Desert Rain

The smell of a desert after a rain fills the soul with an inexpressible, unfathomable hope.  I wish words could give it justice.  I only know of this experience in one desert landscape: Tucson, AZ.  Months without a single drop of rain makes the ground impermeable to the first drops of what Arizonans call the “monsoon season.”  The ground, deprived of water for so long, cannot accept the love that the heavens bring.  Raindrops bounce off the surface of the soil, like a tennis ball bouncing off the court.  This phenomenon will go on for long minutes, maybe hours, until the ground can no longer ward off the overwhelming waters of the skies.  At some point the soil has to accept the waters, and eventually with steady persistence, the water of the heavens finds its way into the soul of the desert. 

When I was 22, I moved to Tucson.  I first arrived in Tucson directly after one such monsoon rain.  Stepping out of the airport doors, I was greeted by an oppressive humidity with which I was all too familiar.  Having been acclimated to the humidity of the Southeastern U.S., it felt like home, and, so understandably I was quite confused.  I had been warned of the “dry heat” of the desert, the low humidity that makes you drink water like a fish, and the heat of a sun that makes you believe in the powerful wrath of God.  I was not expecting this.  When I arrived in the house, where I was to live for a year, the Santa Cruz River out back was flowing quickly with waters, like NC Mountain white water rapids.  There was greenery, there were flowers, and there was life.

The waters and humidity, however, did not last long.  Within days I was drying out like a towel left on the line too long and the river vanished like a ghost into the Southern horizon.  All that was left of the river’s existence was an indentation on the land and a sandy river bottom that suggested memories of a river that once flowed freely and vigorously.   Most of the year I discovered the riverbed served many other purposes outside of transporting water from one place of high elevation to another.  It served as a greenway on which athletes trained. It served as a dog park.  It even served as a horse training facility for one particularly suave black cowboy, who liked to sweet talk the ladies passing by on the path adjacent to the river.  The riverbed also served as a migrant transport corridor.  Border patrol was known from time to time to fly helicopters over the riverbed in search of migrants crossing the border.  One night on the path by the riverbed a Border Patrol helicopter slowed over my head to do, what I can only assume, was a quick profile.  However, the PBR and the jorts must have tipped them off.  “Nope just a hipster,” they must have thought as they continued on their Northern journey along the riverbed. Surely the riverbed was always lively- both with and without its waters. 

The dryness of the Tucson desert births only the greatest and most tenacious of survivors, many of which have spines.  Cacti are prolific and only mesquite trees rival them on the landscape.  Spines are the ‘stuff’ of survivors because they conserve water.  Spines are modified leaves designed to reduce surface area and loss of water through evapotranspiration.  Cacti spines, however, also serve as a reproduction mechanism and a defense against animals, not excluding the most unassuming of these – humans.  The great saguaro cacti of the Tucson desert are the tamer of her cacti brethren.  Jumping cholla cacti are also omnipresent.  Although cholla do not actually “jump” per say, they have readily detachable bits that hitch rides on hikers and other animals to aid in vegetative propagation.  A painful and proactive flora that loves the company of strangers.

Cacti spines and the desert soil are testaments to the power of water and the spirits of her offspring – life.  Everything about the desert screams paranoia and distrust.  The desert is not too dissimilar from a distrustful soul that has been tortured by life’s greatest tragedies. The monsoon season is a large reason why the Sonoran desert of Tucson is so beautiful and unique.  The quantity of rainfall and its timing define the landscape.  It is the reason for the Saguaro cacti and the mesquite.  Without it, the Sonoran desert is a nameless faceless and empty place.  As if water were love, water gives the Sonoran desert its identity and fate.  It defines its being and its going. 

I find myself at times feeling desert-like.  I suppose I feel this now; hence, why I write today.  There are times I feel such a great sadness about our world that I don’t have the energy to let any love into my heart.  There are times I get angry at myself.  There are times I get angry at the injustice that life deals those I love.  There are times that I just don’t want to be anything but a hard surface on which all interaction and emotion bounces.  These are times that I envy the desert soil.

Sometimes I am a desert soil.  I think we all have this mode of action- or inaction rather.  It’s as if we shut down, and I believe it’s as real and human as the human-like stature of a Saguaro cacti.  However, I have come to realize that lasting too long in this state is also an injustice of a different kind.  The universe put me together just in this way for some purpose.  At the very least, I serve an ecological niche or else I would not be here.  I have purpose.  I have soul.  I am.  And so, I will be.  No.  It is true. My species does not depend on whether I am here or not.  But it would be a great waste of energy and the way this universe put me together to be a nameless desert soil.  Although I am not special, I am unique.  I am defined by who I am every time I accept love, every time I accept the waters of this life.  If the desert soils of Tucson’s Sonoran desert were to reject the waters of this coming monsoon season, it would cease to be a Sonoran desert.  I am the love I receive.  We all are. 

And so friends, I say, be a desert soil if you have to be, but just for a moment.  Be still, but just for a short while.  For we have love to give you and life to share.  We carry water for your parched earth.  May it be together that we make the species of our better tomorrow.