With every Season

It's been eight years since I moved back to Phoenix. Living in Ann Arbor, one of the most amazing things I've experienced was the changing seasons. After the Winter months of dread, cold, and snow, the Spring jumps out with daffodils and flowering trees and perfect weather. Then the Summer months come with the fireflies, picnics, Jazz at the Park, long walks, humidity, and greeeeeen, followed by the Fall with a burst of color in the leaves on the trees, the change in the air, the pumpkin patches, the apples and cider farms. I was living in "season heaven."

So, people have mentioned that Phoenix has no seasons. That it shifts from freaking hot to cool. I, too, have been guilty of thinking this, at times, when I desperately want to leave and move away to a utopic place (which I've since decided doesn't exist). But this is nonsense!

This Spring, as I sit in my hammock in February, March, and April I can smell Spring in the air. Do you have smells that bring you back? Back to a certain feeling, memory, place? For me, one of my 3 favorite smells (2 are season related) comes in and out of my backyard, as I lay and read my book, or as I walk Nerina, or as I'm laying in bed with my windows open. It's the smell of Spring...orange blossoms. There is nothing else like the sweet smell of these little orange flowers, everywhere. As I inhale, I'm immediately taken back to some fond memory, or feeling, and I am in bliss. I stop everything and inhale. I do this until I either feel lightheaded for inhaling too deeply (the exhales are no fun) or if I'm in public and I worry about what the strangers will think of me as they notice me just standing there, smelling the air. It's a bit weird, I know, but you should smell Spring...it's heaven.

Then, there's the flowers. The desert in bloom is one of the most amazing things to see. The desert explodes in intense color for only a few weeks. A desert that looks so dry and brown, and, well, deserty, is transformed into a sea of california poppies, flowering cactus, amazing colors of reds, purples, blues...
The ocotillo cactus shoots out these bright red cone-shaped flowers on each "branch" - and if you eat the flower you'll taste that it's super-sweet.


The thing about the Arizona desert is that the seasons tend to blur into each other. The warm Spring weather of 75 degrees quickly changes to the 90's, then the 100's...well before June. Then, Summer hits us full on! The air conditioners go on 24/7, tank tops, summer skirts, flip flops, sun screen, pools, hats...definitely no walking around outside for about 3 months (no Jazz in the parks for us!). Not a cloud in the sky...until the monsoons.

Which brings me to my second favorite smell of all time...the smell of the monsoons. Now, I don't think I can really describe this smell. It's just in the air. You know when the Monsoons are coming by the air. It smells. The Creosote bush (or Greasewood) puts out this smell that is the desert, to tell us that it's going to rain. And after 2 or 3 months with nothing, no rain, the smell is welcome news! Again, I sit, I inhale, I watch the rains come in, the thunderstorms, the wind, the flash floods, the dry arroyos fill up with water to become a raging river...Summer is not subtle during the monsoons. In the southern AZ deserts, where I spend most of my summer months and weekends, the once dry desert turns into Savanna...tall, green grass, flowers everywhere, rivers, cottonwood trees blooming, snakes and other desert things out looking for the new water...a desert totally alive.

So, as I sit here in April, in 90 degree weather, I can say that, what I used to think of a place void of seasons, is full of life, color and smells!