Ocotillo

Watering humanity in the desert

The instructions were to hike a half mile further up the canyon, find a spot, and sit there quietly for about six hours. The leaders of this men’s retreat were clear not to hike too high. Our focus was on observation not achievement. After walking a while, a sitting place presented itself to me down a short slope, just above a rocky wash with an oddly mossy bottom. Odd, for being high in a Sonoran desert canyon northeast of Tucson. The retreat guides had been clear that water was something you brought, not sought, in quantities carefully explained and ensured. This desert canyon still seemed unusual. Saguaro were everywhere, but so were grasses and trees. A regionally rare year-round creek ran nearby.

Our hike was to an area high above the creek. The wash in front of my sitting place had only a tiny seep spring emerging from a basalt crack. Somewhere inside and behind were cool remnants of the last rains to wash through this narrow, rocky divide. Noonday sunlight flickered from the continuous inch-wide flow running down a mossy groove along the rocks, then disappearing thirty feet ahead into sandy ground. Under the hot sun this trickle looked like a continual lightning flash crawling across the rock. We had been warned to watch for cougars. Seeing one would be a gift. We were also warned to watch for scorpions.

A few feet below my ledge sat a barrel cactus, with a moist red cavity in its crown surrounded by inward-pointing thorns. Anything entering that entrance would not easily pull back out. A nearby prickly-pear had rows of childlike buds along the edges of its pads, the largest among all these buds flushing soft petals out towards what promised to become enormous pale orange flowerings in the coming days. Across the wash was a rocky cliff face topped by sandy soil spotted with saguaro, yucca, and other cacti I could not name, but for one which grasped my imagination so hard I had to later ask for it. It is called ocotillo. There were twenty-seven ocotillo sprouting out of the ground and rocky face I gazed on for several hours. Gazed while watching ants and flies darting around the gravel. Gazed while seeing distant falcons gyre in the canyon winds over shadows chasing down the face of Brandenburg Mountain¹. Gazed while feeling the temperature plunge and then climb twenty degrees each time clouds passed down the mountain and across my little wash.

An ocotillo² looks like a cluster of spiky javelins, each pike ending in a drooping organ covered with clusters of bright orange squid-like flowers. They only appear this way in season. When there is no moisture, an ocotillo will remain a seemingly-dead stand of long, bony, spine-covered pikes. It takes a rush of water drawn through broad flat root systems, and up the seven to fifteen foot length of each pike, to flush leaves from each pike and burst vivid color out the end in a florid springtime splash.

I spent quality time thinking of water that afternoon. How it pours down my throat. How it drips from my beard. All the ways it can seep over lips and below rocks and through spikes to shoot upwards towards the sky.

I had not planned to drive to Phoenix after this retreat. After five days in this moist Sonoran canyon, I did not feel ready to move so quickly from desert quiet to smog-soaked urban clamor. But, a newly made friend needed an airport run, and a dear old friend had told me he is living in Phoenix for a few months. So, I braced for the smog. On the last day of our retreat, after stepping a second time through the shallow creek separating the retreat grounds from my vehicle, my new friend and I loaded up my car. For the next three hours I heard his story of being a man who transitioned their gender to female six years ago, with the support of her wife, and then began re-transitioning their gender to male last fall, also with his wife’s support. All this within a body raised in the tightly-packed confines of a conservative Mormon childhood. All in a body that had fixed diesel trucks and collected guns, then sold those to pay for therapy and treatments, then more therapies and treatments. He had come to this men’s retreat to be in the company of other men ready to feel soft and mutable. Ready to change our ways of walking in the world. As two men each uncommon in our respective ways, we found solid common ground. It is always there when we look for it.

His story is not mine to tell. What I can speak to, though, is how moving it feels seeing water flow below spiked and rocky surfaces to emerge through unexpected channels, flashing fresh light in all directions.

After landing him at the airport, I found my way to a cheap, clean motel near the campus of Arizona State University. Once settled, I wanted to walk and find some cactus, a stream, a mountain, anything but asphalt. What I found instead, on my way to a nearby Whole Foods to pick up some travel food, were several strange but identical cars driving about. They were electric. Each had what appeared to be a large baby bottle top on its roof, with a fast-spinning nipple. And, each side of the vehicle had what appeared to be a large plastic toilet paper holder, with a solid plastic tube where the toilet paper should be, also vigorously spinning. These rollers and spinning nipples were the visible, eye-catching endpoints for the electrical currents running inside these mobile feats of human engineering. After staring at these strange attachments for a bit, I realized something was missing from these cars: drivers. While these cars were driving about, picking up and releasing young passengers -- not unlike any vehicle in use by someone working for Über or Lyft -- these were empty. Or, at least, their driver seats were empty. I watched them glide around, wondering if their visibly spinning nipples and rollers were functional, or just security-theater. My own new car detects vehicles and road signs with no need for visibly spinning bits.

Ten years ago, rideshare apps eliminated taxis as a business model outside of communities who choose jobs over corporate profits³. Now, AI-driven vehicles are eliminating the workers who bought a car and a smart phone, installed an app, then went to work for a rideshare company in hope of paying their bills and feeding the kids. There was nothing human about these theatrically-automated electric vehicles beyond their passengers carted from point to point in exchange for a charge against their card. No humanity at all, just algorithms, engineering, and profit. The passenger doors open and shut automatically. No humans needed at all, except those who could afford to ride The Machine.

The Machine does not accept cash.

1. Brandenburg Mountain

https://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=83683

2. Ocotillos and Hummingbirds

https://thisistucson.com/tucsonlife/10-ocotillo-facts-that-will-make-you-love-this-desert-plant-even-more/article_27f6a926-314c-11e8-abf2-1b0322c94205.html

3. Teamsters union jump into rideshare drivers' rights fight

https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/04/23/teamsters-local-25-uber-lyft-union-legislation-debate