About

I grew up in Tempe, Arizona, back when there was still breathing room between Tempe and Phoenix. (You didn’t want to breathe too deeply, though, because of the stockyards.)

Back then, Rural Road went through citrus orchards and cotton fields, and alfalfa grew across the street from my elementary school. We raced stable horses in the dry river bed and ate the fruits of cheeseplant malva that grew in the alley.

Without knowing it, I spent my childhood falling in love with the Sonoran Desert: skittering horny toads, snakes in the river bottom, delicious rainstorms, giant red walls of dust descending.

I left for the Midwest in my late teens. I came back a few years later. When I saw the mountains, I realized what had been missing.

Since then I have lived other places, always within sight of mountains. Even so, without my beloved desert I couldn’t settle. As with any other love denied, it’s absence made me restless and uneasy.

Now I have found my heart’s sweet home in a small Arizona town far from the city. Far for now, that is.

When you find your home at last, if you would have a life of joy, you must stay.