Creek Running North

Dust devils followed me all the way into Arizona. At times they would pitch their shoulders, lean toward my truck as I sped past. It was a struggle to stay in lane.

I keep seeing ghosts at roadside. Someone flagging me down, and I look and she’s not there. In Bakersfield this happened, and in Barstow and Needles. Outside Blythe, I stopped at a set of intaglio figures, old native artwork scratched into the desert pavement, people 170 feet tall atop a mesa. I stood and watched the Colorado River roll past.

In the center of one of the figures’ heads: a pile of broken brown glass.

My hosts in Tucson were generous and gracious, and their party a delight. Writers I’ve admired, offspring of late writers I’ve admired, all sitting convivially above a dry wash as the quail and coyotes sang. At last year’s party, Bill said, a rattlesnake sauntered past a group of guests on a narrow part of the patio, heading deliberately between their toes. No panic ensued. Those guests were all herpetologists.

I parked the truck at the base of a tall, hot mountain covered with such snakes — and cacti and ocotillos and woodpeckers — and hiked to the top yesterday. At a saddle atop the first canyon, a large boulder offered shade, and I accepted. The rock felt good against my back as I opened my throat and poured water down it. And listened, for some minutes, to the silence of the desert. A noisy silence: flies trying to drink from my brow, gila woodpeckers’ insistent calls, the whirring cacophony of cactus wrens.

And the flapping of wings. I looked up to see two black vultures inspecting me. Sixty miles west of here in the Cabeza Prieta, it’s a safe bet that any person they find leaning against a boulder in mid-day is fit for them to eat.

We made eye contact, and they arced away reluctantly. Not yet, I said. Not yet. Soon, far too soon. But not yet.