Sweetwater Swamp

Its real name, of course, is Sweetwater Wetlands. In a runoff contest between Sweetwater Wetlands and Sweetwater Drylands, they chose Wet.

Our city parents collect our waste, purport to treat it, and then drain it into pits and ponds where it becomes sweet. You might notice, in the photo below, that you cannot see any part of the duck that is below the plimsoll line. I rather imagine that, for any plant that requires wet feet and food, that heaven is a spot just west of I-10 north of Prince Road.

Diving tortoises and ducks disappear from view within microns. Frogs fumble about trying to locate where the sun might be, and having stumbled onto it, walk across the ponds to the reeds at shoreline.

But we live in the Sonora, and any semblance of water is sweet (we say to ourselves, hoping that we do not fall in).

Our struggle, here in Tucson, and in much of Arizona, is to treasure the water we have, almost all of which now is below ground. Developers of housing tracts want all of it, and more. Our elected officials seem willing to trade away even our waste water for "development". The trickle of waste water from places like Sweetwater Wetlands, now released into the bone dry Santa Cruz river bed is, for all practical purposes, the only water in the Santa Cruz most of the time.

Swamp it is, but it is the only swamp we have, and we love it.

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