Epic Trip Out West, Day Forty-Six: A Rest in the Desert

Arizona is the truest desert I could have wished for when I first set sail for the west. Dry, stark, fierce, and unfriendly, it constantly battles its inhabitants for rights to a land that never should have been able to support humans. I keep spare tissue in my pocket for my frequent nosebleeds, and I dare not stand in the sun for more than five minutes without a generous lather of sunblock. The houses are flat-roofed and made of pale-colored brick, with front lawns of pebbles instead of grass, sometimes marked with a saguaro cactus or two, or little cacti with slender yellow spines and tiny flowers clustered on top. A few brave souls have even tried planting trees on their rock lawns, which perch amid the gravel as if wondering how in the world they got there. Above the suburban sprawl, a jagged line of mountains marks the distance, the subtlest shades of pink and blue.

I took it easy today: I worked on editing papers and hung out with my second cousin Mindy and her incredibly sweet nine-month-old, Maddison. I watched bits and pieces of several Hallmark movies, did a load of laundry and hung up the clothes in the backyard (they were bone-dry in thirty minutes), talked with my first-cousins-once-removed Dennis and Sheila, and ate steak for supper for the second day in a row. Tomorrow, perhaps we’ll go out exploring, and Mindy has promised me a game of bowling sometime before I move on. Welcome to Tucson.

~Lisa Shafter

Money spent today: $0

Leeway so far: $4.73 (Even though this leeway will no doubt vanished very soon, I’m glad not to be in the hole anymore.)