I fell asleep as soon as I was alone in Tucson, wrapped in graceful comfort. Tired from too little sleep the night before and dazed by changing universes in less than three hours, I woke to the sound of thunder and immediately rushed up to the rooftop terrace. The electric smell that had filled the air when I had walked through a paved desert had vanished, replaced by fat raindrops and a strong breeze.
I leaned on the low wall that serves as a parapet and felt warm rain on my skin, dampening my hair, a benediction and a sacrament in this dry country.
Surrounded by mountains,jagged thugs on one side, glamorous peaks on another, with ghostly ranges to the east and the south that hinted at the Mexican border, I stared at the black-trunked mesquite trees as their leaves brightened in the rain and felt the nourishment that’s unique to Tucson. This landscape calms me and I hunger for it when I’m in lush, brightly colored places. Steeped in that peculiar peace, I think of Saint Jerome and wonder if there were any female desert mystics.
I may have found one when I made my pilgrimage to the Etherton Gallery which was filled with the photographs of a woman who had been formed within the Australian desert and found a similar home in Tucson. “Landscape shapes us,” she said, and she embraces it in her art: the mystery of desert trees, the shadowed shapes of living objects within the sand, and its clouds. An entire wall was filled with her photographs of clouds and I stood in wonder.
I’ve never walked in Tucson without catching clouds with my phone camera and there they all were, solitary in a scrap of sky, boiling in the magnificence of an approaching storm, peony-petaled in the gold of a sunset.
Usually I walk through this gallery the way I do in a museum, with a devoted appreciation and no longing, but I wanted one of those photographs with all of my heart. Many of them would fit in a corner of my backpack with room to spare and all of them had prices that were slight enough to make only a tiny dent in a credit card. But they all belonged together,a glorious obsession, and I knew that buying only one would diminish their power.
When I walked out into the heated air, the sky had turned pale, rumbles of thunder were muted by distance, and my longing for rainfall surprised me. On all of my other trips I had walked without effort to places I wanted to see but this time the heaviness of the sunlight sapped not only my energy but my impetus too. My list of destinations shrank after a couple of miles, dissolving under a thick blanket of weighted heat.
Eight years ago I’d ignored the heat and humidity of late July in New York, propelled by my personal myth, Age Doesn’t Matter. This year Tucson slapped me hard and told me, “Yes bitch. It does.” Ignoring that and pushing past it cut into reserves that demanded replenishment and I spent more time indoors than I wanted. On my last night I was in bed before seven and now, back at home, my body yearns for a nap. I hate naps, and I’m trying not to hate the monsoon that has pushed me into them.
When I return to Tucson in a few more weeks, the air will be light and arid. The heat won’t fall like an anvil and I’ll move with purpose that won’t falter. But now I know. This is a privilege that will not last and I’m coming close to a different way of being in the world.