Experiences are everything. That's what I have learned from riding my bike around the metro area in which I was born, raised, and am currently existing. Phoenix, along with every other city, has its certain stigmas for certain people. But whether someone is stuck here or chooses to be here, they're here--which means we're here.
I whoosh by pedestrians and all their experiences--I glimpse through the crack in their universe's door. I share a small sliver of history with each one. He's the guy whose dog barked and chased me until the leash ran out of slack, while he gave me a look. I am the bearded white guy that rode by and made his dog start barking while he was on the phone.
She is the woman who I waited for at the drinking fountain who wished her two kids would appreciate historical sites when they obviously did not. I was the guy that mumbled a witty comment that she didn't understand and so casually fled from, grasping her children's hands.
The cacti are monumental here. It's arresting to think about the variety of humans that have come to dwell in this desert--an ecosystem so unique that the mere presence of a Saguaro cactus pinpoints your location on the globe to within a couple thousand square kilometers. These fulfill for me any conceivable purpose that a church spire might fill for another. They serve as monuments to the lands and processes that have survived millions of years only to have no choice but to allow us to depend on them.
And let's face it. Our sports history is tragic.
But there remains that relationship to my surroundings that is always so apparent. We don't exist so that our freeways are used--they exist for our use because we chose to build them. But the Saguaros watch on, weathered yet stoic, threatened yet protected. Threatened, yet they have never had a fight to fight. I am proud of them but there is nothing about them to be particularly proud of. The pride felt for the Saguaro is not ownership, it's not tribalism. I think deep down and it turns out to be a selfish pride. I'm proud they've stuck around despite me. I'm proud that we haven't yet screwed things up so badly that they're gone. I'm proud of the Saguaro because it has escaped so far.
The state symbols and Arizona's natural imagery are two different things, though there is substantial overlap. A flag is an effective mode of representation communicated from human to human. But coyotes don't know what the copper star means, and Gila monsters have never heard of Barry Goldwater. I've always wanted a tattoo of a Saguaro, but I feel like the level of permanent trauma between cactus and human is already at a pretty solid level.
And there are the hidden things. The pearls that the swine from other states are not privy to. There is a cactus in my backyard that blooms once a year for only one day before the petals shrivel and fall.
Other-wordly pods grow dark purple and I can almost see them pulsating with anticipatory energy. The annual fuse runs low and a painfully gradual explosion of white and yellow bursts forth hour upon hour. I want to call everybody I know to come appreciate the arresting sight in person, but the window is too small.
The petals have withered and fallen to the rocks by morning. There is a present feeling of grief felt at its passing, knowing that a similar moment would not occur again for a full year--and that it will be very easy to miss when it does.
But in Arizona we sing on anyway. Because there is a lot of that kind of stuff. Most of it is a lot harder to notice and appreciate upon first experience, but that's the desert. It's an acquired taste that doesn't deserve the term. I like to think of it as foolproof. Transplants swarm in from snowy cities to use the climate here while they wait for theirs to climb back up. It's nice to have something other people want.
Then again, we don't have the desert--it has us. Those of us with roots here, I think we do relate to the cacti more than we realize. A cactus survives almost in defiance of its environment. Throughout the world, life is drawn to water. The history of life centers almost completely around its use of water. Civilization was originally birthed between the convergence of two long rivers, a metaphor of femininity too perfect to be made up.
Whatever all that means, it matters little to the desert plants. They've hacked nature, as humans also get a thrill out of doing. Over the millennia, they reworked their biological systems to avoid being so dependent on water. They're still ultimately dependent on it, but they realized long ago that Mother Nature was going to be stingy with moisture in the Sonoran Desert and that it probably wouldn't change soon. What did cacti do? They developed water storage and rationing systems. What did we do? We developed reservoirs and canals. Ours just happen to be outside our bodies.
I love my home state. If I ever do leave, I'll likely return. I learn here every day--from the people I pass to the resources I use--and, because of that, my mind is my own mind from living in my own Arizona.
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