On my way out of New Mexico, a little sad that I was leaving, I passed through Deming (no need to stop there ever again), then hopped back on I-10, where I was immediately stuck in traffic for an hour. It was a tractor trailer in the median, its black charred skeleton lying on its side, billowing gray smoke for a half mile. It was surrounded by a dozen police SUVs and ambulances. Total loss.
The heat was rising steadily as I made my way into Arizona, hitting coffee shops along the way that didn’t have wifi and were therefore useless. I passed several dust-storm warning signs along the highway. Move off the road. Do not put on your blinkers. Keep your feet off the brakes. Noted. I kind of wanted to see one, in the same way that I want to see a grizzly bear or mountain lion: yes, but maybe no thank you.
It’s always interesting to me how not just the landscape changes as you move from state to state but how the whole energy of a place—an entire state—can feel so different from one to the next. It’s not just the people, not just the land, but an amalgam of all things.
Arizona felt good. Not that direct channel to God that New Mexico seems to provide but a wide-open kind of feeling all the same—vast swaths of land dotted with stucco houses with Italian-style roofing.
What really caught me off guard were the saguaros. They cover entire mountains and grow like trees, like prickly, oddly-shaped, desert trees. I found a campsite at Gilbert Ray Campground, which wasn’t hard. I was the only one tent camping there. In fact, the campground is closed during the summer because it gets so hot. It was 110. "Campground closed for summer," a sign read at the self-registration booth.
Summers and winters are reversed in Arizona, I’d learn. Farmers markets and tourist season in the winter. In the summer, people tend to stay in, where it’s air-conditioned, and get their errands done early morning. A lot of homes have pools, where people swim at night because it's too hot during the day. It would be like taking a hot bath. Night swimming, an Arizona staple and also a great R.E.M. song.
So there I was with my little tent, which I pitched next to a huge saguaro that must've been 150 years old. It stood like a guardian, watching over me that night. Lizards darted between cactuses and rocks. I camped nearby two RVs, the only other campers in the park, because my new rule, established in North Carolina, is that I have to be within screaming distance of another human being each night (my dad was happy about that rule, and I suspect a few others were relieved).
That night, I had a nice, long phone conversation with a best friend from back home who I've known for 20 years. Conversations with him are always long but never feel long. He’s usually drinking when he calls, which he had been ... which put me in the spirit to break out that botanical gin again after having not touched it since my hangover in Austin a couple weeks ago. The gin, like the air, was about 100 degrees, but it helped to dull the anxiety that had crept in once it got dark, when I would say "shhh!" and pull the phone away from my ear every time I heard a noise in the wilderness that might’ve been a wild animal that wanted to attack me. Those worries vanished after a few swigs. Nature, we cool.
When it was about midnight my time, we signed off—him in his Maryland townhome and me in my sleeping bag, headlamp affixed to my head, lantern strung to the top of my tent. I lied down, ready for sleep. Instead, I sweat. I sweat for hours, restless, hot, wishing there was a pool nearby. Or really just any body of water. The expected low that night was 80, and it was probably at that point at 2 or 3 in the morning that I nodded off and got a few hours of rest. I seemed to wake up every hour, hearing coyotes yipping and howling at the big white moon overhead, which was a little farther across the sky above my tent each time I woke up. By morning, I was feeling rough. Dehydrated, dizzy. My head. Dried sweat covering my body.
But it was time to pack up camp and move on, start another day. To Saguaro National Park, to Tucson, to find a historical chapel and an herb store, and to finally make my way up to Scottsdale, to stay with another artist, Linda Harrison-Parsons. I’d met her probably 10 years ago in Maryland when I was an arts editor.
Sometimes, I walk into a guest room (and, once, a hotel) that’s so nice, I want to cry. Arriving at Linda’s house was the epitome of that. She and her husband, Rick, had given me an entire casita to myself—a bedroom, a bathroom, shower, KITCHEN, living room. And they welcomed me there for three nights. What a gift to give someone you met once and barely know. They host a lot of family and friends and have the guestbook to prove it. They're avid travelers themselves, usually by RV, and have scrapbooks of all the places they've been to. I flipped through them one night after Linda made us a big salad and chicken on the grill (too hot to use an oven in the summer). They understand what it's like to be road weary and how precious a bed and shower—just a place to decompress!—can be.
I made the most of my time there, too, working for hours on end to hit deadlines and also unpacking nearly my entire car to reorganize it (the Virgo in me was very fulfilled with both). I was productive. I had to be. Here was my chance! I made tinctures from plants I'd wildcrafted and cooked rice and beans (I brought entirely too much rice and beans with me). I wrote postcards and letters and did laundry and hung it in their backyard. (Everyone hangs their laundry outside to line dry in the southwest. Even the hotels. It was dry in about 20 minutes.)
I also wildcrafted some creosote, i.e., chaparral, on their property, which is the plant that gives desert rain its distinct scent. The desert exudes a fresh, sort of intoxicating aroma from the bush, whose volatile oils are released as the humidity rises. It smells completely different from the pungent, earthy scent of East Coast storms.
Before leaving, I wanted to take them out to dinner as a thank-you, and Rick suggested tacos in Old Town (let it be known, Diego Pops had the best fish tacos in all the lands).
String lights hung over streets filled with shops and restaurants and happy, healthy people. Thriving. Why is the East Coast so heavy and grueling and stressful? The people, the traffic, the air.
Linda and Rick were leaving for their own trip in their teardrop camper, as I headed out for mine on Monday morning, once again in the Arizona heat and heading west, but this time ready for it—with a clear head that wasn't throbbing or running lists or lacking sleep.