Sunday, January 17, 2010

Where I Came From, Where I Live



Like many people born in the midwest, I have been attracted to places that are most unlike the midwest. I grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, went to school in Bloomington, Indiana and resided in Illinois. The midwest has it charms if you look hard enough, I suppose, but I love mountains, scenic landscapes and sunny weather. Whenever I had the chance while living in the midwest, I would take long driving vacations with my now ex-husband. We would travel hundreds of miles to Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Montana to various national parks. The cornfields and flatlands would turn to the wheatfields of Kansas, then to the mountains of the Rockies. The midwest always seemed monotonously flat, green and closed in. The west looked wide-open with undulating land with a horizon that seemed to go on forever. I felt free and unfettered.

This attraction to the west and Arizona particularly started at an early age for me. My grandparents retired to Mesa, Arizona, like a lot of older folks and lived in a silver Airstream trailer. My uncle bought a lot in what was then the middle of nowhere around Scottsdale Road and Jomax Road and built his house himself brick by brick. My mother and visited him in 1968

in April when it was sunny and warm unlike the deary gray cold of spring of Indiana. We loved the unique plants and animals of Arizona in the desert-the quail, coyotes, roadrunner and javelinas that would come by his place. The turquoise in the ring that I got seemed like the sparkling blue skies of Arizona.

So when my then-husband and I got the chance to move to Arizona, we jumped on it. It meant dragging our three month baby across the country on a road trip and moving away from family, but it seemed worth it. At the time the local economy was booming, housing was cheap and the cost of living was a little less than in Illinois.

There were downsides. The summertime sucked. It was dreadfully hot and it didn't cool down at night in July and August. You get giant dust storms and violent storms in the summer. You have to drive everywhere because the city area is so spread out. More and more people moved here and the traffic got worse. Eventually the economy tanked and housing prices dropped drastically.

However, I developed an interest in astronomy and the skies are very clear if you drive 70 miles away from Phoenix. Being out in the desert at night looking at stars with the coyotes howling and occasional owls hooting is unbeatable. You can be outdoors most days or night of the year, though it may be uncomfortable in the summer. I can bike, swim or run outdoors almost any day. I have desert preserves to bike, hike and run in.

The winter to early spring days are superb. The days are warm without being too warm, it cools down at night and the sun doesn't burn your skin like it does the rest of the year. The humidity is low and it makes the sunlight seem crystal clear. Sometimes the smog clears and the mountains seem like they could be touched even though they are far away. Distant peaks sometimes have a covering of snow, a contrast to the blue grays of their rocky sides. When the sun is low, the mountains turn brilliant shades of purple and pink.

You get a weird assortment of creatures and plants. I have lizards and an occasional toad in my yard. Sometimes I nearly run over snakes on my bike. Quail run around my neighborhood and roost in my orange tree. Hawks are everywhere and hummingbirds come to my feeders. Sometimes I see coyotes and roadrunners. The cacti come in numerous and novel forms. The Saguaros seem like they have spirits with their giant size and their twisting arm shapes.

You learn to live with the searing summers. You always carry water, you seek shade wherever it is and if you exercise outdoors, you do it at ungodly early hours of the morning. You get so you can't tolerate cold and you don a sweater when it's under 80 degrees. You learn to be careful opening car doors and touching steering wheels when your car has been sitting in the sun. You only buy white cars because black cars get hotter in the sun. You sweat A LOT. If you exercise in the heat you learn how far you can push yourself before succumbing to heat exhaustion.

I guess you like whatever is different from where you grew up. Arizona seems very different from Indiana in some ways, the same in others. Indiana has cows and pigs. Arizona has dairy cows and cattle roaming on public lands, and pigs in the wild. Indiana has mostly conservative politicians, Arizona has mostly conservative politicians. People in Arizona like trucks(white of course) and guns. They also hate government and taxes. I don't remember hoosiers owning as many trucks, but then again maybe they don't have as many dirt roads to go down and animals to shoot. People in Indiana own horses, but I don't remember seeing them riding in the city streets.The big difference of course between Arizona and Indiana is that Indiana is flat and Arizona has mountains, desert and a big canyon.

I don't know if I will ever live anywhere else. Sometimes I miss bearable summers and having tall trees. But I am so dependent on sunshine that I go into a funk if I don't have it. I can't stand cold and I don't know how to drive on ice and snow anymore. The desert dirt has sunk its tentacles in me and I am stuck here.

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