Mountain Living January

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EDITOR'S NOTES

F

or 2017, we begin the flip of the calendar with exciting news at Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living. After two years of being an every-other-month publication, we are returning to our original format of monthly. So, we’ll have 12 issues for this calendar year, one coming out the first Saturday of every month in the Arizona Daily Sun and appearing in select locations across town a few days later. Ongoing interest in the publication from both readers and advertisers—along with a continued request for us to return to our former approach—inspired us to work out a new and robust plan to move forward.

We have decided to reshape the content this year to both focus on areas where we’ve thrived, while at the same time expanding those topics in new and interesting directions. With our food department, the name has been changed to Matters of Taste. Our hope is, through various angles, to expand the foodie and dining experience to include such topics as service, ambiance and décor and presentation, as well as concepts such as fusion, farm-to-table, sustainability and organic

dining. Our Arts coverage will open the door beyond visual artists (though we still plan to feature many) and look at musicians, actors, dancers, authors and poets and other artistic types under the larger banner of The Arts.

Treks & Trails features both regional travel and outdoors, with a stronger return to a variety of adventures and explorations.

Home Front keeps our focus on home features, but with an emphasis on a wider spectrum of home types and exciting mix of trends. Smaller department changes include Playing Favorites, which will open our media views to include not only albums, books and films but also apps, gadgets, local products, interesting gear and more. How & Why is our new As If, and we’ll ask wellknown residents and community leaders fun and curious questions of how or why. Meanwhile, By the Bottle keeps its name, but we’ll look to rotate wine and beer to mix up the sips.

While the changes might seem modest, we hope they open the magazine in a way that makes it more dynamic as we double up on issues. It’ll be a big year for us, and we appreciate the support of all our readers and all our advertisers as we take this next big leap.

Happy Reading!

Seth Muller sethm@namlm.com www.namlm.com

LIMITED TIME ONLY: Naked Mobile is a brand product of Smith Bagley, Inc., dba Cellular One of North East Arizona. Promotion is only available at Naked Mobile, Flagstaff, AZ retail location during regular business hours. Must be 18-years- old or older. limited to new Naked Mobile customers with 3 months activation, minimum 8GB plan.

New Naked Mobile customers may receive a free iPhone 6s while supplies last. limited quantity available. Unlimited talk and text (no data) $20 per month for Naked Mobile Prepaid Plan. Rates subject to change. See store for details, Some restrictions apply. Not all phone colors available and limited to stock on hand at the location. Any individuals who have, within one (1) year prior to the start date of this promotion, performed services for Cellular One, or its respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates and successor companies or any organizations responsible for fulfilling, administering, advertising or promoting the promotion, and the immediate family and household members of such individuals are not eligible for this promotion. "Immediate family members" shall mean parents, stepparents, children, step-children, siblings, step-siblings, or spouses, regardless of where they live. "In Household members" shall mean people who share the same residence at least three months a year, whether related or not. Naked Mobile reserves the right to discontinue this promotion at any time without notice. Your Naked Mobile Agreement includes your service Agreement, and Additional Terms and Conditions available at www.nakedmoblle.com. Service is good for a 30-day billing cycle. All rates are subject to change.

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

Cameron + Kelly Studios

be beat. Sedona and the Grand Canyon have hundreds of elopements each year.”

Venues with a view are certainly a draw.

From intimate gatherings at Shoshone Point on the canyon’s South Rim to formal settings—Flagstaff ’s Forest Highlands, Foxboro Ranch, High Country Conference Center and Arizona Snowbowl, or Sedona’s L’Auberge, Agave and Creekside Inn—there is versatility and variety.

Venues coordinate bridal plans from a property perspective with a range of price points, creative suggestions, menu appeal, and reception oversight. Many have indooroutdoor reservation options for f lexibility with weather. Styles range from simple to sophisticated with a ready list of professional caterers and other vendors available.

Planners like Duncan can help with every facet of the wedding planning process, or she can simply tie up the loose ends for couples t ying the knot. Bridal ser vices vary to include: a complete event package, partial planning or day-of organization.

The vision begins months in advance with a complete package and handles budget management, logistics, vendor coordination, guest considerations, endless advice, and of course, décor and the untold details figure into it. Implementation of an overall scheme for partial planning can cover a number of tasks at the bride’s discretion, while day-of organization encompasses logistics on the ground plus set-up and clean-up.

The average couple spends $30,000 in an effort to pull off the perfect d a y, b u t b r i d a l budgeting is wideranging and can run much higher. With wedding blogs and Pinterest, brides are spoi led for choice by ideas and images.

Many brides enlist the help of friends and family to create table arrangements and decorator detail to k e e p it bud g et f r ie nd l y. T h i s requires dedication,

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

Photos by Moments Found Photography

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3 Rings by: Jeff Karl Jewlers, 4 Wedding Cake by: Mozelle's Downtown Bakery

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Lexi Moody Photography

2

starters, hummus rocks the Med with harissa and za’atar spices for a zippy red dip. It is loaded with pork belly nuggets, feta, hearts of palm and heirloom cherry tomatoes, with pitas for a savory shareable.

As for sandwiches, the Beep is a brisket-lover’s dream.

Ciabatta piled with house smoked and seared tender, beefy shreds, mingled with caramelized onion, red pepper and jalapeño, plus a squirt of wasabi mayo. Go vegan or veg with the Genghis. Mushrooms, marinated in soy and mirin, partner with miso mayo, guacamole, jicama and sesame seeds on a ciabatta for a robust bite. Gluten-free bread is available.

JUNE ROSE COCKTAIL

The sides include harissa potato chips, which beckon for the creamy dip. Go light with a salad or ratchet up a hearty meal with mac and cheese. Amish potato salad solos with red spuds coated in a tangy, yet creamy, mustard dressing.

The New Year launches soup and sandwich combos—a standard and a special. Dessert will sweeten its focus with apple cobbler and chocolate volcano brownies. Warm cider will take melt January’s chills at the bar, and Il Rosso’s Bob Verdame will continue the Monday Italian madness rotating a menu of saucy loves.

The Commerce keeps company with SoSoBa, as a Christensen enterprise. The fun and f lavors of nonstop noodle shop next door boasts of … mic drop … booze and noodles.

On site of the former location of Black Bean, Christensen introduced, “the spirit of Japanese ramen that is unabashedly inauthentic,” he said. “We’re taking care of business—it’s the perfect marriage.” Whether you’re hungry for a bowl of noodles, a craft cocktail or craftier sandwiches, these side-by-side businesses are keeping it old and new all at once.

Learn more at www.thecommercef lg.com.

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

THE ARTS

Too Delicate for Words The Visual Explorations of Contemporary Painter William Ambrose

By Diandra Markgraf

P

iles of canvases, the residents of a single room, are clustered 10 deep across a white cottage in downtown Flagstaff. William Ambrose pointed toward the rumpus room, seen through a couple windows beyond the back wall. Inside, there were dozens more of all dimensions. He laughed, admitting his friends chide him for showing his work so seldom. But as a constant contributor to the intermittent art space, Museum of Contemporary Art Flagstaff, Ambrose explained those who do find that experience are often confronted with messages separate even from the artist’s intention.

“It’s difficult for me to talk about a thing because I’ve learned in the last year or two that an audience’s reaction or understanding that might be very personal to me could be personal to them in an entirely different way,” he said. Over the last year alone he’s plotted photorealistic horses, abstracted blocks of head-on collisions, explored monochromes both detailed and minimalist and all through a number of techniques that quell the boredom of stagnation.

In one series, Ambrose blurs the monochromatic image of a monument; another obfuscates the face of an Indigenous man, reminiscent of 100-year-old photographs—a commentary on identity.

He’ll paint faces thrice over because of a woman’s striking features, her soft resilience becoming a defiant smirk from one image to the next. These forms of repetition as love, as memory, as discovery are entangled in humans’ ability to change so subtly from one moment to the next.

On the path toward the right question, Ambrose messes up over and over again to fit the puzzle of his investigation together. Some call it patience, but he roots the trek in stubbornness. After all, his life before Flagstaff wasn’t made of oil paint. Ambrose noted oil pastel on paper were go-to media while living in Los Angeles, until he and his girlfriend at the time picked up and waded east, landing at that downtown cottage. In the winter of 2010 the relationship dissolved, yet Ambrose stuck with the place and, absent social distractions, took to canvas.

“Flagstaff, really, was the birth of painting for me,” he said of this town and the people in it, all characters still evolving in this story. “Suddenly I was in a new town where I didn’t know anybody and had no real connection to the outside world. But I did have a house, and I started working in that house.”

The Minnesota-born artist said there’s never been a time he didn’t feel the need for self-expression in one capacity or another, crafting graphite drawings or in ink—entering college first to study writing at Sarah Lawrence in New York. Later, while studying

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

 WILLI AM AMBROSE

 HORSE, TWO TIMES.

 JOHN, AGE 5, THREE TIMES.

 FLOWERS, TWO TIMES.

in London, he’d walk around town with a camera in hand. That practice continues in lowland flats and high desert, all the while the artist experiences people who’ve furthered his visual self-expression.

“I think this town is an interesting mix of the sort of thing people who live in cities fetishize in terms of being on your own, making your own way; you in the wild not living on top of other people,” he said, noting the welcome surprise of a rich artistic community in Flagstaff. “It turned out to be a very wide open but nurturing soil.”

As a young painter who certainly appreciates his solitude, Ambrose enjoys both lives inside and away from social bustle—the moments when he can flesh out an idea and reconvene with friendly faces who provide support. He quoted author E.L. Doctorow who said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” He checks the work of his creative process against this, explaining it’s easier to worry about the lofty meaning of art and the usefulness of devoting his life to it while he’s in the act of repetition.

“It has to do with paying attention, and especially nowadays news stories and visual cues come and go so quickly … the idea of repeating a thing, I feel, helps,” Ambrose said, even if this attention only helps to witness change. “If it’s a person, like the pictures of my brother, it makes me think about how even a person can’t be the same person from moment to moment. Visuals are a way of saying things that are too delicate for words, for me at least. They’re easier to express and allow for interpretation.”

Interlacing his fingers, smudged with white and black and cadmium red, in his lap he explained the importance of repetition, of paying attention. These tangible marks, he added, are important for the creator to utilize that reminder to avoid being blindsided; to engage in this world. Together, they offer a reflection for viewers into what the artist calls a journal or biography as the artist contemplates the worth of interpretive expression.

“I think the best thing is being able to look back and be surprised at what made sense,” he explained. “because it’s so easy to forget your own worth and your place in the world and what the value of what you’ve made has been.”

William Ambrose exhibits his work at MOCAF and in exhibitions around town. To contact the artist, send an email to William.Ambrose@gmail.com. january17 namlm.com

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TREKS & TRAILS

SPACE, ROCKS AND SKY Sedona’s Brins Mesa Trail Beckons During the Cool Climes of Winter

By Larry Hendricks

A

crow cries out as it circles high. Steely clouds march fast from horizon to horizon and mute the brilliant browns and red-oranges of the sandstone buttes, pinnacles and cliff faces. Yet, the timeless wonder of the rock formations, sculpted by wind and water, remains. Crooked juniper and stoic pinyon pine breathe in a breeze that cools the skin and carries the promise of a coming winter storm. Soon, hiking in the high country will be a task requiring snowshoes or cross-country skis until the spring thaw.

But not here, where Coffee Pot Rock, Chimney Rock and Wilson Mountain throw shadows at humans striding through Mormon Canyon on their way to Brins Mesa above the city of Sedona. Its namesake path the Brins Mesa Trail— below the rim and a good 2,000 feet below Flagstaff ’s elevation—easily proves to be an enjoyable hike in January and February, when the cabin fever of northern Arizona comes full force, and the urge to stretch the legs takes hold.

The trail is one of dozens that meander through the 44,000-acre, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness just to the northwest

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

of Sedona, and the sheer variety of hikes in the area offers opportunity to outdoor enthusiasts of all skill levels.

The trailhead on the eastern point is easily accessed from Uptown (though it still requires navigation of in-town tourist traffic), and the parking lot was, surprisingly, not full on a Saturday at midday during the Thanksgiving weekend.

However, the western trailhead on this day was bustling and overrun with visitors vying for its limited parking. So, it’s generally wise to avoid peak times like holiday weekends as well as late mornings and early afternoons for what ranks as one of the more popular trails in the Sedona area. An extra early arrival will bring a more tranquil path, both for fewer hikers on the ground and for less flight-based tourism overhead.

The first part of the Brins Mesa Trail consists of a mile-long gentle stroll through the chaparral of Mormon Canyon.

Nestled among the juniper and pinyon,

hikers will spot century plant, prickly pear cactus and manzanita among the plant life. According to the U.S. Forest Service, animal life that hikers might happen upon include rabbits, coyotes, elk and deer. The possibility exists of even coming upon mountain lions and black bears, although such encounters are rare, indeed. An eagle-eyed hiker might also catch red tailed hawks and turkey vultures flying with ravens and crows.

The second part of the trail consists of a steep climb to the top of the mesa itself, and it pushes the scenic hike into “moderate” territory. But the footing is secure on staircases of natural rock, and the trail is

Opposite Page: Photo by Larry Hendricks This Page: Photos by Brady Smith, Coconino National Forest

clearly defined as the heart and legs get a good workout. Once on the mesa, hikers are treated to unobstructed views of red-rock majesty. Bring a camera for some amazing shots of nature’s handiwork.

The vegetation on the mesa still shows signs of a fire that raged through the area about 10 years ago. Charred cypress trunks offer a reminder of the effects of fire on a fragile ecosystem. But regrowth has taken hold, and the earthy fragrance of life adds depth to the contrast of green on red to sooth a hiker’s soul. In the middle of the

mesa rests a pale, sandstone formation that most hikers head to in order to take in the scenery. In the background, the cliffs and buttes clearly demonstrate the differing formations of sandstone and limestone laid down and eroded over a period of about 340 million years. The layers, with names like Schnebly Hill formation, Toroweap Formation, Kaibab Formation, and Coconino Formation are clearly visible from multiple vantage points on the Brins Mesa Trail.

Hikers who wish to continue west on the mesa eventually descend to intersect with Soldiers Pass Trail to arrive at the western trailhead, accessed on the old Vultee Arch Road. It also appears on the map as Dry Creek Road or Forest Road 152—a dirt road that requires a fourwheel-drive, high-clearance vehicle and

a positive attitude because the “road” is definitely a kidney buster.

For the dog lovers out there, this hike is a stellar one for canine companions, and dogs are allowed on the trail. Another benefit to hiking the Sedona red rocks in the winter months is that the cooler temperatures can make the hikes much more enjoyable. Hiking the trails around Sedona in the summer months can be a scorcher, and so the lower thermometer and winter light make the red rock realm a perennial draw.

Learn more at www.redrockcountry. org. A Red Rock Pass is required to park at the trailhead parking lot.

The trailhead also provides access to the Cibola Pass and Jordan trails, which offer beautiful views of a host of Sedona’s red-rock formations. january17 namlm.com

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MIND & BODY

The Biology of Belief How to Alter, Perceptions, Ideas and Paths of Thinking

By Starla S. Collins

T

he human mind and brain is the most complex part of the human body.

The three-pound brain is the seat of human intelligence and the crown jewel of humanity. And we have learned more about the brain in the last 20 years than in all previous centuries. This accelerated pace of learning is due to the development of new research techniques and the expansion of neurological and behavioral sciences. Most recently, a new field has emerged: neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself, both physically and functionally, throughout life. The concept of the brain’s ability to constantly change has replaced the formerly held belief that the adult brain is pretty much hard-wired. Modern technology such as advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

(MRI) has confirmed the brain’s ability to morph and create new connections.

In his book, The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton explores and substantiates the mind’s ability to change the brain. Lipton says we can override our default thoughts and remap our brains to work differently. We can retrain our brain. We can think differently. We can change our behaviors. In other words, by changing our mind, which is our thoughts, we can actually change the physical structure and pathways of the brain. We have the ability to adjust or “re-wire” our brains by interrupting common thought patterns.

Most of us want to make positive changes in our lives. We want to stop the negative thoughts and behaviors that are often all too common. But our brain is resistant to change.

It is wired to think certain thoughts that become our behaviors. Our brains wrestle with change—whether it’s kicking a bad habit or developing a good habit, coming up with new and creative ideas, shifting a business focus, changing behaviors, creating a better environment at home or work or becoming healthier individuals.

So how do you change the way you think so you can change your behaviors? After all, it is the New Year and we are supposed to making New Year’s resolutions, right?

Flagstaff’s Jenean Merkel Perelstein, founder of Alchemie Academy and author and creator of Internal Alchemie: The Welcoming Abundance Blueprint, says you can’t change your behaviors until you realize, understand and confront what you believe.

Perelstein helps those looking to make real, lasting change understand that thoughts and actions are ultimately based on your beliefs.

Changing your behavior without changing your beliefs doesn’t work in the long run— that’s why resolutions and diets often don’t work.

If you truly believe in the benefit or harm of something your behaviors will follow.

Burt Gershater, a licensed professional counselor in Flagstaff, says one of the most powerful and foundational ways to change our thoughts and our behaviors is through our breath. Gershater says our minds are addicted to certain thinking patterns and we actually become “thoughtless.” We often think, act or respond without thinking. When we stop

HOME FRONT

It's Elemental Durable Materials and Low Energy Use Big in Linwood Heights Home

By Seth Muller | Photography by Jamelle Kelly

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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

T

he technology in designing homes is reaching new and dizzying heights. In the case of a new Linwood home build for Flagstaff residents David and Lisa Actor, the application of different techniques and scenarios were studied through computer-based soft ware to simulate the energ y usage of the house and compares it to a baseline. “ This helps us simplify the design process and assists us in viewing the lifecycle impacts of design changes while comparing various design schemes,” said builder Ian Hublitz with Green Mountain Construction. “This provides valuable data to reach energ y saving goals for the building before we ever put a shovel in the ground.”

The house was designed by Aude Stang at A rchitect ura l Design St udio and she worked closely w ith Hublitz and Christie Dennis from Building Energ y Performance. That

company did the energ y model prior to constr uction. This helped the t wobedroom, t wo-and-a-ha lf bathroom Energ y Star home achieve eff iciencies for its 2,0 0 0 square feet. The home, too, feat ures durable materia ls in its constr uction that gives it an elementa l feel—from the meta l roof to the reclaimed lumber accents and exterior barn doors to the concrete f loors. “ The Actors wanted a house that was low maintenance so we used lots of durable materia ls throughout,” Hublitz noted.

He added, “Aude and I applied what we like to ca l l the ‘ Integrated Design Approach ’ for this project.

It is an enhanced design-build team that makes the whole ex perience easier and more enjoyable for the clients. A nd, w ith the help of Christie Dennis we a re able to design and build homes that perform as wel l as they look while being env ironmenta l ly responsible.”

To learn more about the photographer, visit www.cameronkellystudio.com. january17 namlm.com

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