The scent of a rain, man.

I've been reading a book that M~ found at a little shop up on Mount Lemmon. The book is (so far) all about the way native people, specifically the Tohono O'odham (a.k.a. Papago), managed for centuries to live off the arid lands of the Southwest relying on only scant rainfall to produce an amazing diversity of crops. Plants you and I have never known, indigenous varietals of wheat, beans, squash, melons, you name it. Modern agricultural science has attempted to reproduce the same plants with modern hydrology, but the plants grow better with water that comes down from above, not up from below. Now we have removed so much of the ground water from this area that it may well be far too late to resuscitate the old ways, but some folks still manage to make it work. A century ago there were ten thousand acres of cultivated land out there. Now there are perhaps one hundred acres still farmed in the old ways, a mere curiosity in the face of mechanized progress.

These things have been on my mind in part from the book and in part from the current weather - the monsoon season - which has been tempestuous indeed. Yesterday I drove across town through a river that had once been Grant Road (See video #1: monsoon season in Tucson). People here talk about the way the desert smells after a rain. I did not have the time or inclination to stick my nose out the window, but this desert clearly smelled one hell of a lot like rain yesterday. M~ says it just smells like wet dust. It does, but I think there's something deep about that dust.

Since we just moved here, we're not used to the normal cycles of things yet. Back in Chicago it was increasingly difficult to identify normality - ten years there and I saw the seasonal predictability factor drop like a brick in deep water. Locals there will tell you that's the normality, but I do remember a time growing up in the Midwest when summer gave on to fall which turned to winter who set the stage for spring and so on. The last five years in Chicago I don't remember more than a weekend or two of autumn each year. The cold came fast and lingered well into April, even May. Then heat and humidity chased off the few weeks of spring conditions, and summer endured until late September. Normality? Any body's guess, but the chubby fist of GW increasingly seemed a likely culprit. Maybe because it's all the hype these days, the environment, the way we're messing up the weather. Maybe because it is true.
I know I will not miss another winter in Chicago, much as I love the snow. There we had plenty of snow, but it quickly turned to grey snot and packed ice that few landlords saw need to scrape off the walk in front of their property. Why put any actual work into the task when filthy chemistry can do a half-assed job for you? Scatter some de-icer out there and call it a day. Be thankful your tenants don't sue you when they deck out, perhaps saved from a broken wrist by the flab most of them are encased in these days. Sorry, bit of a rant, truth is we have many good and healthy friends back in Chicago. It is just a simple and unfortunate reality that the human baseline is getting dumber, lazier, and more greedy by the minute.

Today the monsoons are building up again, and I think I'll avoid driving down Grant Road. We're heading to Brooklyn Pizza for some good old cheesy grease and gluten. I don't subscribe to the %100 granola life. I can and will eat the occasional Junior Bacon Chee, and it will not kill me. I like a life of moderation, instead of daily indulgence - which seems to go hand in hand with ignorance. Let the weather indulge itself. Umbrellas are for the weak.