A short distance past the Gila Monster Mine I caught a flash of turquoise out of the corner of my eye. I picked up a piece of orange quartzite the size of my fist with a streak of turquoise across its face. This was quite a distance from the big arroyo where I imagined the ledge of turquoise to be so it served as a reminder: turquoise may be found anywhere in these hills where there may be more than one turquoise ledge.
In the arroyo I noticed a small rectangular turquoise cabochon of a very nice sky blue and green. I brought it home but I lost it for a while under papers and notes on my writing desk. When I located it again, I took a closer look at it, and I realized one side resembled the turquoise mask of Tlaloc.
I picked up the trash I found too — a faded scrap of a Starbucks wrapper, a piece of brittle weathered gray duct tape, a shard of a green bottle and a large shard from a clear glass bottle. I am intrigued to see the items that somehow find their way and travel down the big arroyo.
A few days later, I set out on my walk on the trail just after six a.m. The previous day’s rain wasn’t as heavy as three weeks earlier when all the erosion occurred on the walking trail and my driveway, but it was just what the new foliage from the last rainfall needed in order to go on blossoming — the mesquites and the catsclaw bushes all are in bloom a second time in just three months. The breeze was cool and smelled faintly of the flowers and the camphor of the greasewood. Some newcomers complain that the desert “has no seasons,” but the desert has many seasons; each time it rains, we have another springtime.
At the point in the big arroyo where the basalt boulders leave scarcely enough space for a horse and rider to pass, the trail goes up and through the remains of an ancient tumult of stones, pebbles and sand. Stones the size of bread loaves and cantaloupes formed a long narrow ribbon along the sandbars. In the sandbar I found a piece of turquoise rock — the second such since the flood in the big arroyo had moved so much sand and stone.
A light, brief rain from the previous day had washed off the mud left by the floodwater and exposed the turquoise stone which was about the size of the end of my thumb. I saw it so plainly there on the narrow ribbon of sandbar above the big gray basalt boulders. Its color was so bright and intense in the morning sun and leftover dampness of the night shower; the rain brings out the intense turquoise blue. The writing I saw on the stone was in turquoise threads. As soon as my eyes fell on the markings, my brain registered both “turquoise” and “writing” at the same time.
I recalled reading that the Chinese got their written language from sacred stones from a mountain somewhere. The “writings” or natural marks on the stones gave the Chinese the idea of a system of marks and drawings that would send messages. I imagined them poring over the stones with the markings or “writings,” certain these were messages from the supernatural world, interpreting each mark, each figure before they copied the marks and kept the stones themselves as a reference once the message of the stone was deciphered. The turquoise stone I found read thus: a flying bird, a rain cloud over Africa.
CHAPTER 30
I keep other rocks I find on my walks, not just the turquoise. On my writing desk today, I have a piece of quartz crystal with smooth faces that reflect sunlight. I like to keep favorite rocks near me when I’m writing although they barely leave me any space to work. They catch dust and spiders’ webs.
The small spiders in my studio leave tiny fluffy white web strings and balls all over the faces and chests of the Star Being portraits. I don’t like to disturb the spiders by dusting the portraits. It is possible to use a lamb’s wool duster to remove the spiders’ webs and eggs without harm but the spiders are forced to relocate.
Good news. The wild bees that water at the small tank by the cistern pool have returned in their usual numbers. I was afraid they might have lost their home to the real estate developers as the others had.
I ran outdoors as soon as I heard the mastiffs barking excitedly as they do when they have some poor creature cornered. Slow moving tortoises, Gila monsters and toads are at a disadvantage with the mastiffs. A big Gila monster had bitten Lyon on the mouth, and his lip was swelling and bloody; it had to bite and hang onto the the mastiff’s lip to grind in the poison because the lizards don’t inject with fangs like rattlers do. The coral pink and shiny black lizard lay motionless and I saw blood so I thought it was dead. How could it survive the jaws of a mastiff? I felt very badly about the beautiful lizard.
I took the mastiffs indoors and immediately came back out to bury the remains of the lizard, but when I got back to the site, the Gila monster was gone. I walked around and searched carefully under bushes in case it had crawled away to die but I found no trace of the creature in the dogs’ yard. I felt much better knowing it had escaped. I don’t know if it lived or died later but at least it was able to escape on its own.
I found an immature Gila monster in the front yard some years ago; I hope this wasn’t the one that got mauled this morning. I feel badly that I didn’t get out there faster to help the lizard escape.
Dogs have evolved with loose skin on their heads and necks to help them survive snakebites. The snake fangs catch in the loose skin and inject the venom under the skin but not in the muscle where greater harm is likely to occur. If a dog weighs thirty-five pounds or more and is in good health, a snakebite to the head or neck will usually not kill it.
Gila monster venom affects dogs much differently than rattlesnake venom. It acts as a sedative, and a bitten dog will seem to have little pain. The rattlesnake venom is so painful that the dog will pant and pace restlessly. Gila monster venom is prescribed in small amounts and injected to control diabetes that can’t be controlled otherwise.
Lyon is a seven year old purebred English mastiff. Over the years he appears to have developed a partial immunity to rattlesnake venom from frequent warning bites on his head and snout. He’s already been bitten twice by rattlers in 2007.
I kept a little blue notebook I titled “Rain 2007.” I have a number of notebooks titled “Rain” and a year; but open them and they are blank except for one or two pages with writing. Sometimes this is because it only rained once or twice in six months and I lost interest and lost track of the notebook.
Maybe the weather is about to change. The rattlesnakes sense subtle shifts in barometric pressure so they move and change locations days before a storm arrives in Tucson.
This is why I can’t travel anymore: well-meaning house-sitters removed the rattlesnakes that customarily lounged in the coolness of my front porch by the pots of geraniums and datura. One of the twin rattlers was removed and relocated — not far, I hope. A tenth of a mile is still within a snake’s range. That was the distance the firemen took the big brown rattler last year when the other house-sitter called them.
After I returned, I noticed the snakes out by the macaw aviaries seemed much more jumpy around me. The rattler with the big head was coiled next to the small blue plastic water tub under the small mesquite tree. But he abruptly changed position and put his back to me. Another rattler by the old macaw cage hurried away when I came with the hose. They didn’t like the house-sitters.
I found a small owl feather with an amazing intricate pattern of small white circles mixed into the bands of silver and pale beige. Was it a silvery white barn owl or a great horned owl? Perhaps a greeting from the owls that hunt around my house at night. I put the feather in the shade cloth but when I came back it was gone. The breeze took it or it went with the breeze.