In the desert, bite or be bitten, sting or be stung.

We used to live here.  We lived here nearly four full years.  After I lived in the Mojave Desert, I realized I could live anywhere.  Our home was at Achii Hanyo Native Fish Facility.  RW was a fish biologist for the federal government and was responsible for researching and raising thousands of endangered fish in earthen ponds every year — a job he was miraculously successful at.  Our home was in a weird chain link compound, in the middle of the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation.  The first time I saw the place, saw where we were moving to, I cried.  The house was a single-wide trailer, rat infested and foul.  It took buckets of bleach and seven coats of paint throughout to make it mildly livable.  The first improvement I made involved rippping the tin foil off all the windows.  I think RW’s boss was concerned that I would have a meltdown living there and would force RW to find a different job so that boss-man did everything he could to make and keep me happy.  My every request was granted.  Bit by bit, we pulled that place up by its bootstraps and transformed it.  It truly was a ruin of a place, a broken mess of a project, paired with an inconceivable mosquito infestation (the bogs of Alaska have nothing on this place — I can say that because I have lived in Alaska, and it’s true), pressed up against a desolate outback area with a mountainous escarpment that combed the stars at night.

It.  Never.  Rained.

I remember hopelessly watching the monsoons slide by in the hot summer months.  The humidity and heat of the valley was mind boggling — 110F, 120F, 130F for months and months.  Oh…something in me curdles remembering the heat of that place.   And when it did rain, it monsooned, and our driveway turned to impassible foot deep gumbo.  It was such a slog to drive the miles to town on awful muck that gave way to wretched washboard.  And sweating.  Always sweating.

We had a herd of javelina visit the ponds on a daily basis, a bobcat living on the end of our half mile long driveway, a wild pack of winsome coyotes, a ten foot long rattlesnake that tried to bite me on three different occasions.  We had so very many rattlesnakes.  We had a rattlesnake hibernaculum RW dug up with a backhoe while repairing a levy between ponds (he said there were hundreds of rattlers shooting off in every direction, into little holes, ugh, I still shudder at the thought of it).  We had a large, circular fish tank used for predation studies with catfish (that I used as a swimming pool when the research was completed).  We planted palm trees, cottonwoods and mesquites and the facility began to turn into an oasis in the heart of that scruffy reservation.  We had a large aviary filled with Chinese ring necked pheasant, bobwhite quail, California quail and one white winged dove I rescued named Edelweiss.  We had Farley, our beautiful desert raised bird dog.  We had a marmalade cat named Clementine.  We had a dog named Tuba who died by snakebite.  I had a lot of flip-flops.  I had a beloved 1971 Volkswagen Beetle that had been outfitted into an off-roading rig — a Baja Bug, as they call them.  She was cherry red, had a growly old engine and a loud exhaust, a mint condition original interior and I called her June.  One of my greatest regrets in life is parting with her.  In a wild act of maturity and wisdom, we sold her before we moved North.  I still want her back, to this very day.

It was a good life and at times, it was a bloody hard life.  When we talk about Arizona, we refer to it as the place where RW became a man and I became a woman.  By the time we moved, the heat of the warm months had burned me dry as dust and I was aching for the North, for harder, more defined seasons.  But there were times, in the heart of January, February and March, when the desert was the most beautiful place on earth.  The daytime temperatures were bearable, the nights were cold.  The wildflowers and cacti patches were blooming.  I could run and not risk being bitten by a snake.  Everything was cool and restful and I flourished.

One of the things I love and hate about Arizona is the strength of the sky.  In the summer, it’s unbearable.  Everything there feels burned or burning under the heat and directness of the sun.  I am a Northerner, by birth, by life, by genealogy.  I need my sunlight to come in at a slant, I need it to come in at a mild angle that buffs the edge off the power of the light — it makes daytime more bearable for my eyes and skin.  In Arizona, the light seems to pour down like ballistic cosmic flames.  It will burn the wings off birds as they fly.  If you flip a rock over on the ground, you’ll find it has tan lines.  In February, the difference in sun power between the Idaho sky and the Arizona sky is tremendous and lovely.  I enjoy it, especially after being under the weak, pale roof of winter for months.  The colors and contrast of the vegetation pop perfectly against a bluebird sky.  The sunsets are resplendent, mythical and dynamic.  Arizona, in the wonderful short month of February, is one of my favorite places to be.  That’s the honest truth.

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On this trip, the Mojave held:  the excellent company of best friends, sunsets, cholla bone hunts, a handful of great books from the naked bookseller, buckets of turquoise, long conversations that dawdled into the early morning hours, and perhaps, best of all, and most unexpected, a feeling of love for a former home and the surprise of knowing a place, even after time has passed.

  There’s a constant need in me, because I have uprooted so many times in my life, to define and delve into what it means to belong, what it means to rest in a place I know and love, with people I know and love.  It’s a funny feeling, coming home after a homecoming.  I already miss the Mojave in February.  It’s like a phantom limb of my heart…that dried up, mummified old place — wind bitten and sun scourged, rain flogged and dirt dusted.  It’s a wildly elemental place, bare and brooding, and quaking with life if you can manage to look past the crusty surface of things.  I never thought I would say it, perhaps I wasn’t ready to admit it, but I must tell you, I just love those good old Mojave Desert, February times.