Night Walk West of the Tucson Mountains

Over the owl-call road of Grant’s Pass out of Tucson, beyond the city lights, where the saguaros can see the stars from their desert circles, the wind lives. Some nights when the pavement stays warm under the moon, tarantulas cluster along that route to slumber in the cool night air, and the ocotillo wave furiously with every gust.

If you walk out there in the dark, you’ll see the air open in front of you to let you pass, and if the wind is right and strong enough, the saguaros will sing to you, that song you can make with your breath over the top of a Coke bottle to remind you later of what they sang.

In the silence, you can eavesdrop on every thought the desert has to share, and what, I wonder, do those chatterers hear from us? Heartbeat? Breath caught in awe? Our river of blood?

A lone plane rends the sky with sound. It passes. The desert lets down its guard, settles into the depth of its stillness, and begins to speak again. Dry arroyos whisper the history of their streams, broken rocks remember their boulders, and we passersby ponder who we are.