Tag: American West

Incense of the West

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

My hubby got me this as a gift on his travels. Thereby hangs a tale.

My husband has had one of these miniature adobe houses in his childhood room for decades. The set comes in two parts. You light a little brick of “incense” (in this case, pin͂on scented), put it upright on the house’s foundation, and then set the house itself over it. The incense burns down in about half an hour, and meanwhile the smoke comes out of the house’s smoke hole. It makes the whole room smell like you are burning a woodfire.

Now, looking at this little thing, and especially the extremely retro style of packaging, you might think this is the sort of hard-to-find item that might appear on the Antiques Road Show as a piece of 1960s memorabilia. But no! They are still being sold, and quite affordably. Nevertheless, when I look at this thing, I can’t help feeling that I have been given a piece of kitsch from a world that is vanishing.

My man got this for me because he knows I like the Southwest, and enjoy Tony Hillerman novels and books about the Anasazi. It looks really good sitting among my potted cacti.

Snow or Sahara?

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

So, what are these things do you think? Are they snow drifts, or sand dunes?

Yes to both.

These were the surreal conditions in my front yard last week, after a cold snap and some very strong winds first created sculpted snow drifts, then covered them in dirt. The surface was such that you could walk on it, and I’m no featherweight.

Things are melting now, which means that a lot of dirt is being dumped on top of the grass in my front yard.

You Guys Think I’m Exaggerating with this Painting

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

… but this is really what our sunsets look like around here, quite often.

And that isn’t even the finished version. I give you:

“Really?” you’re saying. “Sunset clouds and a rainbow? Come on.”

No, I promise you we get these conditions here in Idaho, and not that rarely either. This would be the eastern sky about half an hour before sunset, with a small rainstorm in the area. Now, granted, I did this from imagination and memory, not from life, and I left out details like the rain visibly falling, and I’d never painted a rainbow before … but it was an emergency! We were about to have a rainbow-themed party:

“Misty Mountains” Poncho

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments

This was a complete coincidence.

We bought yarn in the colors the little girl liked. I had wanted to try a zigzag pattern on the next poncho I made. Turns out, when you do a modified zigzag using colors with an ombre-type fade, it looks like mountains receding into the distance! Who knew?

The picture above is one half of the poncho. I made the other half identical, sewed them together corner to corner, and added a brown tassel:

I like this mountain-y look so much, I am tempted to make one for myself some day. But that’s off in (you might say) the misty future, as I have a few other projects to get to plus a nerve injury in one arm to baby.

Happy New Year! We are not going to die in a flood.

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

On New Year’s morning, my son and I looked out our window to the East, and this is what we saw …

A sun dog.

In just a few minutes, the sun dog had stretched or sprung upward …

… forming what was obviously one foot of a very large rainbow, the other foot of which was visible out our window to the South:

If you’ll notice, they are bending not inward but outward, which means that the bulk of the circle is above the earth.

Now technically, technically, the proximate cause of these rainbows was that there were a lot of ice crystals in the air on New Year’s morning. Someone sent me this picture, taken apparently before dawn, about an hour north of us:

So, yes, ice crystals.

But given that God is in control of all proximate causes, including atmospheric conditions, and given that atmospheric conditions do not always form a rainbow on New Year’s Day, I take this as a hopeful sign. From our house, the rainbow appeared to be stretching from the Shoshone-Bannock reservation north of Pocatello; over Pocatello; over the Snake River reservoir and several other small communities in our region. The rainbow was originally given as a promise to withhold a certain particular kind of judgement.

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations (!): I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is set in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9:12 – 16

Repetitive? You bet. God repeats important things.

So, thank you, Lord, for once again sending this sign. You know that our whole region desperately needs Your mercy, as does every region on the earth. I pray that You will continue to extend your mercy to Southeast Idaho in 2022, and in fact that You would pour it out more than ever before.