Summer's Arrival

Anticipating Another Season in the Sun

After our arrival in Phoenix some fifteen years ago, I remember having friends and relatives from Seattle to California ask "how on earth are you going to survive those beastly Arizona summers?"

The truth of the matter is we didn't really know. But after surviving many years in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska with 9-10 months of titanium gray skies or annual perma-winters, we knew we'd just adapt.

It did take a few years, but now as the first thermals of summer hit and I walk up a jetway at Sky Harbor, I'll hear visitors ask each other "how do these people stand this?". As they are asking their rhetorical question, the lizard in me is feeling the same heat and saying "Yes!"

Sadly, the lovely shoulder seasons that transition Arizona from our beautiful winters to our blistering summers, and back, are far too short.

Moon Over Sedona's Redrocks

But, the shoulder is precisely where we are now. This means the sage is blooming, native trees are ablaze in yellow, prickly pears are flowering, and the tops of the saguaro's are popping. Mornings are still lovely, evenings are a joy, but the hours in between are starting to heat up.

The streets are more spacious as a whole bunch of ASU's 65,000 students have started their journey's home, and our beloved "Snowbirds" have long since returned to northern climes to start seasonal mowing of their big green lawns.

The escapee's miss more than the heat. They miss our calm, slow, HOT, summers. They miss disgusting dust storms, loud buzzing insects, near radioactive parking lots, and the other wordly magic of our dazzling summer monsoons.

So, wherever you call home, please join me in my rapturous anticipation of the first ears of peaches and cream corn, fireworks on the fourth, the whirr of ice cream churning, lots of perfect margarita's, and maybe a harvest moon!

All the best from Roadboy!

Raodboy's Travels © 2010