly atop a hill, outlined by morning light

Another happy sight? My offspring, going out for runs of their own. I especially like seeing them together!

The town was slightly higher in elevation than the surrounding cities, which made it a little cooler. The first morning I went out it was only 45 degrees, which felt wonderful. The other days were warmer, but still pleasant. At home we're at the point where it doesn't ever cool off at night, and even though 75 degrees isn't the worst running weather, it is so much nicer to go when temperatures are in the 50's and 60's!

 

One morning there was the most glorious sunrise. I loved being out in the quiet air with nothing around and only the sounds of birds. It really did feel like a place called "New Harmony." Of course, that also sounds a bit like the name of some polygamist commune, and sure enough while I was out running I saw what sure looked to me like a bunch of plural wives out walking their dog, all dressed alike and with their hair done in that distinctive way they seem to prefer. We waved and smiled at each other, and I spent the rest of my run thinking about them and wondering what their lives were like. I know many of these women are oppressed and exploited, but they can't all be! Perhaps some of them are happy, or content with where they are. Are their lives hard? Or simple? It will give you a clue into my state of mind these days that I felt a touch of wistfulness or envy for the quiet, low-tech lifestyle I imagined they might live. What would it be like to be entirely cut off from the outside world? I wish for it sometimes. Though not for polygamy with it, of course.

That morning I came home to find one of "our" peacocks sitting on the deck railing, surveying his domain!

And it's quite a domain! This is the view from the deck. You can see the fish pond down there to the left.

Here is the pond up close. The owners of our house had left food for the kids to feed the fish and the other animals, so that was really fun. You could also use their fishing poles to fish in the pond if you wanted, but we didn't want to. Feeding the fish was much more fun. :)

Speaking of animals, there were so many of them, and we loved visiting them! There were deer and goats and cows and horses and chickens and peacocks and turkeys and parakeets and bunnies and pigs. Gus got VERY excited about them and pulled me anxiously by the hand to "come see the BIG, BIG, GOAT!" (It was a cow.)

The mama pig had three little black babies. They were SO CUTE!

Junie communed with them. That first day, they spent a good twenty minutes snorting at each other.

Some of the deer had babies too. Just the sweetest!

We saw baby turkeys with their parents in one of the fields.

There were lots and lots of peacocks, strutting around like they owned the place. Have you read "Living with a Peacock," by Flannery O'Connor? You should; it's such a great piece of writing. I appreciated it anew while we were staying at this house. I feel like quoting it all, but let these snippets suffice:

The cock’s plumage requires two years to attain its pattern, and for the rest of his life this chicken will act as though he designed it himself. For his first two years he might have been put together out of a rag bag by an unimaginative hand…In his third year he reaches his majority and acquires his tail. For the rest of his life—and a peachicken may live to be thirty-five—he will have nothing better to do than manicure it, furl and unfurl it, dance forward and backward with it spread, scream when it is stepped upon and arch it carefully when he steps through a puddle.

Not every part of the peacock is striking to look at, even when he is full-grown…The fact is that with his tail folded, nothing but his bearing saves this bird from being a laughingstock. With his tail spread, he inspires a range of emotions, but I have yet to hear laughter.

The usual reaction is silence, at least for a time. The cock opens his tail by shaking himself violently until it is gradually lifted in an arch around him. Then, before anyone has had a chance to see it, he swings around so that his back faces the spectator. This has been taken by some to be insult and by others whimsey. I suggest it means only that the peacock is equally well satisfied with either view of himself. Since I have been keeping peafowl, I have been visited at least once a year by first-grade school children, who learn by living. I am used to hearing this group chorus as the peacock swings around, “Oh, look at his underwear!” This “underwear” is a stiff gray tail, raised to support the larger one, and beneath it a puff of black feathers that would be suitable for some really regal woman — a Cleopatra or a Clytemnestra — to use to powder her nose.

When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing haloed suns. This is the moment when most people are silent.

“Amen! Amen!” an old Negro woman once cried when this happened and I have heard many similar remarks at this moment that show the inadequacy of human speech. Some people whistle; a few, for once, are silent. A truck driver who was driving up with a load of hay and found a peacock turning before him in the middle of our road shouted, “Get a load of that bastard!” and braked his truck to a shattering halt. I have never known a strutting peacock to budge a fraction of an inch for truck or tractor or automobile. It is up to the vehicle to get out of the way. No peafowl of mine has ever been run over, though one year one of them lost a foot in the mowing machine.

It's true—just as she says. The peacock turns and turns so you have to look at his funny backside. 

And then, only when he's ready, he swings around and you get the full glory of his tail. Astounding!

The peacocks were also a noisy bunch. Flannery O'Connor describes it best:

Some people have the notion that only the cock spreads his tail and that he does it only when the hen is present. This is not so. A peafowl only a few hours hatched will raise what tail he has — it will be about the size of a thumbnail — and will strut and turn and back and bow exactly as if he were three years old and had some reason to be doing it. The hens will raise their tails when they see an object on the ground which alarms them, or sometimes when they have nothing better to do and the air is brisk. Brisk air goes at once to the peafowl’s head and inclines him to be sportive. A group of birds will dance together or four or five will chase one another around a bush or tree. Sometimes one will chase himself, end his frenzy with a spirited leap into the air and then stalk off as if he had never been involved in the spectacle.

Frequently the cock combines the lifting of his tail with the raising of his voice. He appears to receive through his feet some shock from the center of the earth, which travels upward through him and is released: Eee-ooo-ii! Eee-ooo-ii! To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded like a cheer for an invisible parade.

The hen is not given to these outbursts. She makes a noise like a mule’s bray — hehaw, heehaaw, aa-aaww-w — and makes it only when necessary. In the fall and winter, peafowl are usually silent unless some racket disturbs them; but in the spring and summer, at short intervals during the day and night, the cock, lowering his neck and throwing back his head, will give out with seven or eight screams in succession as if this message were the one on earth which needed most urgently to be heard.

Ha! Indeed. They cried and squawked at all hours, "as if this message were the one on earth which needed most urgently to be heard." I didn't mind it, actually, as I found it foreign and charming, but I heard Seb mutteringly darkly about "stupid peacocks" as he went out to run one morning.

The bunnies were not very tame, but we saw them hopping around in the mornings and evenings, and flopped under shrubs or bushes in the heat of the day. You could tell by their fur they were pet rabbits and not truly wild ones.

Even the walk down to the barn and the animal pens was nice. Just a little hilly walk, past junipers and sagebrush.

The children found lots of treasures. Juniper berries for Junie.

A beautiful peacock feather for Goldie. I have always wanted to find a real peacock feather—you know, one of the beautiful tail feathers—and whenever I'm at the Hogle Zoo or somewhere else with peacocks, I've got my eye out for one. The best I've ever found in the past is one of the shimmery blue breast feathers, but this one Goldie found was a real prize! And we even found a few more of them during the week we stayed. So good!

The views from the deck were beautiful at all times of day.

The inside of the house was quirky and cabin-y, with taxidermy (taxidermed? taxidermish?) animals all over. The master bedroom had a bunch of African animals (ibexes and greater or lesser kudu, or some such—it reminded me of the old Monte Bean Museum) which were all looking, with some degree of disapproval, toward the bed itself. An interesting decor choice.

There were also these drums and guitars, which I assume went to a video game, but which Gus and Ziggy just played their "concerts" on for as long as we'd tolerate it.

Gus got sick while we were there, and our first clue was when he fell asleep on the floor like this…

…and then we woke him up and moved him, and he fell right back asleep like this. Poor little lamb! He had a high fever and was wonderfully snuggly. We had three children get sick and throw up during the week, and it will tell you a lot about the constitution of a longtime parent when I say that it barely even registers in my memory now. Even when one of them threw up in the car, we stopped expertly at a park bathroom, offloaded everyone else, stripped him down, contrived a sort of sponge bath, bagged up his washed-out clothes, cleaned and sanitized the car, and were on our way again within 20 minutes.

The house had a few little weird nooks, like this nearly-Goldie-sized one in the bathroom, that seemed to point to do-it-yourself repairs and haphazard remodelings over the years. I liked it.

Once he was feeling a little better, Gus was pleased to put his Caw and Taggie in and out, in and out of this wardrobe 40,000 times.

A little way from the fish pond there was a dry creek and a little picnic area with two treehouses and a playground! I love treehouses, but the kids saw a black widow in one of them and were rather leery of them for the rest of the time, even though when we went back later there was no black widow to be found. They did still play in them a bit, but they liked the playground better.

Since we were there on June 21st, we had our Longest Day Party at the picnic area. We ate salmon tacos (cooked up at the house first) and Clementine Soda Floats, and then stayed outside playing until it started to get dark at 9:30 or so.

Tiny picnic table

There was even a bathroom by the treehouses, which Teddy described to me as "just about the nicest bathroom I have ever seen," and I thought it a very strange thing to say until I saw inside—

…and realized it really WAS the nicest bathroom ever! It even had a little sitting room and a tree growing through it. Fancy!

Inside the barn were a whole bunch of game tables—pool, ping-pong, foosball, air hockey—so we played games together almost every night. Sam and Malachi are way better at pool than I am, but I beat them both handily at ping-pong several times…even both at once…until I became too prideful and my pride wenteth before the fall. Let that be a lesson to me.

Daisy and Junie laughed so hard while playing air hockey that I thought they were going to actually suffocate from lack of breath.

The stars were so bright and numerous and beautiful, which is something I always love. Last time we went somewhere we could see the stars (up in Brian Head a couple years ago), Daisy didn't have her glasses yet, so the stars were just faint blurs to her. She didn't realize it at the time. But ever since then she's been dying to see the stars WITH glasses on. I remember being amazed in the same way when I first got my glasses! She stayed outside for a long time with Sam looking through the binoculars and finding nebulas and star clusters, and she loved it so much!

All in all it was a beautiful, relaxing week and we had a great time!