Every other backyard had some kind of amusing surprise for me. Chaotic, eclectic. In the real world each backyard would violate a dozen zoning laws. This town has Granny J's name written on it. She would run wild here, and forget to leave. Patagonia is a lower Leadville.
The backyards are the kind of art I can appreciate. It isn't a studied, intentional art. Rather, it arose slowly through time and chance, the way that sandstone monuments and arches happened upon the Colorado Plateau.
Many houses and sheds had corrugated galvanized metal roofs.
When the sun catches them just right they rip the eyes right out of your head. There is a beauty to intensity that is usually overlooked as artists try to make everything effeminately pretty. I love these roofs most when they are partly rusted.
One clever fellow made a fence of corrugated roofing.
Strange fences are part of the oeuvre of Patagonia backyard artists and architects.
Usually tourism means bed-and-breakfasts that are so kitsch that they make me sick. Only estrogen-befuddled brains could like them. But in Patagonia I actually like the B&B's. One was called the Long, Long Trailer. They took a park model trailer that looked like an old Airstream and made a B&B out of it.
Another was named, La Palomita, the Little Dove. Pretty name.
In the coffee shop I ran into a couple of young Frenchmen who were here to do a photo shoot. They said that many medieval cathedrals in Europe have been turned into nightclubs and restaurants. Here, the old Mision building has been turned into a nightclub of the type you wouldn't expect a little town to have.
There was a private school on top of the hill. Nobody was there, so I went in to look around. Oh sure, I could have used a flash to photograph the mural clearly. But that would have insulted the goddess Sombra. Shade, in the Southwest, is nature's highest work of art.
