In Southeastern Arizona….
When I was about 10 years old our family took a road trip to visit my mom’s sister who lived with her family in Culver City, California. On the way we pulled over into a parking lot somewhere around Barstow on route 66. This was in 1960 or thereabouts. It was night and there were no lights for miles around except one bare bulb outside the lone rest stop building. We had to make a potty break, I guess. Barstow, if you don’t know already, is smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert. When we debarked from the car a very hot wind was blowing. A wind that grabbed my attention. A wind that I’d never felt before and I’ll never forget the feeling.
The wind that is blowing outside our house right now here in Southeastern Arizona is just like that Mojave wind. Dry. Hot. All encompassing.
I was fooled the first two summers we were here. I was so fooled that I wanted to rename Arizona Verdizona. Because arid did not seem to apply there was so much rain and green everywhere. I would have been wrong, oh, so wrong though. Those two years were an anomaly of heavy monsoon rains. Last summer it was more like what it normally is. Unless you ask a local. They say, “It used to rain every afternoon like clockwork! I want to scream what are you talking about? Where did you live, I’d like to know? Not here!
Still I’m glad I don’t live where there’s a lot of humidity. I remember that all too well from when I was growing up in good ole Io-way.
R L Benoit - Writer/Artist 