January 12th, 2006
Gallivanting
The yearly tax season jaunts have begun, in the ongoing effort to pretend my girlfriend isn’t ignoring me when she is up to her eyeballs in other people’s 1040s. So I am off to Tucson. This photo is from the trip I took there last year which was an absolute blast, so I have only the highest of expectations. The giant enormousness of the saguaros (look how tall this one is next to two average-height womyn! It must be 12 feet tall!) really blew my mind. They’re like trees, only also, because of the arms, like very tall still silent alien people. It’s creepy yet cool at the same time to be standing in the middle of a whole hillside of them.
I’m staying with my friend Earth at Saguaro Sisterland, a women’s land outside of Tucson. It’s a really neat place; two of my favorite things about it are the garden of flowering aloe plants (I didn’t know they flowered!) and the really adorable Mexican-style tiled shower.
I’m also looking forward to visiting the Desert Museum again, especially to be in the presence of the mountain lion. (Though apparently a family of mountain lions was spotted near Westwind, somehow I don’t look forward to being in their presence nearly as much.) We’re also going to do some other fun things that I can’t remember at the moment. Anyway, here’s a photo of Earth and me underneath the bottle tree in Alien’s garden at Saguaroland last year. The bottle tree is a palo verde tree, which is another type of neato Sonoran vegetation that I had never encountered before. There are lots of other kinds of cacti, like ocotillo and barrel cactus and prickly pear and giant furry chollas, but my love for the saguaro is pure and true.
