A Beautiful and Prickly Place

Perhaps because I have been watching, The Last Alaskans, perhaps because I live in Tucson, Arizona, perhaps because I have a camera, I have been paying attention to such a place as this is.

It is prickly and beautiful. It is impossible not to know that we share this space with plants and animals long-since adapted to this Sonoran Desert, who define, more than we do, what it is to be here.

That is probably true of all places. I know that, born in Tacoma, Washington, and having grown up (more or less: less) halfway between Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier, that graveled soil and a sea of Douglas fir trees were everywhere, and that there is a mountain always in my mind, and the incessant slap of water against stone.

Here, while it is snowing in Minnesota, the saguaros are blooming. It is the time of year when 100 degree days F. become ordinary, when the Tucson Old Timers baseball team starts playing ball an hour earlier in the day to avoid total desiccation and dispersal by a passing breeze.

Our stalwart, fourteen pound Miniature Pinscher parks himself by the patio door by day, and the bedroom window by night, to report attempts by little lizards to reclaim the land.

It is the time of year when javelinas introduce their piglets to spillage beneath the bird feeder, driving Cooper to heroic attempts to scare them off by tenor-barking through the fence. The javelinas conceal their terror well, lying down for a short nap before going on to whatever is next.

It is a special place. A beautiful and prickly place.

Comments

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

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. ...

Best Not Noticed Among Friends

"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times: don't exaggerate!" That isn't what this post is about, except that is has to do with the way we use language, or how language reveals how we think. What has been intriguing me lately is the growing habit of saying everything twice, or repeating the same idea with different words. For example: "When the barrage comes, it comes in bunches." I rather imagine. A barrage of one is such a lonely thing, by itself. Here is a list of recent examples: "for each respective team" "both teams have only one timeout, each" "there is this sort of, like. . ." "retweet it out" "but lying about the same, exact. . ." "then elevate up" "He's very good at parceing these arguments apart" "and lied, over and over and over again" And then there are just curiosities: "A man who, everything he touches, turns to g...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog