by Carol St. John

Water, cool, clear water,” sang the Sons of the Pioneers. As the heat heats up, I hear myself singing that old tune with a new appreciation, one beyond the innocent, humid, eastern summers of my youth. Now, like a tomato left to wither on a counter top, my southwestern skin craves H2O and I have become one with the cowboys lusting for water. Perhaps that is why I paint with transparent watercolors in the summer-- the craving for a reprieve from the density of the heat, a counterpoint to dry skin and dry eyes. Cool, (water) clear, (water), water.

photo by Joseph Birkett

I’ve learned that the passage from spring to the glorious monsoon season is much like the long wait from February to May back in New England, when I thought flowers would forget how to bloom. Now, here in the Southwest, the time of discomfort is shorter but just as real. In April, first the heat feels really good.

Healing even. In May it grows tired, raspy, and then the sounds of dry swirling dust and cranky crickets take over. June wears on you, demanding great gulps of water and afternoon siestas. Rain becomes only a memory until the whole world seems to crave that plip-plopping sound on the roof, the aromatic aftermath and the restoration of agua’s life-giving sweetness.

Water. It is the only element that has three faces; ice, steam and liquid. It gives and it takes away. It blesses and it punishes. Its beauty can emanate peace; its fury - fear. It provides easy avenues to enter landscapes and then just as easily washes them away. What a diverse and marvelous contribution it makes to our lives. And, of course, it should. We are all water babies, conceived in, fashioned by and composed of water. (72%.)

Deserts can seem formidable for water sprites, but our desert, the great Sonoran Desert has many hidden surprises. Like the aquifer that lies beneath Tubac’s crusty surface.