A short non-fiction piece about growing up in the desert. This story was accepted for presentation at the Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society's International Conference in 2020.
Image Credit: ProFlower, "Arizona State Flower–Saguaro"
In Arizona, we would learn about the desert from the moment we entered first grade to the day we finished our last environmental science class. Instead of learning about pine forests or soil types, I learned about saguaro cacti and the layers engraved in the sides of mountains. I learned that the plural of cactus is not cactuses but cacti, and that even saguaros have blossoms. Some people confuse desert with dead, but any desert native would know otherwise.
Copper Ridge was a pre-K through eighth grade school in North Scottsdale, just a five-minute drive from my house in D.C. Ranch. Our neighborhood, contrary to its name, was not an actual ranch, but rather a collection of suburban gated communities. North Scottsdale was nestled at the base of a small range called Camel Back Mountain. While our mountains weren’t necessarily famous, they were beautiful. In the morning, the sun would shine between the rounded dips, casting a ray of light on our school like a signal from heaven. (My little brother and I found this hilarious––who would think school was a gift from God?) In the evening, however, our rainbow-colored sunsets would cast a glow on the mountains, turning their silhouettes a rich shade of purple. Unlike forested mountains, ours were wavy and soft like sand dunes spotted with patches of green bushes and trees.
Though it’s true it rarely rains, I need to explain to people out East that the desert is more than open spaces, dirt, and tumble weeds; it has forests, and mountains, and snow, and fruit, and so many interesting and dangerous animals.
My neighborhood had several kids my age living right down the street; I hung out with three of them during my early years at Copper Ridge. Taylor and Shay were siblings, with Shay being the older of the two. They each had dark brown hair verging on black; Taylor was about my height, but I remember Shay being at least three inches taller. Our third neighbor, Matthew, lived next door to them with his mom and two older brothers (who had graduated high school before we’d even made it to sixth grade). Like us, he was tan from life spent in the sun, and he had short, dirty blond hair.
The four of us would play in the space between their backyards on the only tree thick enough and short enough for us to climb. Because rain was a rare occurrence in Arizona, most of its trees couldn’t grow more than a couple inches thick; so, finding a tree we could actually climb on was an exciting discovery. My neighbors had found the spot long before they invited me to join, and the best spots on the higher and thicker branches had already been claimed. I hadn’t brought a blanket or anything to “set up camp” on my lower branch of the tree, which sloped just a foot off the ground, but I made myself act like it was comfortable.
The small clearing––no more than a few feet of empty space toward the back of the yard—was closer to Taylor and Shay’s house than it was to Matthew’s (though both houses were considerably close to one another). The combination of the tree and the house provided plenty of relief from the bright afternoon sun; we lay on our branches and played music from someone’s iPod until we grew bored and left.
We played there a few more times after that, but when I’d visited Taylor only a couple weeks later, she told me that we couldn’t go there anymore because the boys had encountered a rattle snake slithering beneath the tree.
After my neighbors and I had outgrown playing horse-riders with our bikes and making forts behind their house, we’d decided it would be a fun change of pace to go to the school’s public baseball fields. I had never traveled anywhere without adult supervision, and felt both nervous and very grown-up taking this trip with my friends. Matthew, Shay, and I were in second grade (though Shay was a year older than us, having been held back in kindergarten) and Taylor was in first (she’d also been held back, though a year later than her sister).
Matthew and I met at the sisters’ house around two or three that afternoon. Every building in Arizona was made of stucco or adobe and painted varying shades of orange, tan, and occasionally a dull green. The Shultz’s house was tan like Matthew’s, with two floors, a brown tiled roof, and a square patch of grass out front.
Shay decided to take Lucky with us to the school to play catch and run around. He was a small dog, around two years old, with smooth black hair; we all adored him like he was our own. The four of us stood in the kitchen––since their guests never entered through the front door––and waited for Shay to get the dog.
“All right,” Mrs. Shultz said. “Be careful, and get back before dinner.”
We all nodded and left through the kitchen’s sliding glass door, walking down a ways until we passed the neighborhood gates. The trail to the school was a block over from our cul-de-sac and across an empty street. The school was less than a ten-minute walk away, but the path was unpaved. We wove in pairs of two through the golden dirt trail, avoiding a few prickly pear cacti as we went.
We loved the desert, but not all of us knew not to mess with it. I remembered how our early elementary teachers would frequently inform us not to touch the cacti.
“They might look soft,” they said, “but if you touch one you’ll be picking needles out of your skin for a week.”
While this seemed obvious to most of us, we knew the precedent had to come from somewhere. I was in first grade when a small boy hugged the only teddy bear cactus outside the cafeteria. I don’t know if he decided to or if he was dared to do it, but I remember the teachers escorting him, sobbing and covered in snot, to the nurse’s office on the far side of campus.
I curved around a small prickly pear that jutted into the trail, and kept an eye on Lucky to make sure he did the same. Our path was lined with dark green shrubs scattered between patches of weeds and cacti; the bushes were short, but so were we. Our eyes peeked only inches above them, yet still caught sight of our destination. It seemed like a straight shot to the fields, which were maybe two minutes away.
“Let’s take a short cut,” someone said.
I had never walked to school before, so I figured I’d trust their judgement. The shortcut we took was unmarked and led us through several bushes with who-knows-what living underneath.
We’d just begun our detour and could already see the fields not too far away––but then the howling began. At first, I didn’t know what was going on, but when Matthew screamed, “Run!” my legs burst into action, carrying me alongside the others as we ran from the coyotes.
Their howling grew louder as more voices chimed in––three, four, five––I couldn’t keep track. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw their brown tails bobbing and heard the bushes rustling only five feet behind us.
The distance between us and the fields seemed to stretch longer like it would in a nightmare, yet somehow it felt like I was running faster than I ever had before. The sharp smell of dirt and bitter plants faded with the rest of my senses.
Soon, all I could do was run.
At first, I lagged in the back of the group, but felt a sick kind of relief when Matthew fell behind. Was he looking out for me? I thought. No. He was just out of breath.
“Wait for me,” he cried, though he managed to keep pace with me while Taylor and Shay ran in front of us with the dog.
We didn’t stop running when we reached the baseball fields, nor when we flew past them. We ran all the way up the hill, past the baseball parking lot and into the one closest to the school, beside the playground. We doubled over, wheezing as adrenaline gradually flowed from our bodies in puffs of air and shaking limbs. The sun was already setting, turning the lower half of the sky blood orange, but the coyotes had stopped following us when we reached the fields.
“I can’t believe you guys left me!” Matthew said.
It wasn’t entirely true since he’d managed to keep up with us, I thought, but it could have been true. Guilt pricked at my chest yet was quickly masked by shock. My legs threatened to give out beneath me.
A teacher came up to us who recognized Taylor and Shay.
“Are you all right?” she said. “What happened?”
We told her everything.
“They must’ve been after the dog,” she explained sympathetically. “Do you want me to drive you home?”
We said yes––none of us were in the mood to play––and followed her to a small black coup.
“I only have two doors,” she said, “but the rest of you can squeeze in the back.”
I don’t remember the ride home, but I do remember telling Mrs. Shultz and my own parents what had happened, and how none of them had seemed very concerned about what their children just experienced. They all said the same thing, “They were probably after the dog, not you. You’re too big for them.”
I didn’t find this very comforting, and in the years that followed, I was terrified of leaving the street without adult supervision––as if their presence could protect me from the creatures lurking in the bushes.
The desert was still a beautiful place, with beautiful mountains and flowers, but there was a darker side of it, too––one I’ve since come to respect. Looking back, I now know that the adults were right. Coyotes can grow to about fifty pounds and reach speeds of up to forty miles per hour. If they were really after us kids, they would have caught us long before we reached the fields. We must’ve disturbed their den for them to have even considered chasing Lucky with four humans surrounding him. There were plenty of rabbits, rodents, and snakes to fill their bellies, but on another day, if Lucky had been on his own, the small dog likely wouldn’t have survived.
I used to look at the desert and see a fantastical land of life, beauty, and art. Now, when I look past the glowing mountains and cloudless sky, I see danger, too. True, the desert is a hot, dry, and spacious place, but it is still full of wonder and complexity, and those are worth protecting.
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