Travels

We spent the past weekend in Tucson, Arizona, where our two college boys were playing rugby in a fundraiser tournament.  Three of the four younger kids complained daily about having to go; the fourth had her little suitcase packed days in advance and played a game called "Going to Arizona"  until the moment we walked out the door, and then we were really going to Arizona. Her enthusiasm finally infected the others that morning, and for the most part they were good traveling companions. 

The complainers finally accepted the inevitability of their fate, and so the drive was pleasant.

This trip was oriented around seeing the big boys, so we didn't do much site-seeing or hiking, but we did get a good introduction to desert life.  For short time in southeastern California, we drove through the dunes that fit the stereotypical image of deserts from cartoons and movies. I was surprised to see RVs parked at parking lot campgrounds. My husband thinks they were dune buggy people.  For a short time, we could see the wall separating California from Mexico that already exists. I also was fascinated by the enormous cattle farms that spring out of the desert. Here are these hundreds of thousands of cows packed under shelters that are basically a roof covering a feeding trough. Row after row after row of hamburger meat stood lined up with little room to move. Their water must be trucked in? They have no green fields for grazing, and no room for them to move even if there had been fields. I thought I'd been exposed to large animal farms from growing up in Indiana and living in Virginia and driving through the midwest all those years, but these are farming on a ten times greater scale. Who thinks of raising cows in the desert? Someone who has a farm that produces noxious odors that can be smelled for miles.

On the drive I read a picture book about the Saguaro cactus to the toddler, and it caught the interest of the others in the vehicle, so once we entered the Sonoran desert area, they all started to pick their favorites with their funny arms. I was fascinated by some green trees that I had never seen before that were used as landscaping plants along the highway.  The sunset Friday night as we drove was just as brilliantly hued as you would imagine a desert sunset, although it was behind us, and once the full moon rose, it provided enough light to see the forms of the cacti and further in the distance, the mountains.

We stayed at an Air Force Lodge in one of their Temporary Lodging Facilities. These facilities are designed to accommodate service members who are on temporary duty or who are preparing to PCS, but when they are empty, they are rented to active duty on leisure travel. They are a perk of military life that we discovered late in the career, but intend to make use of as much as possible. For $68 a night, we have a recently remodeled two bedroom apartment, full kitchen, pull out couch, portacrib, a safe place to park, and the commissary was right across the street. Makes traveling much more affordable.

After a breakfast from the convenience store, and a visit over coffee with the rugby players, we had a few hours for being tourists before the rugby game. Some friends had recommended the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, and although my husband wanted to just drive out to the Saguaro National Park, I was in the mood for something educational and thought the kids would enjoy it more than a hike.  When we were discussing our options, I realized how powerful personal recommendations are; I usually prefer less mediated interactions with nature, like visiting national parks, and am always looking for ways to save money, but for once, I really wanted to see this museum and could justify the cost because it was educational and something like a donation to a conservation organization. And it was a great place - museum is almost a misleading term. It was more crowded than I expected, and bigger, so that we didn't have time to see everything. It was part zoo, part botanical garden, part art museum (although we missed the art gallery to my dismay), and part natural history museum. A recreated cave was a highlight for the kids, as was a archaeology exhibit with fossils cast in concrete that they could chip away at. I loved having labels for all of the wildflowers and interesting plants. I learned the green trees were the Palo Verde, which stores chlorophyll in its bark as an adaptation to the desert climate and I know recognize by name the ocotillo and the chollo, in addition to the saguaro, the barrel, and the prickly pear cacti. I struggle to remember the names of the hardy western wildflowers that are so different from the delicate woodland ones I am a familiar with from childhood, but they were blooming in profusion.

The rugby game itself would be better forgotten. The Arizona team crushed the Notre Dame team. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and more skilled with the ball. Our team was missing six seniors who chose to go on a spring break trip, and they looked pale and pasty in the hot Arizona sun after being in the cold north all winter. They also had just started practicing a few weeks ago, but I know at least my two boys were playing on little sleep after a rough week of midterm exams that just ended. Our band of fans was dispirited and wilting. We had to revive with one price Big Gulps from the gas station next to the field, another highlight for the younger kids.

After the game, after the hot and exhausted players showered, we joined the team for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was only so-so food, but the company was good, and the couple that sponsored the charity foundation paid for the team's dinner.  I wondered if the cost of dinner depleted any funds that were made from the game. I also wondered what it might be like to receive a diagnosis that three of your four children are going to die, and then have to watch them die.  How do you go on? Yet here was this couple, smiling and laughing with all these big grown boys surrounding them, eating their food.  Perhaps the only way to continue is to turn yourself inside out and keep giving. 

The next morning we went to early Mass and were grateful that Arizona doesn't change time for daylight savings.  The visiting priest must have been a chaplain at the university because he mentioned the inspirational quotes in college classrooms as he gave a really good homily about the quote from St. Irenaeus of Lyon, "The glory of God is man alive; the life of man is a vision of God," which he illustrated with the story of Eric Liddell, of Chariots of Fire fame, (which my kids don't remember watching - correction time!) and the story of Malcolm Muggeridge's conversion after doing a story on St.Mother Teresa for the British press - BBC maybe? I knew the story that Muggeridge had converted from his Something Beautiful for God, but I don't remember hearing that after the crew filmed Mother and her sisters in the dimly lit home for the dying, a former temple to the Hindu goddess of darkness, and viewed the tape thinking nothing would show up, they discovered that on the film the sisters seemed to emanate a warm soft light that bathed the house with a glow bright enough to illuminate all the footage of them serving the poor and dying. When we got in the car and commented on what a good homily it was, all of the kids agreed that even they had listened! It helped that the priest had a deep sonorous voice and great delivery. Maybe he was a missionary.

We grabbed our bigger boys from the hotel for breakfast at the "Sunny Daze" cafe that is famous for "Sunny puffs," which turn out to be like little beignets that the waitresses bring around to everyone while waiting for pancakes and eggs. Then is was good bye to the boys who were going to mass at the Newman Center at U of A before boarding a bus and going to the Flagstaff area for some training and then more games in Phoenix for the rest of their spring break. 

On the way home, the baby cried, sad to leave her little house, while the other siblings were happy to be getting home in time for dinner and homework.  We still had time for a quick stop in Yuma to see some friends stationed there, and to give thanks that it wasn't us stationed there, even though the downtown area where we met them for a late lunch had charm and an odd vibe of old west kitschiness.  And they have made wonderful friends through bonding with the rest of the military people exiled to the base on the outskirts of town. It is so hot in the summer that it is illegal to walk dogs during the heat of the day. 

And then home: unpack, reset, ready for the next adventure. Baby is keeping her suitcase packed with toys. 

Blossoms from my Fruit Salad tree

My photo of the green branches of the Palo Verde didn't turn out so well

Studying the chollo

Bat ears

Malachite

Desert blooms

Young paleotologists

A friendly squirrel

Sleeping coyote

Saguaro love

Rugby

Not letting go

Brotherly love