Tucson, Arizona

Tucson sits at the foot of four mountain ranges. It’s a windy box of blue skies and vivid color. The people drive slowly, with their windows rolled down.
Tucson is a dry place of sunshine where your bread never molds in the summer. Families go swimming on Christmas Eve, and wreaths of chili peppers are sold on the roadside.
Tucson has a wet season that lasts a month. It is greatly anticipated, a feast time after a long fast, and when it arrives people wander outside to smell the perfume of wet creosote, the fizzing sound of the plant life drinking in the rain. Washes swell and quickly recede. People who test the swollen waters often have to be rescued from their Ford Tempos, their faces gracing the evening news.
Tucson has nights when the lightning splices the sky with aluminum color and the sound bounces off the mountain walls. Scientists study our lightning from a great tower on a peak and put photographs on postcards that tourists buy.
Tucson is made of low houses with red roofs that sit on squat green hills, streets lined with antique malls, and restaurants where the tortillas melt on your tongue.
Tucson is a place where hyenas, wild pigs of an ancient time, waddle up to your front porch and eat your flowers. It is a place where sitting on your roof you can see nothing but blue sky and low greenery and wonder why you feel so quiet inside.
My town is a jewel covered in prejudice and assumptions. It is not a dusty saloon town ornamented with cowboys. It is a brilliant sand ruby blowing in the desert wind.

Sarah T

Submitted: Friday 23rd January 2004, 12:41 AM

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