I came back from my Arizona vacation with non-lethal covid.  This was better, however, than returning with a non-lethal rattlesnake bite.  (I’m always looking on the bright side of things.)  Other than boxes Tylenol and Mucinex, the covid didn’t cost me anything.  In fact, it probably saved me money since I’ve been quarantined for the last few days and unable to go out to restaurants or stores.  

The reason I’m thinking about rattlesnake bites is because of the naturalist at the Desert Museum (outside Tucson) who gave a presentation on venomous reptiles.  Arizona has 13 kinds of rattlesnakes, leading the nation in that department.  We were warned, while in Arizona, not to stick our hands, feet, or anything else in a place we couldn’t see. The presenter assured us, however, that rattlesnakes were more afraid  of us than we were of them. “Just don’t surprise them, or corner them.”  

Of course, this is no different than the advice I’ve tried to follow while working around bishops and superintendents.  

If you do get bit by a rattlesnake, don’t try to suck out the venom or put on a tourniquet.  Neither act will do any good. Instead, you will need to spend your time and energy doing two things that are more urgent:  1) getting to a hospital and 2) getting a second job so you can pay for the anti-venom.  The naturalist told us that we probably had two or three hours to get to a medical facility, so no need to panic.  She also told us that we would be luckier to get bitten in Arizona than Rhode Island.  I can’t figure out why any sensible rattlesnake would want to live in Rhode Island, but God's critters are always getting themselves in places that don't make sense. In Arizona, anti-venom runs about $2000 per vial, with the average person needing somewhere between five and ten vials.  But if we get bit in Rhode Island, the anti-venom may cost up to $10,000 per vial. Due to shipping costs, I’m guessing.  

Once the museum lady got me straightened out on rattlesnakes, I was able to enjoy the rest of my seven days in Arizona.  We stayed in a lovely and hospitable Airbnb.  Jie’s bedroom was an antique furnished suite with a four-post bed, a dressing table, and flower paintings on the walls.  My bedroom had rifles on the walls and twelve pictures of John Wayne scattered about.  I christened it the Second-Amendment room and slept well all week, probably because I felt so well guarded.

Jie enjoyed the annual gem show in Tucson and spent the better part of two days learning more about gems, minerals, and jewelry.  While she was shopping I found my way to the Saguaro National Park to do some hiking.  I also found some sunshine and enjoyed several good books.  On the other days, we caught the Phoenix Botanical Garden, the Desert Museum, the State History Museum, the Sabino Canyon, Oracle State Park, and a zydeco concert. We attended St. Xavier Mission church south of Tucson and had lunch at a mariachi show with friends from Geneseo, Barry and Lorrie Snodgrass. I also took the half-day tour of Biosphere 2, where eight people spent two years in a sealed off environment.  

This was my ninth trip to Arizona.  The first visit was in 1968, when I was about to enter high school, and we piled into the family station wagon and followed old Route 66 all the way to Los Angeles to visit our cousins.  By the time we hit Arizona, I thought I was on another planet.  It was the lack of trees, the petrified forest, the Grand Canyon, the steaming water rising from the toilets in Lake Havasu City…  Even though California was our destination, Arizona was the place that most intrigued me, and I determined to return. On that first visit to Arizona, it had less than 2 million people.  Today there are almost 7 million residents.  It has more days of cloudless sunshine than any other state.  (Sorry, Florida, you’re only # 5 in that department.) 

I took Mindy and Alison to Arizona for the first time when they were 12 and 10, resolved that they would be as mesmerized by the state as much as I was.  Since my first taste of Arizona’s splendor was the Petrified Forest National Park, I wanted them to have the same feeling there that I did.  But poor planning thwarted that desire. Instead of taking them straight to Arizona—to the Petrified Forest, we went backward:  first through the Colorado Rockies, then into Las Vegas, then LA, Disneyworld and Universal Studios, the Pacific Ocean… and only then did we hit Arizona, on the way home.  They liked the Grand Canyon just fine, who doesn’t?  But we still had the magic of the Petrified Forest ahead.  I told them it would be the highlight of the trip.  

But we got to the Petrified Forest at the end of a long day.  And it was getting dark. And we almost ran out of gasoline. And it was raining hard.  And we had to drive almost an hour in the park itself before we got to the petrified wood.  And by the time we got there, I was in a mood, and the kids were in a mood, and their mother was in a mood.  I had trouble finding any petrified wood for them to see—what with all the dark and the rain.  Finally I found some, put the headlights on it, and demanded that they get out of the car… and be impressed.  Well, the two girls did get out of the car to get a closer look.  But their reaction sorely disappointed me.  To this day, the only thing they remember of the Petrified Forest was my delusional description of the place, and my insistence that they stand in the rain and enter the delusion with me.  

For Jie, this latest trip was a respite from our Illinois winter.  I took it with the intent to spend some time in the Sonoran Desert, a section of Arizona I’d only been to one other time.  

There are 11 major deserts in the United States:  eight of them cold and three of them hot.  The cold deserts are in the northwest and can be found in the states of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, California, New Mexico, and northern Arizona.  The three hot deserts are the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan.  The Sonoran is the only one with the gigantic Saguaro cactus and the extensive vegetation not found in the other deserts.  It has its own unique sensual spirituality.  It holds stories of persons and cultures shaped by its places.  

It is a place I plan to attend again, only next time, hoping to forego the viruses as well as the rattlesnakes.