My First Arizona Summer
July 1, 2010
Stewart and I have learned that farming during the summer rainy season is hard. As we bake in mid summer heat of June with temperatures soaring into a scalding 109’ some days we look forward to the relief of the first rains of July but we are also apprehensive as to what the years’ monsoon season will bring. Monsoon rains come hard and fast. They cause flooding and erosion and storms are often accompanied by hail. Too much water at one time causes tomatoes and melons to plump up too fast and split. Hail can pock squash or completely destroy crops. Heavy rains make it impossible to get tractors into the field to cultivate and soon weeds, as opportunistic as desert critters, take over in earnest. Harvesting in muddy fields is exhausting. I usually start out with shoes on, but soon go barefoot. Rubber boots become so laden with mud that it is like carrying ten-pound, slippery weights on each foot. Crocks or tennis shoes don’t even stand a chance. Bare foot is the only way, but my feet soon get sore from sliding against wet, gritty rocks hidden under the slippery mud.
My First Arizona Summer, 1978
I was seven years old in 1978 when my mom’s job with United States Customs transferred our family from Maine to the Mexican American border in Arizona. Our first house in Nogales was a tiny adobe rental with two bedrooms. “Be careful when you are playing outside because there are rattle-snakes, black-widows and tarantulas and most of the plants have sharp spines that are very painful if you touch them.” My mom warned. What? How terrifying! Somehow mosquitoes and black flies, so pesky in Maine, didn’t seem so bad. It didn’t really matter, though, I soon realized. It was impossible to play outside! I recall giving myself a pep talk “It can’t be too hot to play outside, Laurel. You are just being a baby. It can’t be too hot… It can’t be too hot!” I vividly remember repeating this out loud to myself as I opened the front door and stepped out into the blazing July afternoon. I gasped at the intense heat that caused swirls of distorted air to blur the view of the road that passed the little house. I kept walking. “It can’t be too hot, it can’t be too hot…” I stopped. The air was burning my skin. I stood for a moment as reality sunk in. “It IS too hot. How could this be? What did other kids who live here do?” A movement in the bushes caught my eye and turning, I saw a giant bumblebee. I had never seen anything like it before. It had to be two inches long! I ran back into the house to my sisters and told them to add “giant bumble bees” to the list of dangers they needed to watch out for.
Then the rains came. The monsoons were like nothing any of us had ever experienced. It became an end of the day ritual that July and August to position our chairs on the little front porch and watch the spectacle unfold. Like clockwork around 4 in the afternoon everyday, the big, clear blue Arizona sky was transformed as great thunderclouds came rolling, dark and menacing across the sky. Distant thunder warned of the drama to come and we would count “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” to gauge how close the storm was. My Mom’s best friend, who had moved with us from Maine, said that every second between a flash of lightening and its accompanying thunderclap represented one mile.
FLASH!
“One Mis…”
BOOM!
The lightening and thunder would be right on us! The rain came hard and fast and so thick you couldn’t see the road in front of the house. It would become impossible to stay dry as the rain whipped sideways under the little overhang, stinging our skin. “AHHH!” we would all scream and shout, running back into the house, laughing, soaked to the bone. After a hot, uncomfortable day, my skin would be covered in goose bumps and I would wrap myself in a blanket. This was an entirely different experience to the damp rainy days in Maine when the sky would be heavy with a gray blanket of clouds and gentle showers traded places with drizzle throughout the day. Arizona monsoons were a terrifying spectacle. Often the giant drops of these desert storms would turn to hail that would rattle on the roof and bounce like pin-pong balls off the sidewalk. Brilliant lightening streaked through the sky and someone would always shout nervously – “That one was way too close!” Thunder clapped and boomed loud – so loud you could feel it rumble though your body. The electricity would almost always go out and we would sit in the living room close together in the dim light marveling at the power of the storm while the wind whistled eerily through the cracks in the old house. Buckets were left in position to catch the leaks in the ceiling – it was pointless, at least for now, we learned, to put them away after the storm – this happens everyday. The storms never lasted long, though. Usually within a half an hour after the first drops of rain, the sky above would be bright and blue as the great thunderheads moved on. Sometimes they would circle back around for “round II” and always a brilliant rainbow – sometimes a double or triple – would follow.
After the storms passed, the usually dry, hot desert air would be thick and damp and even more uncomfortable than before. I learned that the parched sand trail behind the adobe house was actually a river – a river very unlike the ones I knew from Maine. These were washes and when the water came it flowed hard and dangerously fast, the color of chocolate milk. “Don’t play in the wash” was added to the list of Arizona dangers.
As I look to the Eastern skies this summer, I am hoping for the return of the daily pattern of soaking, life giving rains to marvel at with my own kids who have lived in this long drought their whole lives. Despite the risk to crops, I pray for rain.
Agua Linda Farm is open weekends year round. Go to www.agualindafarm.net for more information
Comments
Got something to say?