It’s raining in southern Arizona. I’m here to host my beginner backpacking trips/hiking and writing retreats but I added some time in before then, past me, months ago when I was buying my plane ticket, I thought I’m probably going to want to get the hell out of Alaska and gave myself some extra days down here before my trips start. I love Alaska winter and I did want to get the hell out of there- the lack of bright light and geographic isolation from everything and everyone else on earth creeps into my bones slowly, like a sort of anemia, and then one day I feel like I’m suffocating, like I’m a squishmallow that’s been stuffed into a fishbowl who also has no circadian rhythm because the world is just various shades of dim and none of that sweet sweet UV that banishes shadows, and also ghosts.
I flew to Phoenix and picked up my Turo car and drove through the rainy, wind-lashed dark to Tucson, where my friend Kacey (who is also my ex) had left the light on and hidden a key for me at the little house they share with their current partner (they were both out of town). Their house is old, in that crumbly Tucson way that is incredibly charming, and that is becoming increasingly hard to find in cities where everything has been remodeled- old windows, old gas stove, old bathtub, old arched entryways. Hardly any outlets- when I’m in houses like that I always try and imagine what people were plugging in back in the day- a lamp, a radio, and that’s it? Literally nothing else? Kacey and Ali’s décor was true to the vibe- old glass bottles on the windowsill, gathering the morning light, dried flowers, stacks of dusty books, interesting looking rocks, taxidermied bird wings. In back was a little dirt yard with a weathered board fence, couches around a firepit, twinkly lights.