It
seems ironic to me, maybe even ardently wrong the way nature plays with us. I
hear the coyotes’ merriment drifting over the jagged peaks of the Catalinas; I
see the sleepy saguaros that rim the mesas as I listen to the wind performing
in the freshly born leaves of the Arizona ash tree I planted in our yard. We’ve
had a warmish January -- we even imagined spring just around the corner -- but
as February approached,
the weather turned into a mean winter blizzard outside. The countryside took on a rather colorless
sepia hue as a steel sky set in and a cold wet snow began falling,
wilting new shrubbery and foliage from warmwr days.
The
seasons will do - come and go - as they please, with no determined schedule in
this part of the southwest; we simply inhabit the rugged areas that have now
gone urbane. The native chollas, palo verdes, barrel cacti, yuccas and saguaros
of bygone days have been dug out and re-planted elsewhere to make room for
housing, roads and cars.
Nature
is strong, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
I live in this desert with which I feel no rapport. The dry land profits
from me. It takes my moisture, my softness, and my abundant reveries and
indulgent memories of beaches past. Remaining
in this desert, I will dry-up like an apple left out on the kitchen
counter for a while.
I
cannot deny desert’s beauty; she’s a unique crystal, a balanced ecosystem of
full sun, ragged mountains and sandy landscapes; pastel painted sunsets, vastly
starry nights …
As
I gaze into the future - down the road of my life – I fail to see new
undertakings coming this way. The path ahead does not appear to be too long or
easy anymore. I miss the sea.
The sea indulges my musings
… it voices my truth.
Transplants from other parts tell me it may take up to five years to break through the culture schock and feel a bodage, a connection to the desert.
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