Haboob

You walk outside with your recycling, and it's like standing between the ruts on Main Street at high noon in a lawless town. Eerie. The residents are hiding in their homes and businesses. Maybe they're watching from behind the shutters. Maybe they can't bear to watch. It's just you and that imposing wall of dust browning out the sky as it sweeps in from the south. Or north, east...west.

You could hide behind the recycling can, or you could hunker down in the carport. Or, smart one that you are, you could skedaddle back into the house, which you do, but only to hastily grab more recycling before brazenly walking back into that fog of dust particles. You're breathing in all the fertilizers, pesticides and natural hazards of the arid soil in this dirty old town, stirred into one huge, threatening cocktail. It's not healthy, but you can't help but feel the excitement of another haboob.

A gang of those fiends have terrorized our town this summer. Nothing can defy them. The wind picks up; the sky is sullied; and when they leave, in their wake a layer of dust over everything. Okay, maybe the word haboob makes it hard to take seriously. But, my friends, read my fingertips: a dust storm is no joke.

It just ain't.

Dust to Dust

While reading Anne of Green Gables to my daughter, I heard the wind suddenly rise. My little girl slid over to the window and pushed the blinds upward to reveal a brown-grey sky and trees that whipped toward the west. We watched this phenomenon while my husband raced outside to save some ceramic ware we had on the patio table. My daughter held the sliding glass for him, and the thick air bit her eyes, making her turn aside. Meanwhile, I was gaping at the noise and dust rushed into my waiting cavity from the open portal, which set me to smacking my mouth in distaste.

This western town is built on desert, so a powerful wind whips up the fickle soil into a restless and engulfing dust storm. It browns out the world, and throws one back into long ago images of a barren desert where this great city now stands or makes one think of cowboys hunched up in their dusters, hats down to protect their eyes on open ground while they listen to the sharp complaints of their horses.

But there's also something about a strong wind's strange howl that makes one feel as if one should be in, as Gordon Lightfoot once said, "a castle dark or a fortress strong". One might be alone with the wailings of a restless ghost, or hiding from the ragings of a blood thristy villian. Or, more pleasantly, one might be running toward one's beloved in the broad hall whose return from battle, while long desired, was improbable. The noise, especially as it thrashes the boughs of trees, is very emotive, and it stirs up the imagination and manipulates one's thoughts.

My eldest girl and I turned out the lamp, so we could sit together, watch, listen and imagine. Outside the window, it looked as it does when rain obscures the landscape with its torrential streams. But there was no rain in those artificial ground-hugging clouds - only dirt. After we had watched the wind die down and resurge a few times in the trees, I sent my girl to bed.

The storm subsided shortly after. I did not even have a chance to fear. For during most summer storms, I sit in the dark of a recliner in the living room, a sleeping child on my lap, and dread the enormous eucalyptus in our front yard, waiting for their branches to splinter in the frenzied wind onto the roof of our home. I have no doubt I will keep that anxious vigil sometime before summer is through.

This morning we found the evidence left from the previous evening's fifty mile dust storm. We went out early to eat our breakfast on the patio before the heat could slaughter that pleasure, and there was no place to set our dishes, our newspaper or our bums. Everything was layered with the grit of mother nature's whim.

De Olde Dry Bones

It's that time of year in Phoenix when the hot desert wind will whittle you down to your brittle bones. And by the time your bones are cleansed of tissue, they'll be blanched by the brutally efficient sun.

We had a 118 degree day already. I think this must sound crazy to anyone else in the US unless, of course, they keep a summer home in Death Valley. Okay, and yes, it is a dry heat - mostly. But it's so dry here that any overcast can be a relief and feel oppressive with humidity at the same time.

A friend told me a few days ago that she feels as if she has grown use to this summer heat, days of 109 - 116 degree weather for four straight months. I've been here just short of nine years, and, no, I am not used to that heat. By October, I am actually angry. And if I thought that I could make the desert feel my wrath, I'd probably wander around beating cacti, rocks and scorpions with a broom.

Dream Blog: No Bridge at the Old Ruin? What a Bunch Of Croc(odile)!

A new road had been built by-passing the old fort or Native American ruin (I couldn't decipher which it was at first). Unfortunately, somehow I ended up taking the old disused road that ran right along the old place. Part of that road was blocked by a piece of overhang that had once shadowed the front of the ruin and which was now standing perpendicular to the lie of the dirt road. This was simple to get by, and I went swiftly around it.

I didn't stop to examine the place or go in, and I don't know why. I am always drawn like a magnet to anything that reeks of age and abandoned civilization. Here, I only noticed as I drove past that the building materials had crusted into a darkish grey color, almost black, and that the building was essentially a rectangle.

After or just slightly before passing the fort - for so it must have been, being composed of discolored wood - I decided to carry my car in the palm of my hand to make the going easier. I trusted my two legs more on the uncertain terrain.

The scenery opened up, and the landscape was like so many desert environs I've seen. I walked through the sandy soil until I reached an impressive canyon quite abruptly. I gazed across it; I did not look down. Nevertheless, I knew a river lived and moved there at the bottom of its astounding depth; I could hear it.

There was no bridge.

There must have been at one time for the dirt track resumed on the opposite side of the canyon. Stupid old road. Why had I gotten lost? And the sight of this old place was decidedly lonely and eerie.

I spun around and quickly retreated. Not the way I had come but along the back of the fort, and suddenly I was accosted by water. So much water. It was shedding off of huge boulders to my side and rushing through a gorge that lay in front of me. I'd have to get across this water that had sprung up all around the ruin. The way home would not, could not, be the way I'd come. Still, the gorge was not too steep-sided. I could jump from boulder to boulder down through it and to the other side. I tensed my body for the leap, and then I spotted something below in the churning pool. It was gliding through, its long body a pale soothing green in color. My desperation increased at the sight of it, though; that crocodile was going to make the going more treacherous - deadly perhaps.

A few seconds inward debate helped me to conclude that this strange creature in an alien environment would indeed try to eat me if I splashed through that pool. Who knew how hungry it was, and that water had to be very cold. I felt that this fact would make it more aggressive somehow.

I went along a narrow ledge of rock behind the fort and jumped across the gorge to some higher boulders. My mind fast-forwarded this part, so I could get swiftly by that thing that I feared. And then I walked and walked. I came to a Catholic Church that was just concluding mass. People were streaming out the doors of the small church. I wondered at this a second and then turned to find the ranger's station for the ruin I had just journeyed through.

I went directly up to the woman there and said without preamble, "There's a crocodile in the waters by that old fort."

"A crocodile?" she repeated lamely. "I don't think so."

"Oh, yes, there is," I told her. "You better get rid of it before somebody gets hurt."

"Okay, well I guess..."

"Maybe it was somebody's exotic pet, and they let it loose there," I concluded for her.

Finally she seemed to accept that I spoke truth.

"Okay," she said, tossing her tightly braided hair back over her shoulder. "I'll tell someone and we'll get it out of there."

I nodded, satisfied....