Desert Calling

Deserts leave few indifferent. Climate, landscapes, and unusual fauna and flora send some reeling homeward while at the same time beckoning to others. I’m quite fond of the desert. If I were prone to reincarnation, I’d believe I had lived a previous life in one of the world’s vast collections of baked sand. Barring the tundra, must deserts share characteristics of majestically painted mountains, ragweed, the ubiquitous cacti, scorpions, coyotes, blistering hot days and windy, cool evenings. Let us not forget the American Bedouin living in aqueducts, canyons and RVs.

Tucson, Arizona, holds true to the above desert description in many ways. This great American city whispers the secrets of indigenous people, pioneers, gun slingers, and the legend of Kokopelli. All of these haunt the southwestern corridor. What separates the region from others is not the desert alone, but this desert’s ability to not dominate, but to hand the brush to its people and let them color its history, existence and future. The area’s desert claims interesting people from the past like renowned photographer Camillus Fly, and residents in the present such as eclectic bookseller Winn Bundy and our family members, Leslie and Tyler. Born or brought to the deserts of southern Arizona, these people add their story to the never ending novel, a book of relationships with one another, nature and a quest to commune with intangible things greater than life itself.