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After The Rain
The ducts blast fiery, dusty air; sweaty clothing sticks to my skin; newer cars fly past. I downshift, and then work
the plastic spray-bottle, cooling my face. This dirtbag AC will be useful where I'm headed. The plan is to spend a
few days on my favorite patch of Sonoran desert, a low mountain range near Yuma.
Snowbirds love the place-in winter. They drive shiny Jeeps to the wilderness boundary, and then break out picnic
lunches. Almost nobody likes the place in summer. There is little water. The sun is merciless and the shade thin.
Picnickers are rare.
The truck lumbers up the southbound I-17. I'm sweating like a copper pipe. It's not just the truck that's working
hard - I don't seem to handle the heat so well anymore, either. And, Jesus, my neck hurts - worse all the time; also
my low back. The knees are still OK, though. I wonder what will happen when they finally crap out, and I can no
longer lug a backpack. I'll go crazy, I think.
A hitchhiker in the northbound lane derails this train of thought. He has a scruff of grey beard, a big blue
backpack, and the steady, resolute trudge of a confirmed road man. He carries a black umbrella, wide open under the
relentless sun.
These aging solo travelers cannot be living easy lives. But these hitchhikers and riders of old bicycles are living.
And they are speaking to us. Even as you whiz by at 60 mph, you can hear them: We are still in the game.
The guy with the umbrella disappears in the rearview mirror.
Three hours later, the sky over the interstate west of Phoenix has taken on the color of a fresh bruise. The air is
heavy with moisture. When rain finally comes, it comes hard - slapping the windshield, slowing traffic, and flooding
the arroyos with what looks like a frothy mole sauce. The air sweetens. In ten minutes it's over. Not much of a
storm, the cowboys would say . . . not much, but a lot more than none.
The hitchhiker would get that joke, I'm sure. That umbrella suggests that he understands the desert. What else does
he know? Where has he been? Does he have family? A favorite writer? What's his drug of choice? Or is he sober? I'm
left to guess about these matters.
But this is certain: wherever his life is taking him, whatever else he may have endured in his travels, my brother on
the road is looking at loss. Any man of his age faces a predictable attrition. For all of us, the physical strength
and mobility we once took for granted becomes more precious as it inevitably fades. If we live long enough, we get to
lose it all, every one of us. After the rain comes drought.
It is two hours past dark when I leave pavement. The desert smells like heaven. I camp.
At dawn, the sky is mother-of-pearl tinged with raspberry juice. My neck hurts, but that's nothing new. Sunrise makes
the old mountains glow like heated iron. I strap on the backpack and walk up the nearest wash.
It is a convention to speak of the desert as the place of absence: no people, no water, and no color green. But today
I see that, after the rain, the tall naked wands of ocotillo are rushing to sprout leaves again. A green fuzz has
appeared across the land, literally overnight. And in the first 10 minutes of my walk I count 27 small pools of
rainwater on the slickrock. Most will dry up in a day or two. A few will survive the desert sun for weeks, maybe even
until the next rain.
I bend over and dip my fingers into a shallow, palm-sized puddle ringed by damp stone - it's already shrinking
under the fire of the sun. I stand up and find myself wondering where the hitchhiker is today. A smile
slips across my face. I keep walking, and do what people always do in the desert: I admire water.
Michael Wolcott is a regular columnist of InsideOutsideMag.com.
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