I Love This Place

I hear myself saying that a lot. And then I realize, Wow, I do. I love Tucson, (and Vail), Arizona. It still surprises me that I really live here and that I'm enjoying it so much.

When the kids and I came out here to live with Joel temporarily in the summer of 2010, it was summer in Tucson (think 110 degrees regularly) and it was not permanent. Also, we learned the foibles of apartment living with our bellowing beagle, Daisy: being land-locked, for one. She could never be left alone lest she hear a creek from the neighbor's floor boards and begin her incessant barking binge. Our neighbors informed us pretty quickly about that issue. She's always been a house-dog, un-used to hearing the voices and movements of others in our absence.

So now, we're renting a house in Vail. We have the best of both worlds: small town living at the foot of a mountain, surrounded by cattle range and more mountains, unobstructed by anything but the silhouette of a saguaro or an Italian cypress. We regularly spy the sharply contrasting coal and russet cattle grazing on dry grasses in the endless fields of cacti; and even the occasional coyotes with tawny, dust-colored coats trotting in twos across the sun-baked roads, so much like domestic dogs chiefs of themselves. And then, we listen to the twilight lowing of those longhorns and the timed yip-yap-yowling of our canine neighbors on their nightly hunt for food and fun.

On weekdays, Grace and I head into Tucson. Her school and her new community theater class is right near the heart of the city. Each morning and afternoon we see joggers, runners (think Kenyan speeds), walkers, speed walkers, walkers with babies and baby strollers, and besides all those walkers, are the ubiquitous bikers of Tucson. There are so many cyclists in this city, they have lanes on all the roads exclusively for them. And for all  those walkers? They have special crossing lights in addition to the normal "Walk/Don't Walk" signs; all they have to do is push a button, the traffic lights blink yellow, then turn red for the pedestrian to make their way across safely and conveniently. All public schools, even in the suburbs, have portable 15mph signs posted when school is in the first or last hour of session, and all cars obey the slower speed limits. I love this town!

In Warren, I felt so conspicuous in my Prius--like an alien in a spacecraft, so unusual was my environmentally conscious automotive choice. Here in Tucson, my car has found its people. They come in all colors and dress up in bumper stickers that have sayings like: "Keep Tucson Kind," "Whose Your Farmer?" "Tolerance" (with applicable religious symbols), "Create Art Not War," "Zombie Outbreak Response Team," and "Green Cabs for Blue Skies" (the taxi cabs are little bright green Priuses{I can't call them Prii}).

We moved here to be with Joel. But this place is chock-full of artists, poets, painters, musicians, students (and professors) of the Univerisity of Arizona; I love college towns and college students. I will never stop being a student myself and to have them so near is inspiring and makes me think of Nathan, too. This is the place for me.