July, July 30th, 2010
Dateline: Tucson, AZ

They say there are two ways to die in the desert. Dehydration. And drowning. Monsoon season here now so the latter is the greater risk today anyway. I was once on my way back from Rocky Point headed north from Lukeville through Organ Pipe National Monument. Far to the east I could see clouds massive clouds; it was raining somewhere. But where I was the sun, the sole occupant of a piercingly blue sky, aimed its relentless searchlight at the utterly dry arroyo over which the road now led. Just as I headed across the bridge, I chanced to glance upstream. There, some quarter of a mile up, at the edge of where the parched river bed bent slightly north and out of sight, a wall of water came suddenly tumbling down the arroyo. Not a trickle. Not a gentle swelling stream. No. It was a solid wall - three feet high - of roiling water! I stopped in the middle of the bridge (kids, do not try this at home) and watched in reckless amazement as the arroyo filled, from bank to bank and then some, with the tumbling, crashing water. Where there had been no water at all, suddenly there was a full-blown river carrying in its powerful movement the refuse of life in these desert borderlands - backpacks and water jugs, tires and family Bibles, wallets and clothing, make-up bags and diapers. Tumbling one over the other, all swept up in one great river that, only moments ago, seemingly hadn't existed. But it had. It does.