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Water, Sometimes with Tequila

One of the most interesting drives in New Mexico is down I-25, following the Rio Grande as it meanders south and eventually east, to form a thin border between the U.S. and Mexico.  The River is not interested in becoming a border.  It is, rather, a contest with sand and the sun, siphoning water from mountains north, daring the desert to ignore it, or to swallow it whole.

The Rio Grande nurtures a ribbon of green life; a fragile ribbon, never more than a few steps from dust.

Again, Mari and I stopped at a familiar rest area, mostly just to see whether we could walk, and if we could, to walk to the restrooms.  I have never seen a rattlesnake there, but the sign is better than coffee as a way to wake up.

Then, half a day later, other water--"Monsoon" water:  almost the only water available to the Sonoran Desert--thundered down with a fury the Rio Grande cannot dream of, obliterating nearly everything from sight, including the highway, the shoulders of the road, and almost every truck we knew to be there.  We shook.  We rattled.  We crept, more than rolled, but persisted in the belief that if this storm was as sudden on the other side as it was where we entered it, that it would be best to get out of its fury.  We did.

The storm had come from north and west, precisely where we intended to end our trek.  When we got there, we could not pass under the freeway because the underpasses were flooded.  Those dips in the desert roads with signs warning, "Do Not Enter When Flooded", were flooded, and we, together with everyone else going where we were going, did not enter; could not enter without being swept sideways and possibly rolled.  The Santa Cruz River, dry almost all year long, began to fill, astonishing the small trees that had found such water as the recycling plant could give them, bending them downriver, threatening to take them to Casa Grande or Phoenix, should the rains last nearly forever.  They didn't.

We have been leaning slowly into the job of unpacking the trailer and arranging the house.  We are still exhausted, somewhere deep at bone level, and we have time to do what we must do.

What we must do, we said, is to go to the Mosaic:  Teresa's Mosaic Cafe, halfway down to where we lived before we moved to Minnesota ten years ago.  Teresa knows how to replenish the soul:  Feed it!  There are no rattlesnakes at Teresa's!

It is raining again, here in the desert, with waters swept from the Pacific Ocean.  In another season, the rains will come from the Gulf of Mexico, a long arc up over Mexico, to green the ocotillo, and fatten the saguaro, and encourage every other living thing, something like what the Rio Grande does at ground level.

Something like what Teresa does, on my level.

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