Trip to Mexico--Day 1, Santa Fe to Tucson

With great excitement me, my wife, and three friends left for Mexico early in the morning. There's not a great deal to say about the beginning of such a driving trip. I-25 through New Mexico does not hold secrets of great interest. There are certainly more boring drives than I-25 through the northern part of the state but south of Albuquerque is a fairly grim drive. Nonetheless, the thrill of the upcoming 10 days got us through this portion of the trip with flying colors. I imagine the road would be far less tolerable if, say, God hated your soul so much to force you into a regular Socorro-Truth or Consequences commute.

It's funny how a trip can change your outlook on life. I am a very political person as any reader of this blog knows. But as soon as I hit the road, my interest in such subjects abates quickly. It's not as if I become actively disinterested in the rest of the world. But the sights, sounds, and smells that you experience simply overwhelm average worldly concerns. Even when traveling amongst the poorest of the poor, which did not happen in Mexico, I feel a great sympathy for their plight and a need to help them improve their lot, but it's not depressing because one realizes that even among those who do not have great economic fortune, there is a great deal of life and a great deal to learn from them. Even baseball fades from my desire. Driving through Tucson that afternoon I saw some baseball fields and felt a certain longing to go to Spring Training. But it faded real fast.

As I mentioned the drive through southern New Mexico is pretty boring. One odd thing though. We took a shortcut from Hatch to Deming in southern NM. That road was nearly choked with cars with Midwestern license plates. Were they snowbirds returning to Iowa and South Dakota early? Was there a mass migration to Deming? God knows they could not have come to visit that area of New Mexico as there is approximately nothing to see on that highway.

Part of the reason for the relative disinterest in the drive is the monotony of the Chihuahuan Desert, which starts just south of Albuquerque and continues for several hundred miles into Mexico. It's just not a particularly biological diverse place. Even the cactus there is pretty uninteresting. This continues all the way into eastern Arizona. But wow! when you hit the Sonoran Desert you know it. The most striking sign is the beautiful Saguaro cactus. But prickly pear fields dominate the ground in a way that they don't in the Chihuahuan Desert. There seem to be more kinds of grass and other plants as well. It's simply beautiful and unique. The place is alive with interesting plant life. Why there is such a significant difference in the two deserts I do not know. They have fairly similar human histories, at least since whites came to the area. Both have been changed a great deal by intensive cattle grazing. If anything, Arizona's deserts have suffered greater damage from humans because of the enormous population growth in the area. And both the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts in Mexico have also been subjected to cattle. I guess the Sonoran Desert is just one of the Earth's unique ecosystems. It's certainly the most stunning desert I have ever visited. Maybe it is the most beautiful on Earth.

That stunning beauty is preserved nicely in Saguaro National Park, just outside of Tucson. I won't go into the park in great detail--more Saguaro, more of the other beautiful flowers and cactus that dominate southern Arizona. But the park is in some peril due to its proximity to expanding Tucson. On the road we took the park, new and expensive houses dominated the landscape more than the Saguaros. The Saguaros are thick enough that there is no way that several do not get taken out for each trophy home that goes up. I don't know what's more damaging to this unique species, the homes or the rednecks who use them for target practice. Either way, it is not a species on a road to long-term health in the United States. No question that it will remain in large numbers within the park but to create isolated populations is certainly not a positive development.

That evening we went to a Mexican restaurant in Tucson. There were some kids playing around with walkie-talkies just outside of the restaurant. As it happened, we traveled in two trucks and brought some 2-way radios to communicate between the autos. One of our companions brought his radio in and began to mess with the kids a little bit. This greatly amused their parents who told them things that would scare the kids. This was all highly entertaining as the kids were a little freaked out. Then it got a little weird. My friend began talking to them in Spanish some. This completely confused the kids. The oldest, who was probably 7 or 8, came up to him and said (probably a slight paraphrase), "This is America. We speak English here." This in a Mexican restaurant in southern Arizona. As you can imagine that caught us a bit offguard. At that age, you only learn those kind of things from parents. It was a little depressing and sad. But then again, I guess this gave us a little insight into the kind of people who actually vote for Jon Kyl.