Small stones and rocks were gouged out of the center of the arroyo to make a level yard for the ridiculously huge house. Boulders and rocks, the fine sand and the pebbles that formed the sandbars along the edge and middle of the arroyo to slow the erosion were gone. The gaping hole left the young mesquite tree and its roots vulnerable to flash floods.
The owner of the grotesque house could have easily afforded to buy rock and sand excavated legally from a quarry. Instead he acted out what he saw as his manifest destiny: to destroy whatever he wanted to destroy willy-nilly no matter the impact on others or himself — that’s the credo of southern Arizona, and much of the West.
I was shocked at the damage because I thought the arroyo’s proximity to the national park safeguarded it from such damage; I thought the flow of the water in the arroyo was protected by Federal water law. I am always surprised at how easily the wealthy in Pima County can flout laws intended to protect the desert terrain and groundwater. They break the law and then pay a dinky fine to the County which allows them to leave the offending damage or structure in place for a matter of a few hundred dollars. This is the reason much of Tucson looks slightly askew and a bit trashy.
When I approached the damage in the arroyo the next day, I tried to remain calm. I recalled my old neighbor, may he rest in peace, the author Edward Abbey who made famous a certain course of action in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang.
The Earth-avenging protagonist and his pals drop monkey wrenches into bulldozer gear boxes at destruction sites and unbolt power transmission towers from their pedestals. In law school they called such action “self-help” which is frowned upon by the police and the courts because it makes them irrelevant.
But instead I resort to another kind of remedy: I begin to visualize the man with the rock-moving machine as he pulls the wrong lever one morning and drops a boulder on himself. He lives alone in the huge house so he lies squashed under the rock for a good while before anyone finds him.
With that image of the man’s moisture squashed into the humble desert earth he violated, I think of rain — great long rainstorms from Lord Huracan far to the south who, once every thirty years, sends Tucson great deluges of rain that last for days and wash away trees and highway bridges and parts of mountains.
The violence of the flash flood powers the redemptive process. Over the years I’ve seen floods completely change the appearance of the big arroyo.
Just past the machine’s destruction I glanced down and found a flat stone with a deposit of sky blue turquoise in the shape of the United States and Mexico. The Earth doesn’t cease her blessings just because humans foul Her.
The first storm clouds since June 17 appeared out of the southwest. Just in time to water us thirsty things. It broke the back of the monster heat.
Another gathering of rain clouds.
Our beloved ancestors return to us as rain.
The black mountain peak above the house is veiled in fog and misty clouds in swirls of wind out of the south.
CHAPTER 32
I broke my foot on July 11, 2007, the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death. At about six a.m. I went to let the two mastiffs in the living room out. The three steps down into the living room were built incorrectly, too narrowly, and too close together to be safe. It was early, I was too lazy to turn on the light and I thought I was on the bottom step when actually I was on the middle step. My left foot took all the force and weight of my body as I fell from the middle step to the living room floor. As I went down I heard a loud sickening crack.
Early on a Friday in the summer, I knew all the doctors would be gone far away from this blast furnace, off to the cool golf courses of Mission Beach and La Jolla. At the time, the average wait time in a Tucson emergency room was four hours fifty-eight minutes.
I thought: why inflict four hours and fifty-eight minutes of the emergency room on myself while I’m suffering with a broken foot? I took two ibuprofen tablets and hobbled around to feed the dogs and parrots before the worst of the swelling and pain set in. I sat with a big cold pack on my foot and watched Sesame Street with the gray parrot.
I knew the doctors didn’t put rigid casts on broken bones in the foot; I figured that was all they’d do for me at the emergency room after four hours and fifty-eight minutes and a charge of five hundred dollars or more. So I decided I would take care of my foot myself. I called Caz and asked him to buy me a cane and one of those ugly postsurgical sandals. My health insurance doesn’t cover anything but major catastrophes anyway. I decided next week I’d let the acupuncturist work on the foot, which was completely black now; if I went this week it would frighten her.
My younger son, Caz, came and fed the dogs and parrots the next day so I could stay off my foot. I never thought about it until now but with one foot gone, the stress on the remaining foot and leg was shocking. I forgot; it had been years since I’d lost mobility; one cannot order the remaining limbs to take up the burden of the failed limb without much protest by the sore strained muscles unaccustomed to the sudden shift in weight. The cane left my hand and arm sore. I had to face the facts: if I ever lost my mobility permanently, I’d have to find someone to help me or I’d be forced to part with my beloved dogs and parrots because I could not feed or care for them properly.
The broken foot forced me to sit on the front porch and observe the sky and the gathering of clouds.
More rain
good rain
all love and gratitude to the clouds who come
from white shell houses afar.
In the swirling mist
cloud breath beings sweep
along the slopes of the dark peak.
For eleven days straight, the rain came into Sinaloa and Sonora along the Sierra Madre and the Sierra Madre Oriental fed by the twin tropical storms named Cosmo and Dalia.
Thirteen nights after I broke the bone in my left foot, it was healing nicely thanks to the benevolent energy of the Nine Lords of the Night who wished to see me back on my feet so I could continue painting their portraits, and thanks to the little needles my acupuncturist used twice a week, beginning the tenth day after my fall.
On the fourteenth day after I broke my foot, I was up watering plants in the front yard when I caught a glimpse of a piece of turquoise rock I had picked up long ago on a walk probably in the big arroyo. It was in the dirt in an old flower bed. I had to smile. This was the second time since my injury the turquoise rocks came to me. I have them to write about even if I can’t walk far, and of course I have the big rains to write about.
A few days later on a rainy Saturday, I used my special waterproof notebook paper with special waterproof pencil to sit outside on the front porch and write during the rain because a breeze would blow the raindrops onto the porch from time to time.
The following day I hobbled out to water the fig tree in its pot of dirt and lo and behold I saw a turquoise rock the size of a pea. How did the little rock get there? Was it in the soil from this hilltop or was it one of the rocks I picked up years ago and tossed into the pot? This nugget was on the ground in the back yard where the erosion is loosening the pebbles and gravel in the layers of white caliche dust. I realized then how old all this rock is, how the turquoise ledge may have been very large — as big as a mountain ridge — when it was blasted to smithereens by the big volcanic eruption millions of years ago and its turquoise was scattered all over the area.
The turquoise pieces I’ve found since I broke my foot came to me so I could keep writing about the stones even while I couldn’t walk in the big arroyo.