Hi Girls,

Just today, I ran across a copy of a letter I'd written in August of 1995 soon after we'd moved here to Tucson. It was one of the hottest summers on record for this area. I thought you might enjoy a few paragraphs from it.

The felt tip drawing of a saguaro cactus above, was a doodle that I'd made down near my signature on the letter.

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Imagine waking up in a place where the contrast between life and death is a stark, everyday reality, where daytime temperatures can soar above 120°, where it seems everything can prick, scratch, or poison you. Imagine living in a place where even the plants have names like shin-dagger agave, cat's claw, devil's claw, and the jumping cholla cactus is so-named because it seems to jump right off the bush onto you.

This is a land where the insects have names like assassin bug, and there are more than 20 kinds of scorpion (one, deadly), to say nothing of black widow and brown recluse spiders. We have 8 varieties of rattlesnake, coral snakes, and the Gila Monster, one of only two poisonous lizards in the world, lives here. In our neighborhood, even the street names such as, Thornberry, Thornapple, and Silverthorn, sound inhospitable. Welcome to Tucson! Welcome to the Sonoran Desert!

On the other hand, the Sonoran Desert is filled with life. Morning, noon, and evening, we watch coveys of Gambel quail with their distinctive topknots compete with mourning doves, rosy finches, and pyrrhuloxia to get their share of the scattered bird seed in our yard. It's difficult to step out any of our doors without seeing cottontails or huge jackrabbits scurrying away throught the cactus and mesquite. Our near neighbors also include several varieties of hummingbirds, horned toads, coyotes, and deer.

Right up from the desert floor rise lush "sky islands," biologically diverse mountain tops isolated from one another by vast expanses of desert. On some of them you can drive from "Mexico to Canada" in an hour--from the cactus of the desert floor to firs, spruces, and aspens at 10,000 feet, the home of bears, elk, squirrels, and mountain sheep.