The first snakes to come out from hibernation in the spring of 2005 were down by the old corrals — the big dark gray rattler that lives under the old saddle shed and the smaller lighter reddish snake that stays under the fallen saguaro behind the corrals. I wasn’t expecting to see the reddish snake so I blurted out something as a greeting as I might to a person I met suddenly on the trail. The ugly sound of my human voice upset and frightened the reddish snake. The wild beings prefer silent communication with humans.
Around the middle of June I watched as the big reddish snake that lives under the house hugged the perimeter of the house to find its way from the west side of the ranch house. Tigger the old pit bull dog barked excitedly at the snake as it crossed the front yard. I called for her to come to me, and I brought her indoors. Meanwhile the snake then ran into the mastiffs on the east side of the house so I called them and all six came running. I locked them indoors with me to give the red rattlesnake time to move out of their area.
Snakes remember unpleasant encounters with humans and other predators and will try to avoid further encounters if at all possible.
Then I found a three and a half foot black masked rattler was inside Sandino and Bolee’s aviary. The snake remained motionless until I turned my back to get the macaw feed, and then it was gone.
Later as I was watering the datura plants in the clay pots under the mesquite tree, I splashed a two and a half foot long brown diamondback that I hadn’t noticed at rest in the shade under the tree. The snake moved away but didn’t rattle because it is one of the regulars in the front yard.
CHAPTER 23
Cirrus: a curl or spiral. Over mountains and pushed by high altitude winds, cirrus clouds form at twenty thousand feet; gauzy wisps of ice crystals form streamers and streaks composed of delicate white filaments or tenuous white patches and narrow bands that feather and swirl. I see them in the ancient black and white Pueblo pottery designs — the long parallel lines with hooks and convergences.
Gradually more cirrus clouds arrive and fill the sky so the Sun is visible as a shield of orange red with a rainbow around it.
Stratus: to spread out as with a blanket. Stratus clouds are low horizontal layers of light to dark gray water droplets that look like fog with little structure. Stratus clouds indicate saturation near the ground.
Cirrostratus are high thin hazy clouds that give a halo to the Sun and the Moon.
Stratocumulus clouds form white to gray layers with bands or rolls that hang low across the sky like strands of cotton. Light rain or snow may fall from them.
Cumulus: a heap or mass; a pile. Rising air that flows over mountains creates cumulus clouds. Small cumulus clouds are fair weather water-droplet clouds that are detached from each other, with sharp outlines, flat bottoms, and no taller than they are wide. The base is dark but the sunlit part is brilliant white. If there is lightning or thunder the cloud becomes a cumulonimbus. They can develop into rising forms of mounds or domes, rounded masses piled on each other swelling to become towering cumulus, from eight thousand to fifteen thousand feet high in the Southwest. In one of the ancient Pueblo stories, a wicked ka’tsina imprisoned the rain clouds in his house on a mountain-top and caused a terrible drought.
Nimbus means rain or mist.
Nimbostratus are dark gray to deep blue clouds formed from water droplets. They are rain and snow clouds that are deep and foggy with the falling precipitation; a dim light glows from within.
Cumulonimbus clouds have flat tops like anvils and voluptuous bottoms with edges that appear fuzzy from ice particles. They can roll into rows of swollen pouches that move in waves ahead of thunderstorm wind gusts.
The great heat of 2005 arrived in late June: thirty-nine consecutive days of temperatures above 100 degrees — mostly above 103 degrees.
Signs of a hot summer were written all over that earlier day on the fourteenth of March when it was already 103, and no one in Tucson had prepared their evaporative coolers yet. The heat never wavered — not even after late spring storms cooled the mountains of northern Arizona — the heat parked right over southern Arizona.
During those thirty-nine days, I spent my time caring for my eight dogs and fourteen parrots, to make sure they were kept cool and comfortable during the hottest part of the day — around four p.m.
I’d get up at dawn while the air was cooler to feed the parrots and dogs and give all of them fresh water. As soon as the heat would begin to descend, I’d bring all the dogs indoors with me; the six mastiffs fill two large rooms. They lie low in the air conditioned coolness, perfectly quiet and well-mannered lest they get evicted into the heat.
By one p.m. the temperature would be over 101 and it would be time to begin spraying the parrots so they’d be cooled as the water evaporated. By the time I finished these chores, I’d need a break.
When the break was over, it was time to wet down the parrots again. Now the big heat would descend as a blinding white hot curtain that cuts off the oxygen; I’d feel my stamina wane.
The water out of the hose was too hot to use at first, so I saved it by filling buckets and water bowls and after a while the water from the hose cooled enough for me to turn the hose on myself. I’d wet down my hat and all my clothes for evaporative cooling while I worked outside in temperatures above 101. In such intense heat, my soaking wet hat and clothes protected me.
Afterwards I would be too worn out to do much of anything but sit in the dim cool living room with the gray parrot and watch old movies on TV. My overheated brain wasn’t much good for writing or anything else.
In the early days of the heat wave I didn’t leave the property because of my concern for the parrots outdoors, and the dogs that stayed indoors with me. But finally I needed bread or dog food or parrot food and I’d venture out in the car after sundown.
The desert evenings are lovely even in the high nineties because the breeze moves across the hills and the air is dry. Rodents, reptiles, all refugees of the heat come out after sundown. After dark I managed to get my groceries to the car without them melting.
The desert hums with activity and the night calls of birds and owls; sometimes the coyotes sing out exaltations because they’ve caught something for dinner. Breezes stirred after dark and cooled everything.
I watched the planets and the stars and hoped for a message like the one I got in 1998 when the name for one of my characters came to me suddenly while I was sitting outside watching the stars. But before long I would be sleepy and go off to bed without a message.
On day nineteen of the heat wave Bill fled to his house in Albuquerque. I didn’t like to watch him suffer in the heat, so it was good he left town. Of course it was over a hundred in Albuquerque and Santa Fe too, but Tucson was 110.
As the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth day of the heat wave dawned, a voice in my head said “Tell me again — why exactly do I live here?”
PART THREE Star Beings
CHAPTER 24
I originally wanted to be a visual artist, not a writer. But at the University of New Mexico I discovered the fine arts college was blind to all but European art with its fetish for “realism” and “perspective.” I dropped the basic drawing class and majored in English but I never stopped drawing or painting with watercolor and tempera for my own pleasure. I learned to use acrylic paints in 1986 and 1987 when I painted the big mural of the giant snake on the side of the building on Stone Avenue in downtown Tucson.