The Ice Broke

There are many dry washes in my little corner of heaven, gullies filled with cacti and wildflowers, with coyote dens and pack rat nests.  Some of them are wide enough to be used as hiking trails; the sandy ones make 100' of elevation feel ten times as high a climb.

Trees line the edges of the washes; they rarely grow taller than bushes in the middle.  Why, you may wonder?  Every once in a while the washes fill with rain water or run off from the surrounding mountains.  Some of our roads dip down and up again out of the washes.  These roads have signs warning drivers - DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED - which are regularly ignored.  The local paper delights in front page pictures of those violating the Stupid Motorist Law (yes, that is the real name).

Tucsonans really don't know what to do with water. That is why, when the temperature first breaks 100^o  the local news reports that the ice in the Rillito River has broken.

No, it doesn't make any sense at all.

First, you have to get over the redundancy of the name; Little River River is ... well..... redundant.

Then there is the fact that in 11 years of living here there has never been ice in the Rillito River bed.  Maybe frost on some of the branches of the mesquite and the creosote bushes in the dead of winter (all three days of it) but the notion of standing water in the Rillito River's bed is a fantasy.  Only during the heaviest of monsoons is there any water at all, and that raging torrent dies out as quickly as it arrives.

Still, ice is a fantasy that feels pretty good right now.  I've been busy, at mah jong and lunch with Scarlett and a nice long talk with TBG following an equally lovely sojourn-by-phone with Little Cuter and now writing to you, but it's sunny and 3 o'clock in the afternoon and the removable plastic tips melted off the ends of the clothespins and that should tell you all you need to know about the feasibility of doing anything that requires intersecting with the great out doors.

I could read - but I've read a book a day since Thursday and I'm looking for something else.  I could go to the gym, but I'd have to traverse the parking lot.  Scarlett proved that she has true Tucsonan chops this afternoon; she parked far from the restaurant's entrance .... because she found a (small) patch of shade at the other end of the lot.  I'm not willing to start sweating before my workout begins.

And so, I'll find something on Netflix and try not to feel like I'm wasting the day.  It's really too hot to do anything else.