Sonoran Spring
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Oh God. The traffic on I-10. The lines of trucks - are they talking about me? Do they still have CB? There are very few good horse trainers. There are very few good truck drivers. Can I say that? Will they hear me on their CB’s? Are they out to get me?
I travel alone. I always have but haven’t felt OK about it until now in my sixth decade. Eating alone, going to museums alone, attending performances and concerts alone, streets fairs and tours alone. But here’s the thing - you’re never alone. People are everywhere. You sit next to them, walk next to them, eat next to them, drive down the highway next to them. Sleep almost next to them in thin walled motels. People are everywhere. And if you’ve ever traveled with someone you don’t get along with, you realize it’s a relief to be able to set yourself a bit apart from all of them. Even the nice ones. It’s a relief to be “alone” this way.
Deming GOP headquarters and Mimbres pots at the museum
I-10 makes I-25 look like my driveway in comparison. I-40 is even more crowded and chaotic. The trucks have business so I give them leeway and practice the etiquette I was taught long long ago: signal, don’t hang out in their blind spots, be patient, never flip them off.
At Deming I went to the museum in the old armory building and enjoyed the Mimbres collection. Then I checked into the Best Western and ate the chicken drumsticks and peanut butter and honey sandwich I had packed with wine from the LesCombes winery. Sweet. Too sweet.
I took off in the morning to avoid the expected afternoon wind and stopped again at Benson Arizona to visit another museum. It was a collection of railroad, mining and the settlement history. There was a tiny collection of huge mammoth bones but no mention of indigenous groups. Grumpy men sat near the doorway as if to keep them out. An attentive docent showed off the old dentist chairs, rolltop desks, and cabinets full of ephemera belonging to early residents that might be found on eBay.
I headed west, intent on finding more evidence of early history somewhere.
In Dragoon I came upon Amerind Museum, Art Gallery and Research Center by delightful accident. I took the tight turn of the exit ramp on a whim, intending to get to the Dragoon Spring and stagecoach station on the Butterfield Stage route. Within seconds of the harrowing interstate full of fast giant trucks was the narrow slow road to Dragoon. I opened the sun roof and turned up the radio.
My quest for the stagecoach stop ended at a closed gate and private ranch land. I headed back, disappointed but unwilling to trespass. The sign at the turn for Amerind noted it opened at ten and I took the turn. The broad drainage strewn with huge rounded boulders is called Texas Canyon.
The old ranch turned museum and research center contains a vast collection of Native American artifacts and contemporary native art. It also has miles of trails through the big beautiful boulders.
The wind was roaring when I reached the eastern edge of Tucson. Anxious to leave I-10 I explored the far eastern edges of the sprawl. Eventually I reached old Fort Lowell, but the wind was too fierce to allow any exploration.
I checked into my beautiful room at the Arizona Inn, designed by the same architect of the Amerind Institute, Merritt Starkweather, who favored the Mission style and dusty rose stucco.
The two days of the Tucson Book Festival at the University of Arizona went quickly. It was well-organized and full of great speakers. It was fabulous and also overwhelming, free and well-attended. I packed my schedule with sessions.
Is this thing on?
This proverbial question at presentations wasn’t asked much. Things ran remarkably smoothly considering the crowds, lines and event spaces. I attended seven sessions in two days and came away informed and inspired. I also purchased books. Note for next year: budget for the books. Maureen Dowd at Tucson Book Fest
The sessions I attended were almost all about current politics. Titles like The Dangerous Manipulators, Freedom Under Fire, Searching for the Truth, and Reconciling in Trump’s World capture the drift of the sessions. All were excellent, if not very uplifting. Random advice: You must stand up. Voting isn’t enough. There hasn’t been a good President since Madison (according to Turley.) The Federalist Society has become the GOP’s “one stop shop” for judges. Conduct and content of “free speech” are different. Fifty years of not weaponizing the Justice Department has vanished under Trump. Just stating the facts won’t work to convince the right. There are no good billionaires who’ll save us.
Most importantly: There is hope in the local.
I needed to explore the desert to recover.
I toured the Los Morteros Conservation Area in Marana and the Picture Rocks site on Spring Equinox with a guide from the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. The first is a Hohokam site featuring mortars in natural rock outcrops used to grind mesquite pods into flour. While we were walking I ordered mesquite flour that I’ve since used to make cookies and pancakes. It’s orangish in color and has a nutty flavor.
The Picture rocks site features a sun spiral with a shaft of light or dagger that points to its center at midday on the Spring equinox. We careened to the site in a caravan of cars and arrived at the Catholic retreat to watch as it happened. Tour attendees were respectful and quiet but for the memorable and not insignificant sound of feet crunching through gravel.
On another tour of the San Xavier del Bac Mission I learned about Father Kino who established it and many others. I found out that it was once a part of the Santa Fe diocese. The Spanish Gothic architecture is unique and unrivaled, even by the California missions. We were told it was once abandoned completely and that people took shelter within its walls, making fires that blackened the wall paintings that took decades to clean and restore.
The Mission Garden is located at the site of a village and another mission once located at the foot of Sentinel Peak. The site is “Tucson’s birthplace” and origin of the Tucson name, “Cuk Son” meaning something like “Black Base.” The gardens are relatively new but the site is ancient. Over 4000 years of cultivation has occurred at its location within the Santa Cruz River floodplain. The plots each demonstrate a different era in Tucson’s agricultural heritage, from Native American to Statehood.
This was one of the multiple botanical experiences I enjoyed that also included theTucson Botanical Garden and the 49 acre Tohono Chul gardens. There I watched an outdoor performance of the Mozart opera, The Secret Gardener, by Arizona Opera. Midway through the opera a woman had an apparent stroke as the tenor was singing about dying of unrequited love. She looked like she had recovered by the time the emergency team wheeled her out. The opera was never paused and many didn’t notice because it was that engaging of a performance.
My Airbnb hosts, who work at the University of Arizona in an arts and cultural capacity, generously invited me to a party for the Martha Graham dancers and a sold out performance the following night at Centennial Hall.
I also went to the Tucson Museum of Art and Tucson’s Fourth Avenue Street Fair. I took a tour of Barrio Viejo and afterwards enjoyed a margarita with the guide and several attendees. On another tour I learned about the Fort Lowell site which, as the guide suggested, reflects the entire history of Tucson and southern Arizona.
My final nights were spent at the Hotel Congress downtown. The place is character rich with vintage elements. It is also known for performances it hosts. I enjoyed jazz and flamenco shows while there. Guests are warned it is a loud hotel. In fact you have to sign something acknowledging this when you check in. Somehow I thought it was about the music, but the walls are also very thin and my room was above the kitchen.
At 10:53PM on the first night I woke to yelling. The man didn’t seem drunk. He wasn’t slurring his curses at all. They reverberated down the halls with perfect clarity as he fought with his girlfriend who pleaded with him as a little dog barked. It went on for quite a while and at one point I heard another guest asking him to be quiet. “We’ve got kids. We’re trying to sleep,” to which he responded with loud mockery. That must have been the final straw as it ended soon after that. In the morning I remarked about the “performance art” at the reception desk and was told the police took him away. Subsequent nights were much quieter. By comparison.
I explored downtown on my final day, visiting the Pima County Courthouse and the memorial to the shooting that occurred in 2011. The Courthouse visitors’ center has excellent exhibits, including a large three dimensional representation of the state showing geological and geographical features.
I headed home on the second day that the temperature reached 90 degrees. I returned with fourteen books, a stuffed javelina, mesquite flour, photographs and great memories, including visiting friends in Marana who have an owl living near their home who watched us as we marveled at the size of her nest.
The highlight of this trip was stumbling upon the Amerind Museum in Dragoon and learning about the Paquime site in Mexico at Casas Grandes. All this wasn’t enough to fully quench my thirst for the Sonoran. I plan to return again in the cool months.