The Beauty of the Tucson Desert

It is really unfortunate that the desert is an "either you love it or you hate it" type of place.

It always gets such a bad rap.

No one ever says to a Montanans "Man that must really suck, being hot all the time!"

Oh wait; people do say that to Montanans, only in reverse!

OK OK but the difference is, when you say "it must be terrible being COLD all the time"

The people from Montana AGREE!!!

You think me cruel? You think me narrow minded do you?

Well, actually I am well able to pay my respects and my complaints to both Arizonians and to Montanans

Our daughter was born in Kalispell, Montana and our son was born in Douglas, Arizona.

In the six years we lived in the ironically named "Banana Belt" at the edge of Glacier Park, Montana, my feet were always cold.

My honey, bless him, the last year we lived in Martin City, Montana, he built me a fire in the wood stove 364 out of the 365 days in a row. He built me one every morning, then I could keep it going all day if I needed to; he never complained. He cut the wood, we both piled it in the den on the stone corner and he started the fire while the kids and I shivered under the blankets.

What a sweetheart.

So there, I can say with expertise that they do have summer in Montana; one day out of the year!

But This Is About My Beloved Desert!

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Until I was twelve we lived on 26th Street West. Then my Dad moved us to the edge of Jefferson and Shelby counties and I thought I would never leave. I loved the river and the woods and the trees. I loved being able to just walk across the road and blend into the foliage.

I went to school at UAB, received my RN, BSN in 1976 and was promptly thrown into what was then known as culture shock. A little over a year later I took my first vacation and went to see my friend in Tucson. I stepped off that plane in January, looked around and thought "uh oh, I've been living in the wrong place all my life!" Two weeks later I went home, gave my notice, called my parents and put my cat and I on a plane bound for what I knew was my true heart home.

It was there, in 1980, that I met my honey, my best friend, my hubby, my David. He is a sweetheart! As you’ve probably noticed, he is fonder of the cold than I am! But one thing we always come back to is our beloved desert. We are working our way back every day. The pictures and statistics of Tucson are a bit daunting! When My David first got to Tucson in the early 70's, the city was still just a bit more than a rural town. It took less than thirty minutes to cross the width of the city in a car and the foothills were still inhabited only by the flora and fauna!

But we watched it grow and change even as our family grew and changed. My husband was a part of a group of young entrepreneurs and we caravanned back and forth from the desert to the Grand Canyon to the national parks of the Rocky Mountains. My David sold the tourists rugs from South America that were made from sheepskin or cowhide that were practically kid proof they were so resilient and rugs made out of alpaca so fragile they had to be hung on the walls. It amazes me still that anyone would pay so much money for something that had to go on the wall! David would give his sales pitch and pointing to me with my dark hair in braids and leatherwork in my lap say "My wife made everything you see!" The fact that he was pointing to the current work in progress on my lap was usually lost to the tourist. They seemed happy to take a piece of the old Wild West home with them; goodness knows we were glad they did! Some of those years were lean.

But would I change it now, if given the chance? No. With my David I lived in places I had never even imagined living! I met wonderful people and felt a sense of belonging for a long time. In the west I learned that the world is a bigger place than I thought and that people are not the same from one place to the next. Visiting somewhere for vacation is fun and different, but in order to know a place, you need to live in that place for a while, make it fit around you, see how it feels against your skin. Then you can say whether it is a true heart home or just a place where your home was, for a while.

My Favorite Places Around Tucson

I prefer to sit and look. It takes me a long time to sit and drink it all in. When the "drink" is that of the desert, it has always felt as if I am sipping an intoxicating brew from a bottomless river. The desert changes by the seasons. Yes, Pilgrim, the desert does have seasons! I don't have favorite or least loved one either.

In the winter, you can watch the snow grow on the Catalina Mountains all the way to halfway down its sides then ease its way back up by the end of spring. There were several years I watched the snow on Mount Lemmon for ten straight months!

In the spring, the desert changes literally in hours! The rocks we sit on in the winter have little bowl hollows and when the spring comes the hollows fill with flowers! During the monsoon rains everything slows in the city for about two hours every afternoon. The streets are shaped in a "V" so the rain fills the streets and rushes madly down the washes. Many greenhorns have been caught unaware in the washes; I remember watching an old 911 episode about a woman on top of her car several years after I had watched it for real from the side of the road on my bicycle!

Old Tucson is my number one favorite of course. All the BEST western movies were shot there! It amazed me, when I went for the first time how small the set is. All that action, imagination, and drama shot on location and really, it isn't that much larger than a small town civic center.

Our favorite picnic spot was always in the West Saguaro National Park. During the great depression the WPA built all the picnic spots, had made tables, benches, pathways and covered barbeque pits out of the rocks of the desert. We would pack the cooler with soda pop, hubby's beer, and hot dog or hamburger makings and off we'd go. Sometimes we would have to scout around a bit to find an empty table but the old truck never minded and my David could always find us just the right spot. The kids would wander, searching out the prettiest rock while David and I would sit there holding hands just being together with our little family. Good times. Enjoying life and each other.

My David, our Katie Baby and I are going there again soon. Even if the city has changed beyond recognition, even if there are way too many people, we will find us a little piece of desert and be free, be happy, be in love, still, after all these years.

What could be better than that?