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Sweetwater

Sweetwater Wetlands Park:  mind you, I am not complaining!  It is water, and water is sweet in the desert, but sweet water it is not!

In plain fact, it is water from the sewage treatment plant for the city of Tucson, reputedly "treated", and released again into the wild, right in the middle of the city, into what we love to call The Santa Cruz River.

Most of the time, it is the only water in the Santa Cruz River where it goes through town, and for that reason, it is beautiful water.  Earth has been put in charge of reclaiming what had been taken into town and soiled.

It is only a few miles from our home, so this morning I drove to Sweetwater Wetlands Park to praise the gods of reclamation, who have called turtles and birds to help us remember what it rather was before grass-fed beef and beef-fed humans dug the earth for minerals, built a railroad, and ran the river dry.

Last week, when Geri and Dean were here for a lovely couple of days, we drove down to Madera Canyon, half way to the Mexican border, not far.  Madera Canyon is a crease in the earth, catching and funneling really sweet water down to the Santa Cruz River before it gets to Tucson, and where earth pulls the water down into her heart before it can come this far.  At Mission Xavier del bac where, three hundred years ago, Father Kino came and claimed he was in Spain, or what ought to be Spain, they built a mission because the river ran by.  The river is still there, but it seldom runs.

The river does run again, in Tucson, and while it is not sparkling blue, it sparkles still because it makes life possible.

 I felt a bit like Father Kino, myself, this morning, because I discovered something that has been there for a long time, but I had not seen it before.  If, like Moses, I could strike a rock and get water out of it, I would, or if, like Father Kino, I could call on the resources Spain stole from "Latin" America, I might whack away at stones in the desert, hoping for streams in the desert, but short of that, I am pleased with such Sweetwater as we have, west of I-10, at Prince.


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