Like Felix at the Air Vent

When we lived in Tucson in the mid-1980s, and made periodic trips to Iowa and back, our WonderDog, Felix, could smell when we were nearing Pima County. He pushed his nose at the air vent in the pickup, and began to show excitement.

Mari and I visited Tucson for a few days this month--a kind of belated family holiday trip. Twice, we have lived in Tucson for a few years each time, so our visit was something like Felix, smelling familiar and unusual things.

We drove up Silverbell, wide in its newer neighborhoods, in bright and clear light, framed by the purple mountains rising from the desert floor like islands.

Together with family members, we (of european and asian descent) breathed in the wonderful smells and rainbow sights of Teresa's Mosaic Cafe, a woman making corn tortillas on one side of us, and the Santa Catalinas beyond the windows on the other. We tipped our margaritas in gratitude, and sipped them to show how fine it is to be in a city that surrounded us with Mexican and Native American food and language and culture. Salud, Teresa!

We may live there again, someday. Places like Tucson are not so much an escape from winter as they are an immersion into another culture; one that invites you to become a participant. "This," the culture says at lunch, "is how we use peppers and cactus paddles, and how we prepare fish!" "This is what it sounds like when we speak to each other! 'Amigo,' we say: 'Amiga!' Bienvenidos!"

"Should we go look at our old house?", Mari says, and I say, "Yes!, and see what else there is, too."

"It gets really hot in the summer," Mari said, "and there are two rainy seasons."

"Do you remember the smell of creosote when it rains," I replied, "and water in the arroyo?"

"I do! And javalinas, with their babies, begging for lettuce and potatoes! And deer in the yard!"

Comments

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames. We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves. For instance, some people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old. Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old. That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together. But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer. It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog