Into the Over Armored World

The dropping of the dogs. Before we have the other things, like the naming of the parts, the packing of the bags, we must have the dropping of the dogs. And we had found our favorite dog sitters out in the countryside west of Damascus. No, not the dry bullet ridden Damascus. The one south of Clinton, south of Fox and Mozart, on the way to the cabin that we have been working to bring up to comfortable. The dogs having to stay occasionally at boarding while we went to paint or hammer or meet plumbers. Darcy, the twelve-year-old, is not easy for anyone. Requiring medication. Requiring the earth not to bring thunder and rain to terrify him above his normal level of terror at all the complicated things involved in getting through his regimented day. Tess, my puppy-aged, big, shaggy, mohawked girl was easier but she too preferred home days. This would be the longest that we had left them anywhere, a whole week. Tess, who growled at me the first time we met at the shelter. Where the lovely lady that had gotten her through the near-death experience brought her for what turned out to be a gentle goodbye. Tess who will go anywhere in the car because riding is, well, riding and it remains a wonder to her. Tess with the face that has elements of regret, sorrow and acceptance in the eyes. She is willing to understand, if I will help her.

I have the drop off assignment. And I see two Roadrunners on the way through Damascus. A good sign before travel toward true Roadrunner desert. At the dog landscape, it is indeed a world of dogs. I have to manipulate the gate myself while the dogs bang against my windows. There is a long corridor of blue draping on the south side of the great dog acreage. I see a tower at the far end. I see a white flash along the ground moving at high speed and a whippet of a dog on some faux rabbit’s heels. It is a mad world today. There are twenty cars at the big kennel buildings. I am astonished. Dogs are everywhere. Inside there is no one. I go back outside where I see Pam way down field. And she points and talks in all directions. She corrals one of her many beautiful German Shepherds. Tess, once inside, throws herself against the kennel door toward me, once again misunderstanding how the world works. Darcy folds into a bed, understanding more.

And then we fly. For the first time in six years. Covid having disrupted everyone’s urge to fly. Or, at least their desire to be trapped and strapped inside a long tubular airborne cage with hundreds of other breathers. The airport in the morning is more peaceful than I expected. But still more people around us, suddenly, than for any other recent outings. Scanned and redressed, rehatted, rebelted. Why do we do such things? I think of Tess’ face in the mesh of the door. I hope she is running the grass landscape and forgetting about me for awhile.

After the long flight, my wife punches me with her squinty look as we weave through the Tucson airport throngs. Then she actually punches me harder on the arm. I remind her that I had offered to sit in the row behind where I had sat in my aisle seat comfortably. I remind her she had refused the exchange. She was pinned to that narrow center seat by a woman who, well, wanted to chat. This random lady traveler had been to an organ recital/competition accompanying the child of a family across the aisle. One that had been sponsored by the Lord Himself, clearly. And she had been recently on a trip to a riverbed somewhere in Texas which the local Christians had no doubt surrounded with lights and banners. A riverbed where humans and dinosaurs had walked through the mud together. Probably a generic dinosaur since she wasn’t sure they believed in them anyway. It was some sort of new Holy destination. She had also been, of course, to the Noah’s Ark construction in Kentucky, the monument to the great myth that was already a moneymaking empire for the worshipful family owners. My wife tried to feign sleep beside her. She tried to nod off convincingly several times. I think the woman actually poked her once or twice. I, one row ahead, sheltered beneath my noise cancelling headphones and Beethoven. The couple to my right unobtrusive, the husband with his laptop playing a free movie involving gunfights and explosions that was noiselessly shifting the light above his snoring.

My wife is far more tolerant that I am. I would have pushed some questions once pinned to the lady’s attention:

“So they walked together six thousand years ago or was it eighty million years?”

“You know Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood? And what kind of cruel tormenting Master of the Universe asks a 600-year-old man to build the giant ship?” I would have pointed out that just at my age of sixty plus I am creaky and can’t imagine lifting big freshly hewn boards over the muddy fields. I get slightly short of breath, Oh Lord, just putting on my socks. “Yo, Big guy, I ain’t your man for this.”

“You do understand that all the water the earth has ever had is all the water we still have?”

“I can’t wait to see the dinosaur room in the Ark. Did you go there?”

My wife is far more tolerant but now she was exhausted. We did meet a fine lady from Hot Springs Village going to visit her brother in Tucson for the first time in five years. She had baked some Ukrainian stuffed rolls for him that he undoubtedly had not had since she last saw him. She was Ukrainian though she had not ever been to the Ukraine, her parents whisking her to the US and telling her never to return to the home country. You know, except in your baking. She offered us one of these unpronounceable rolls but we politely declined, though I desperately wanted one. At one point a basketball team comes up and splays against the window in six and seven foot lengths. They are travelling from Baltimore to Tucson to play a game. It seems excessive, such distances for that. They all lean back and stare into their phones. Somehow these giants must fit on the same plane as I. Oddly, I think, I would not mind watching them play.

We had briefly landed in Dallas and that place is just as devastatingly frightening from the air as always. Masses jammed across the flatlands, roof after roof. Traffic to tie up the nerves even from above. And then we were there after those crampy couple of hours and into a rental car Jeep that I was astonished to see has a hybrid drive. It has buttons and screens that are initially a mystery; they seem excessive. I am riding higher than expected. We are off for the Bed and Breakfast, into the Saguaros. I watch for Ravens and snakes and bad drivers. Across the south side of town and then up on the east side. Where they have preserved some space in the foothills for the cacti and the wrens. We cross many dry washes all with warning signs. And they don’t believe in bridges for these intermittent flood zones. They just roller coaster the roads up and down and ask you not to be stupid. Big rains here are rare but required. Everything is adapted, except perhaps the humans, but still: water in the desert, sometimes.

We find the Bed and Breakfast drive with its five or six acres of preserved landscape. We meet John, who will be making our coffee and breakfast each morning. Coffee having become essential to just basic daytime existence in my life. There are big glass windows, a pool, hummingbirds, a lounge and a library. In the guest house, which is off to the west just slightly from the main house, we find a clean kitchen, a large window with bird feeders and hummer feeders just for our viewing. The window holds a large jug of extra seed to keep the feeder filled. A recipe for hummer mix is tacked on the fridge. John is scoring some points. Large bed. Powerful shower water. I go out on the porch.

Comfortable chairs and a table with viewing of the bird feeders. One sits there and has red wine, clearly. Though we had not fetched any red wine yet. But at that moment I appreciated the reason for going to new places: for the sonic change in the landscape. Horses whinny to the north. I hear distant Ravens. They have two kinds here. Separated sometimes by altitude but not reliably I suppose, Ravens being Ravens. A place with two Ravens is a rarity anywhere in the world. The Chihuahuan Raven (formerly White-necked) being six inches smaller and half the weight of the Common. They are such good mimics that they both make some of the same sounds (ha, yes, I can do that one), though I feel there must be some basic chatter that is distinctive (try that one Neckboy). I have not been around these smaller lowland Ravens very many times. I’ve seen one in the panhandle of Oklahoma. There are no true crows or Ravens in Central and South America. But there is a rich group of Jays there. And several here.

I focus on the hummer feeder and it is repeatedly attended. The slight and subtle Verdin tries repeatedly to beak out some nectar, to tongue it with its inadequate tongue. They are like face painted chickadees but are big enough to contest the hummers away, sometimes with a fight. The hummer here that is dominant in frequency and, in my immediate view, also dominant in their attitude are the Broad-bills. They are four-inch hummers. A quarter inch bigger than our home Ruby-throats which had been sheltered in Mexico and South America already for a month when we left Arkansas. My home feeders were already down and cleaned. This slight quarter inch difference however makes the Broad-bills look bigger despite the math. Arizona in this area has up to fifteen hummer species in the warmer months. In November there are only three or four around. Not like the Andes collection of hummers but still. I have seen exactly three in Arkansas. And one of these was a wandering Arizona Broad-bill.

My ears are attuned for the new sounds around me. And the local Curve-billed Thrashers are the loud and immediate vocalists. They seem to be constantly calling ree-treat, ree-treat in the scrubby things around me. Mesquite, Palo Verde, cacti of several unknown varieties are within sight. The Curve-bills seem to love the one sprawling cactus over my right shoulder. They peer at me with that orange eye. Several sparrow species sneak up to the feeder and the underneath. Including the local Rufous-winged Sparrows which are somewhat more delicate bodied than the hefty White-crowns. The White-crowns sing occasionally as they always seem to. The Rufous-wings are silent and shy, clearly made to fade cryptically into soft sandy earth tones. I like these local guys.

At dusk on that first day, I ranged the five acres of John’s landscape. Like a starter lesson for the wider world of desert there. Ran my fingers over the plants and stems (carefully). Stared down the things that survived in this land of oddities. The cacti in their different forms. There was one great Saguaro just a short step away from the porch which was so armed and branched one had to assume it was growing here before my father was born, before the internet and garage door openers existed. It had a great and what looked like dangerous lean towards the sunrise side of this world. Perhaps it was going down in the slowest fall of anything. Perhaps it just preferred this stance after considering the weight of all things. Look, that over there is just its favorite sky, its namesake star. The world rolls over and over. Is it not tiresome?

I reviewed the names of the strange birds in my head when they arrived: Pyrrhuloxia, Phainopepla. A bright red dot to the west was a Vermillion Flycatcher atop its tree. Tucson in November still has insects to eat. I find a huge gleaming beetle gnawing on prickly pear which turns out of course to be the Giant Cactus Beetle. I could have named it myself. Mourning Doves flutter and purl. I watch, as always, for serpents. I have missed the bloom arrays of the flowers that were atop the Fishhook Cacti but I admire the clusters of green fruits now. Surely, they are edible, though I don’t try it. These seem to be higher than a Javelina’s hungry snout. This being the hairy and destructive local pig here that must be mostly fenced out of John’s land. I see no hoofprints, no nasal rakings. The first planets are emerging by the time I make the slow circuit back to the guest house. The thrashers are still ‘retreating, retreating.’ And so do I.

After John’s fine breakfast of banana and walnut pancakes the next morning, it is time to walk into the desert while my wife reads and enjoys some away-from-me time. An extensive network of trails is shown just to the east of the B&B where the paved road seems to end. It is a short run over there on this workday morning. It is midmorning by this time, but I find the small lot for the trailhead and most of the sides of the highway at the road’s end are covered in parked vehicles. At least fifty or more cars. I have never seen a trailhead anywhere this popular on a Monday morning. But there are so many branching and diverging trails I don’t expect crowds. I can hear the Cactus Wrens talking so they are not more disturbed than I am. The trail still beckons.

Immediately the landscape advances from the B&B plants, though the Saguaros are in every direction and are in every size and shape. They lean, they sprout up beneath the mesquite. I read in a Tucson nature essay collection that the Saguaro youngsters do best if they try and emerge beneath another desert plant. I find this to be accurate. Those and the short Fish-hook Barrels seem happy in this dry scape. The Saguaros apparently being huge canisters of stored water. One wants to plug a sharp drain in one to see if they just spout clear water. What must be Scrub Jays call off to the south. The trails zag and branch and I stick to one that seems to be working up some elevation. Blooming things are rare. I am well past summer and any recent rains I suppose. Now and then a dryland dragonfly lifts and settles on a stem. They are all Variegated Meadowhawks. From whence, I know not. Fast lizards slink under shade hideouts. It is hard not to admire the towering Saguaros every time I pass close to one. These giant adults have no growth rings. They have these struts inside and a complex support structure. Supposedly the full adults that reach up into the 50 foot range are easily 125 years old or more. They are felt to age into the 150 to 200 range before dying of cactile senescence. One wonders if many of them must survive lightning strikes, being the only towers around. Would the powerful bolt just scar the tower from crown to ground leaving a long, woven sear of raised pallor or would the whole great green beast just blow apart like it had never existed and leave only a dark glass hollow in the sand? I find no black craters. I find no etchings along the trunks.

More unreachable fruit sits atop many of these spires. I am past the peak of blooming but now and then I see a large white flower. The host of nectar bats and thrashers, woodpeckers, a bloom to swallow a family of bees. I want to smell one. I would need quite the ladder. A jogger approaches and I stand aside. She is sheltered in headphones to keep all that nasty birdnoise out. She must watch her pathway closely only for roots and stones and rattlesnakes, so I am not sure what she sees in the end, head down, straight ahead (I came, I jogged, I left). Several of her ilk pass in the lower trails but they disappear once I am higher. I turn southward and cross a great dry wash which suggests its intermittent power. More plant life clusters near these zones, roots likely reaching, reaching for the water table somewhere down there closer than impossible. Many of them far past bloom and even leaf. They hint at what once was in the burning summer here. From the slight elevation, one begins to see the human landscape to the west and the clear divisions of preserve and suburb, over the heads of Teddybear cacti that are also reaching for what they can reach in all directions.

At next day’s breakfast we watch the big Anna’s Hummingbirds coming to the window feeders. The Lesser Goldfinches crowd John’s seed feeder. We meet a couple from Kansas City who are also learning about the desert. Trying to map out some of the hummingbirds. He is an Astronomer and they have chased some Astronomic landmarks nearby up where they hide the big telescopes. We agree the starscape here exceeds our own. Here in the brighter dusty stripe in the sky you remember you live in a galaxy of 400 billion stars. Though we tilt hurriedly across close to the same view of this galaxial neighborhood both here and there at home.

The reason we came to the desert, to this Tucson otherworld of retirees, joggers and tanned rich people is to see our friends again. Because this piece will be out there in the wide world I will refer to them as Good Friend Wife (GFW) and Good Friend Husband (GFH). They moved from Arkansas to Tucson five years ago and we had not seen them since. I met them more than 20 years ago when they drove over to Bell Slough in Central Arkansas so I could show them the Diana Butterflies I had discovered there. We found them. Some wandering males and a very patient and magnificent female in the cypress swamp. We had been wildlife chasing friends ever since. GFH and I taking many years to explore some specific insects of Arkansas. GFH having run around Arkansas previously with a dragonfly master, I was just learning them back then. And butterflies were my other new fascination when we met back then at Bell. My friend was now in his mid-eighties and suffering some of the ravages of age that ravage us all. It was time to visit.

The Bed and Breakfast by choice was just a quick 15 minutes from their neighborhood that was tucked up north against the first hills that pointed towards Mt. Lemmon. It was a neighborhood that had done a fine job of trying to insert the houses among the native plants instead of just knocking everything out of the way. GFW’s yard, of course, we knew would be attended by all the local wildlife. And indeed, we found our friends tucked into healthy trees and cacti. And we found GFH sitting in his favorite chair in front of a large windowscape on their private backyard world. My friend looking like my friend should look: kind eyes, still holding that sense of humor. The quick mind working fine. We arrayed ourselves around him and looked on the world as it was.

GFW keeps feed of all kinds outside and a multitude of feeders. Suet cakes, seed cakes, water sources, ground feed, live mealworms: this is the place to be if you are feathered and famished. The back porch is also circled with comfortable chairs and we eventually moved there. She has Roadrunners she has taught to come into her lap for worms. They also learned to tap on her window glass to get her attention. They took the worms from her hand. They are not here now in November. She wonders if her female is still alive out in there in the thorniness and the diminished heat, the predatory, over armored world. She has Cactus Wrens who also come for the worms. She has a pet herd of the lovely Gambel’s Quail that I watch for. She has her own crew of Anna’s Hummingbirds. And while we sit a young Costa’s Hummingbird, that diminutive SW desert specialist comes to her feeder. His purpled beard not quite complete. It is a bird that waits for winter rains and then nests in January and February while the rest of us are regretting the length of winter. This Costas male is the first I have seen on planet earth.

At breakfast the day before, John had asked if I was a birder. I gave the easiest answer, that I have been since I was 11 years of age. I wandered into the Sherwood landscape with my Naval binoculars that weighed more than my head and were tied about my neck with strong shoestring. And as I have said, since then I have always paid attention to bird sounds and bird movements. I learned them by chasing down every bird that made a sound. Birds are now mixed in with plant attention and butterfly enthusiasm and insect excitements in general. Still, if a bird sound is made that seems odd or new, other things drop away. Anyway, John recommends that I walk the Tanque Verde wash where birders often go in this immediate area. It is conveniently just a ½ mile walk away. I have my wife drop me there by the roadside while she goes out into the shopping world where true dangers lie. The wash is a very impressive one in its dry state. Surely a raging river in its full rain choked glory. And John does tell me that he was standing there admiring its power one day when an evacuated pickup truck tumbled by. Now it is a dry, rocky and sandy world with late fall plant life. The suburban world comes in fairly close on either side. You are not in wilderness, but this long meandering slice of Tucson has been preserved by its periodic ragings. I find huge stands of invasive cane and indeed the work of people interested in destroying this caney vermin. Large piles of downed cane are here and there, inviting thrashers. The stumps remain, though I find piles of the weird ungainly stumps as well. The trees above the wash are coloring up. I find a huge Cottonwood that is clearly a Cottonwood but is not my normal one. It is admirably old. It towers above the empty wash like a feathered lighthouse. In its shadow, I admire some weird grasses. Birds are elusive. And then a Peregrine Falcon cruises by and lands in a high spire behind me. I wonder how common they are here. Lesser Goldfinches frisk some other tall grasses. I find a giant flower that stuns me. I think immediately it must be one of those hallucinogenic flora that could transport me into the world beyond this world if I sucked on its pollen, chewed its white petals. And indeed, I find later it is the Devil’s Trumpet, one of the Datura. Some of the blooms are 8 inches long or more. They all seem to be harboring a single honey bee. I had seen the spiny fruits of this thing first along the wash and had been completely puzzled by it.

I look for butterflies, though the true remaining blooms here are few. Some composite that I don’t know is making flowers still. They are tattered and yellow. I find what looks like knotweeds making purpled flowers and indeed this is where all the small Metalmark butterflies are lured. I see likely fifty of them on the whole walk, spreading their wings in the sun. There is no wind. There are a few quiet Inca Doves. I find some beetles on a tree. I find a man bearing binoculars heading back from where I am bound. We trade birdy things. I tell him to watch for the Peregrine Falcon.

On the way back I find a young girl in uniform who is part of one of the restoration crews. There is a man on a bobcat ripping up bamboo roots. She apologizes for the noise. I tell her they have quite a bit of work ahead of them, but it is a rewarding goal to stomp out invaders, rip up stumps. She has not seen the Peregrine but is immediately interested. I make it back to the road crossing and decide to just walk it home to the B&B and not call my wife back from her no doubt intense shopping focus. Some tall oak shade trees shelter some cows. I see the only White-winged Dove I have seen aflutter in them. A great white flare of a bush blooms on the roadside. It looks like our Baccharis at home. And indeed it is a different one. Ours are blooming in November as well. Apparently, it is the largest genus in all the Aster family, which I did not know. It was abuzz with small wasps and more honey bees.

With a glass of wine, I sit at the guest house feeders and watch the show once more. Horses whinny again over at the neighbors to the north. It is the background Horsey noise. And a dog runs up and immediately puts its head on my lap. German Shorthair youngster with an orange collar that says DOT followed by a number. I wonder why the Dept of Transportation has a dog on the loose. But John laughs at breakfast later when he tells me her name is Dot. She has a radiocollar on. She makes rapid fire loops out into the spikes and needles, making me cringe. John asks if she has been bothering me and I tell him she is perfectly happy to be petted. “She knows you are a dog person.” John tells me. She has looked into my dog loving soul.

Eric has arrived in Arizona and he finds us. Our friend from Atlanta. He ripped down from Phoenix where some of his other friends live. We all meet at the local water park that is not far east of our Tucson friends and not far north of us. Roadrunners track across in front of us on the way. The park is a rare permanent water feature in the area. By design I presume, with a spring, a 100 acres and at least three ponds. We find the largest lake and some waterside benches which call to my wife. Soon our Tucson friends find us and join my wife on the bench. The place seems ripped with school children and their teachers/caretakers. They are running in packs and apparently enjoying lessons on netted up aquatic life. An odd but fascinating lesson I am sure in the desert. Ducks of unclear heritage waddle around. We argue over their Mexican duck or Mallard breeding. Certainly, there are some hanging together in a pair and neither of them has a green head. Turtles bask on downed trees across the way. A kingfisher rattles. Did I forget to mention trees? There were hardwoods and several fruit bearing palms. I saw some true trees on my walk in the Tanque Verde wash but they are not part of the normal landscape of Tucson.

With my wife ensconced with snacks and drinks alongside my friends, Eric and I ventured down the path north and west to the other ponds. Children scurried, doing some sort of hunting game for objects and visual treasure. Some were taking notes. Screams arose occasionally from the pond netters. Something about shrimp; something about scorpions. The greenish ponds to the northwest were attended by quite the crew of Ring-necked Ducks, diving and giving us a cautious distance. More Mexican looking ducks were sunning. A Green Heron poised. The trees around the ponds held Phainopeplas, a Kestrel on the prowl. Off to the west the city began again. Walkers walked on the wide path. The sky was full clear overhead. I watched the schoolgirls and boys examining the flora for signs of something more interesting than, well, flora. Would they rather be examining their phone screens? Back at the lakeside bench our trio were still gazing and talking.

In the afternoon Eric and I, back at the B & B, launched down the road to the trailhead. The parking area was nearly empty. I guess morning is truly jogger time. Afternoon must be for the watchers, the outcasts. We fit. We parked close to the start of the trails. We took the trail that went mostly due east into the foothills themselves. The Saguaro numbers were striking everywhere. They were the kings of the hillsides. I found a perfect skeletal cross from a deceased one. Like a crucifixion cacti. The inner structure of the thing was interlaced and beautifully designed by time and evolution. Though one could not help but think of Christ in front of this stripped down thing. The ends of the bony arms curved downward like fingers. The cross faced west. One wondered how the deserts of Israel compared. There were no Saguaros there in the drylands where Christ wandered for forty days, pondering the coming events and his own solitary humanity. I remember that he died relatively quickly up on his agonizing perch. The Roman soldiers normally made rounds after about six hours back then and if one looked too perky, they broke both femurs to speed the deathly process. (This according to John, the least reliable and most political of the accepted Gospels.) One just can’t be lingering in agony upon the cross. But Christ, when they did come, was reportedly already gone.

I wondered if I could just walk out into this right-now desert here beyond these foothills for 40 straight days and 40 long starry nights?

“Eric, tell my wife to look for me next month. You head on back now, I’ll be all right.”

Christ walked out without a pocket knife. Without a canteen. Presumably he could make water, wine, or fish at will. But I did not have that skill. But what was I allowed? A robe, some sandals? Could I tear the heart of a saguaro out and eat the wet meat inside? Could I scrape the seeds from an Ocotillo and down them like cereal? Sleep on the sand, head propped on stone? Among rattlesnakes and kangaroo mice? Would CoyoteMan and I have a chat out in this dry and prickly world? Would I find the face of some God in the dark starry nights of my own hunger and thirst? And if I knew I could eventually see into the heart of the galaxy in this midst of this suffering would I roll in these thorns, would I throw myself down onto all this jagged stone? I reserve the right to be very afraid of my inadequacies.

Up the trail, the views grew striking. The Teddy Bear cactus made me stop and stare over and over. I would hover my palms over all the stabbing bristliness. We were surrounded by Black-throated Sparrows. They seemed to want to sing, perching up for us with their lovely black bibs. The singsong sparrow languages, older than Latin. Lizards skittered in the late afternoon sun. The path was much less worn up higher, broken and slanted, not made for any kind of jogging. We saw one lone walker descending from wherever ahead of us he had been. He nodded to us and kept his knowledge to himself. His sleepless nights holding his own magic, his own faces. “I am returning with regrets. Do not trust the voice of long thirst.”

After dark at the guest house, I would sneak out when my wife had drifted off with her book draped in her lap. Dot was somewhere sleeping. I would stare at the jagged dark to the east where the stars were obliterated by the hills. Up above was Jupiter, making its way along the great elliptic of its own wanderings. Most of its motion across the sky was actually my motion, on the surface of the earth. We spin. We always spin. The slower of our four motions against the fixed bones of the universe.

On the last day before departure, we decided to drive up Mount Lemmon. It is a local landmark and a worldwide known biking adventure. Bikers somehow liking the challenge of riding uphill for 25 miles. The temperatures atop the mountain are often 30 degrees cooler than the valley in summer. They are cooler now as well. It snows and there is a ski area atop the mountain. John says it is odd because whenever it snows deep enough to ski, the road to the ski area is closed. It becomes a private local ski zone I suppose. But the curving road up the mountain is a spectacle going from the valley at about 2000 feet to over 9000 feet up at the top. Eric and I jump out at most of the pull offs. We are stop and start guys. We have done this drive years ago in Spring. My wife takes in the views while we romp down the short prominences. At one such stop a very fit looking Octogenarian leaps out of the car ahead of us. Comes right at us. “You boys from Tucson?”

“No, we are easterners.”

“Well, nothing better than this anywhere. Don’t you love it?”

It was easier to nod assent, then review the many spectacular places aside from Saguaro desert. We gave her that is it certainly a place you don’t want to miss. She shook her head and jumped back in her car.

Onward, the altitude changes the landscape every mile or two. The Saguaros fall off and out of the picture. Trees grow taller. At one stop, explosions off to the west. We scan the nearby valleys and see nothing as the big bangs go again and again. An attempt to head off avalanches of rock? A clogged drainage? We don’t know. We’ll never know. Up higher, curves and stone pillars, overlooks into the cityscape now miles below. Some mountaineers prepare to drop off a cliff. A chipmunk oversees. At one looping curve we see a Peregrine Falcon perched on a spire near the road ahead. We stop and sneak up behind some rocks, but the bird has fallen away, living what seems like a better life at that moment. Below, a Coopers Hawk also spirals and lifts towards us. We see no water anywhere.

Eventually we are in tall conifers. It is cooler by another several degrees. We walk over fallen needles and burnished Bracken fern leaves. Near a picnic bench a bird pops out and we see it is a Yellow-eyed Junco. A bird we don’t see elsewhere. He ignores us. At a steep stop down towards a lake, Pygmy Nuthatches talk. The place looks abandoned for winter as many of the stops are. We begin to see more evidence of civilization, cabins and sideroads. We are up Mount Lemmon by some twenty miles. We watch for Black Bear and Ravens. I remember reading about a young female camper being attacked up the mountain by a bear with a yellow numbered ear tag. She survived. And her family sued Tucson after learning that this mountain is where Tucson dumps its troublesome bears. We see no bears, troublesome or otherwise, but all the garbage cans are the ‘bearproof’ kind.

Into a real town scape up top we stop for some lunch on a sort of Main street. Pedestrians ped to nowhere in particular. Above us is a perched and cantilevered cabin. Acorn Woodpeckers flutter about some feeders up there like mechanized toys. Around the cabin evidence of past fires. Encircling black. We presume the cabin was spared and not rebuilt. It is unclear. But the sky seems closer. The café serves sandwiches and chili, available foodstuffs are scrawled on a large chalkboard. There is a full bar to enjoy the boosted buzz of wine at altitude. A poorly dressed group of Americans in shorts and thin shirts (I can almost see my breath outside) sit by the fireplace which is badly drafted. Every time the waiter or waitress opens the patio door a blast of swirling smoke surrounds them. They cough and flutter until the door is opened again. I can picture the place snowbound and insular, hosting the summer crowd atop the world, pretending hot deserts and cacti do not exist.

On the friend’s back patio again, the scrubland seems closer. Host and hostess off to my left, my wife to the right, the desert air is pleasant, we talk in low tones to calm the hummers. I remember their yard in Arkansas, a haven of trees, a pond, the gardens of butterfly attractants. A house half filled with books. For years they kept a large Tortoise who would winter inside, sleeping the good sleep. A three-foot Iguana roamed the yard in summer, (I forget its name) climbing the trees, teaching the cats about whip-tails and reptiles and who has been here longer on this earth. At night Green Treefrogs would come and stick themselves to their windows hunting bugs. I can see them again in remembrance. Here, in Tucson there are no treefrogs, but the quail come to us in this yard chatting and burring, making their odd popping sounds. Occasionally a male would grab another male’s topknot and appear to try and rip it off the competitors head, like wrestling. Would he keep it as a souvenir? Does the dominant male have a stash of topknots? I assume this black curled feather would grow back, but the male doomed to a month of shame, the females turning their fine feathered backs on him. Except Delilah, who shelters with the disgraced Quinn, waiting for this crown to grow back.

At one moment my wife says, ‘ohh, a big bird.’ And there in the tree is a huge female Cooper’s Hawk. Well known to our host and hostess. She haunts the yard on her rounds. Occasionally lifting a quail up to its defeathered death in the trees. It terrorizes the ground squirrels, makes the finches fly for their lives deep into mesquite. My Tucson friends have watched it all at close range.

I went back over to the great Saguaro that was twenty steps from my sitting area on the porch, repeatedly. Whenever I sat and watched the feeders there, I could look over my shoulder and see the top spires of this great being. I could see myself growing very attached to it. Like a favorite oak tree. Like the Willow Oak that is next to my swamp at home. I wanted John to have a name for it. “Oh yes, that is old Methuselah.” I visited it often. I sat on the bench nearby. I wondered what this giant weighed, my Saguaro buddy. I wanted to put some sort of plumb line on it with a dangling pointed weight to see its angle of repose. A dangling line pointing to the heart of the earth, down there in the core all metallic and burning, swirling at 10 thousand degrees. If I lived here, I would want to know the rate of its decline, the progress of its ancient bow. A millimeter a week? A centimeter a year?  Slouching towards Bethlehem. Slouching towards another sunrise more like. This green giant had seen thirty thousand sunrises maybe. And, hell, for all I knew Bethlehem could be straight east on the long curve of the earth’s latitude lines. This beast would know. (I looked, it is just 0.5 degrees off.) Though seriously, Christ did not come to teach the cacti, to save these innocent spires from their transgressions (forgive me Father, I once poked a Thrasher in the breast.) One wonders however about those 40 days Christ spent in the desert. He was telling them something. Or learning. Who knows? I now better understand men who sit and talk to cacti. Anyway, I touch the green skin of this great one. I flick the stiff spikes. Oh, to see what has been seen here.

And I don’t want to live forever. Really. Give me a drift off in my dreamy sleep sometime in my 80s, I’ll be okay. Would I take 250 years as a Saguaro? Woodpeckers in my hair, bats in my bloomery? It is tempting, a still life with stones. Feeling the dawn on my green skin every day. The buzz and play of frog choruses after the rain zinging my thorns like tuning forks. Hell, just a thousand days of rain in a life, the lightning again and again passing me by, going east, leaving me safely in starlight. (Once more I am spared.) Would I miss the love songs of long bonded Ravens in my valley? It is likely.

I just hope my friends get all the days they want in their reading chairs, inside the windows of their chosen world. It is my esteemed hope for this. Would I give away an hour or a week to a friend who needed it? I hope I would. Here, take this Saturday morning on your porch, you need one more. Just a few hours. Have another sunrise. Oh, to see the great wash roaring with water. To wade out in the edges of the maelstrom. Yes, here is another day of rain. Have it. Take a few hours of this great silence. One more full moon.

I hope I would do it. I hope they would do it for me.  

        HR

Thanks to John and Steffi at the Desert Trails.

They are at:

www.deserttrails.com

12851 E. Speedway Blvd.

Tucson, AZ 85748

1 520 885 7295

And thanks to our Tucson friends, our hosts, (they know who they are.)

It was a great pleasure to see them again and have a coffee or two and some meals.