After 11 months of traveling around this country, I have
learned not to trust my preconceived notions of a place. I am not sure what I
expected of Arizona before we arrived but it certainly wasn’t this. This is a
landscape of surprise. The sun that pours in early each morning doesn’t have a
harsh quality as expected but rather the promise of something that can be mine
if I get up early enough to beat the heat. As a tried and true despiser of
heat, I am happy to oblige!
Bridgeeta, (who
is now being referred to as the desert queen), and I make coffee and come out
to the patio that is cool and shady. The mourning doves are singing their song,
as are at least four other kinds of birds I don’t recognize. As we sit down,
all the birds seem to disappear and it is only upon patient waiting that the
whole area comes alive again. Suddenly a whole group of birds with curved bills
appear and began digging at the dry ground, scratching out some unseen
delicious bug. A family of five Gembler quail
come walking out of the huge prickly pear cactus near us, their fancy curly cue
looking like church bonnets from a century past. They too scratch and search
through what seemed to be barren dry earth and come up with a mouthful of
breakfast, all under the not so watchful eyes of the Desert Queen, who can’t be
bothered to lunge unless they brazenly pass within a beardhair’s length. Something
they quickly attempt to do, no fear here.
Last night as we
watched the stars a coyote crossed through the site following the calls of his
family just off from the light of our camper. The lizards here are especially
busy running to and fro at any given moment, much bigger than their Florida
counterparts. It’s a busy place to be, here in the Arizona Desert.
As we always do,
the boys and I have been studying the local plant life as part of our
curriculum and the junior badge program. We are able to give names to the
plants that seemed so extraordinarily foreign upon our arrival.
The Ocitillo in particular seemed alien and now we see it everywhere, in some cases as living fences and surrounding the graves up on BootHill in Tombstone.
The Palo Verde tree, hated by my in-laws as it makes a lovely but problematic carpet of yellow blossoms all over their yard to be tracked in by the kids, has evolved into a Jack-of-all-trades. It has a vibrant green bark that allows it to create it’s own food even when there isn’t enough water to sustain leaves. Even when times are tough, it finds a way to power on!
The barrel
cactus here are sprouting a ring of bright yellow fruit when it isn’t plucked
off by nocturnal ringtails. There are agave plants that rival their Prickly
pear neighbors in size. But the king of all is clearly the Saguaro. A row of them at the entrance are twice as tall as our rig, pushing 30 feet. One has 13 arms, making it a contender in our arm counting contest. We know from our studies that the first arms don’t arrive until the plant is 75 and they can live to be 200 years old
I am in no hurry
to leave this area but the daily heat, pushing into the 90’s even in April, is
a stark reminder that this beauty comes with a price if you stick around long
enough. This has been a very surprising trip into the desert. I didn’t
anticipate the 
