I'm sitting at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. I've been here for about a week. I left Toronto and got right on a plane for the desert. I've been here several times before. Half of my family has migrated out here over the last several years. But I have never been here in the summer. This is really something.
The heat here is intense. It's been above 110 all week (low to mid forties for the rest of the planet). I can't help wondering, maybe marveling, at how anyone moved out here in the nineteenth century. Or, for that matter, how any of the Native Americans lived here for millenia. I sweated through my shirt playing a quick 18 holes on a putting course yesterday. How the hell did anyone ride out here on a horse?
If not for SPF 30, lots of bottled water with ice and air conditioning in the cars and buildings this vacation would have been a sweltering nightmare.
A friend of mine claims she hiked Camelback Mountain in August last year. I'd like to believe her, but I can't even imagine being outside here for more than a few minutes at a time (unless in very close proximity to a pool).
This has me thinking. Cactus, scrub brush, red dirt baking in the summer sun, scorpions and rattlesnakes. This had to have been an extreme environment back in the old days. Makes me want to write a western. Maybe a western/horror or a western/fantasy. Maybe both.
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