Six lane arterials lined with strip malls. Subdivisions bordered from each other with high concrete or brick walls. Huge swaths of asphalt in front of box stores. Few things make me feel more alienated than these cookie cutter American suburbs.
Yesterday, we sat behind a big black Ford Explorer with a sticker in the window that read, “God bless our troops, especially the snipers.” We drove, the tinny little compact rental car rattling away between extended cab pickup trucks and SUVs. “Turn in here,” my Dad would say, and we’d be at yet another low row of shops, one or two independent business squeezed in between a Subway or a Ross Dress for Less or a Linens and Things.
The roads were choked with church traffic, long lines of huge cars piloted by men in white shirts with dark ties, one after the other. The windows were rolled up, the cars idling as they exited giant parking lots, wives sat in the passenger seats checking their lipstick in the rear view mirrors, another big car, another man in a white shirt behind. I was grateful when the road started to wind up into the foothills, when the houses moved further apart, when things started to change.
It was windy in Saguaro National Park and the light was flat and a little gray. The air has been so clear, from the slight rise of the park we could see all the way across the wide shallow bowl of Tucson to the mountains on the other side. The cacti stand, politely distanced from each other, arms raised to the sky. The ground is reddish and crunchy, and everything is covered in spikes.
We circled the park, admiring the big saguaros, stopping to picnic amongst birds who don’t even bother to pretend they’re afraid of humans. Then we wind back down into the suburbs and re-enter the grid. We stop for coffee at one of the low malls and I stare out the window. The decor is hodge podge anonymous, there is no sense of geography. I mentally catalog the things that might help me have a sense of place. A palm tree. A faux Spanish archway. The pale reddish brown soil in the divider strip. The rise of the mountains behind the strip mall across the street.
We get back in the car. “Turn here,” my Dad says, and we disappear.
Ah, but raise your eyes above the roof line and you have the mountains–so close you think you can touch them. And in minutes you are beyond the anomie of suburbs to the inspiring Sonoran desert. You can’t say that of everywhere.
It is all in the point of view.