A Sense of Place

Miles of sunbaked desert dirt stretch out underneath a fiercely blue sky. Saguaro extend their arms stoically upward. The only things that can live out here are scaly rattlesnakes and prickly peccaries, well, and Arizonans. Some would say the desert is a barren, desolate wasteland, but they haven't seen it after a spring thunderstorm. A fiery blaze of wildflowers quickly transforms that barren, desolate wasteland into a lush garden of creamy yucca, poppies and fuchsia prickly pear blooms. After sunset, the temperature plummets and anyone about will have front row seats to the eerie symphony of the coyote and the owl. That same fiercely blue sky that later glowed with a sinking pot of gold is now the darkest of blues and alight with more stars than can be numbered, like thousands of votives at a candle light service.

Some would say the desert is too open, exposing, baring your existence to the world. They are used to leafy canopies of maple and oak, where the sound of gushing water is never far away, and the forest is populated by small woodland creatures that rustle and chirp. They haven't felt the almost tangible silence of the desert as a friend, driving you to the deepest, quietest places of your heart. They haven't experienced the miles of sunbaked desert dirt as freedom to run as far as you could run, unhampered by trees or rivers. Not that you'd want to run miles into the desert, but with that much open flatness to the horizon and beyond, you feel as though you could.

It's a peculiar place, the desert. Seemingly hostile to life, it teems with activity during the cooler night hours. Appearing unchangingly dusty and desiccated, it is transformed with the help of monsoon showers. It is unforgiving, and, like the sea, a force to be reckoned with. I don't really know why they built a city in the middle of it, entrenched in a ring of mountains. Maybe it was just a stop on the way to greener pastures in California and Oregon, but some crazy man with a vision decided to stay and build a city, one that has become a sprawling metropolitan center for agriculture, business and engineering.

A third generation Arizonan, I inherited a little of that spitfire spirit, that wild west sense of adventure and determination. My ancestors were small business owners, cowboys, and teachers who made the desert their home and built lives from its dust. There's still a trace of their indomitable spirit racing through my veins.

As a sense of place, it's a long way from the ragged mountains of Colorado or rolling hills of Virginia. It doesn't have the appeal of a sprawling historic brownstone in New York, or the cozy feel of a family farmhouse in Minnesota. The desert provides a strange kind of comfort. It's not welcoming or cozy. It's wild and unruly, more like a wild mustang than a gentle plow horse, but it's home. The smell of creosote after the rain and the yellow saguaro blooms are home. The sun that goes down blazing behind the line of mountains in the west is home. The desert is home.

Little Miss Sunshine