Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

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.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more