Sunset Walks In The Desert

We had to come to Tucson.

Neither Tam or I really like it here. There are too many bad memories and too much bad juju around this place for us.

This has been the summer of helping elderly parents move into assisted living and all of the fun, government, bureaucratic paperwork that goes along with trying to get your family members assistance to pay their bills.

I finished up getting my mom settled in to her new facility in June, but Tam had to take her turn over most of August and the entire month of September here in Tucson, so I had to come down and join her.

For both of us it was time to take over from where our respective sisters (both rockstars dealing with this stuff) had gotten everything rolling, but, in both cases, there was still so much to do.

So: stuck in Tucson again.

Unlike the song, it’s not quite as cool as being stuck in Lodi again. At least there was a drop zone in Lodi… many great memories of skydiving there.

But, that is not what this post is supposed to be about.

Aside from the sprawling cities spreading like destructive desert wildfire, I have always loved the desert for its ability to hide away the toughest of living things in it’s cracks and crevices. The life here is so unlikely. You can look, and if you do look closely enough, there is unlikely beauty to be found in these desiccated wastes.

All of it, though, is a bit pokey and has a tendency to draw blood if you aren’t paying attention.

There is just such a variety of life out here.

So much of it is so… stabby.

Even this tiny, innocent-looking leaf is a sword-wielding little ninja.

Where the beautiful meets the savage.

I don’t know how they do it, but these tiny cacti hold on for dear life in the small spaces between solid limestone. They are tenacious little guys, and they grow so slowly out here.

These guys are my absolute favorite. The shapes they grow into are always entertaining, providing hours of the “that one looks just like…” game. I have the utmost respect for them, that they are actually able to make it at all against the odds of the climate and their particularly demanding life cycle. They grow about one foot every ten years, so these big ones have been here for a long time. The first arm usually comes in around fifty to one hundred years, and the second around another fifty years after that. If you see one like this with multiple arms, it will generally be over one hundred and fifty years old.

Just amazing.

Even the occasional critters are a bit pokey. None of them are too cuddly.

This one is just gorgeous, if not a bit bitey.

This one is rare: both cuddly and cute…

unless crossed.

But, oh, those sunset sky silhouettes…

And the sunset light over this unforgiving landscape.

But, you do have to be careful not to spend too much time out here. It is possible you might end up going a little feral and start to look like the rest of the pokey, stabby, bitey flora and fauna out here.