A bit of wind blew in a bank of gray clouds and a little rain, which dissipated into lots of puffy white clouds. I guess blue sky is back. It's warm enough in the trailer for the AC to kick on so I assume it is warm outside. I live in two climates, cave and desert.
When I hear the word ranch, I think of my grandfather's cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon. We visited the ranch for a few days most summers when I was a kid. No more than a weekend though—my father hated that ranch. I had mixed feelings about the visits. The dry brittle air made my nose bleed. (To be fair, back then, everything made my nose bleed.) The harsh silence was disconcerting to a city kid. I could see planes high overhead, heading for PDX, but hear nothing but the wind scratching through the trees in the yard.
For me, the best part of visiting the ranch was being around horses. My grandfather kept a few in the barn to help him with the cattle, but we were only allowed to ride old Betsy. One at a time, my father lifted us up to sit in front of my grandfather. Grandpa twitched the rein, and Betsy shambled along the dirt road to the gate. She was slow going away from the barn but fast coming home. I was paralyzed with the chore of parsing two conflicting emotions: the utter joy of being on horseback and the fear of my grandfather, who was a large, gruff, mostly deaf, intimidating man.
The Tucson desert is not like Eastern Oregon. Eastern Oregon gets snow. It's dry, but not this dry. Here, ranch land is littered with rocks, dry brush, and cacti. You could not graze cattle in the Tucson desert. You could not graze anything. You could probably grow a fine herd of rattlesnakes, though, if you had a hankering. Which I don't. Which brings me back to my story about the stone cottage.
At some point in the early part of the twentieth century, some rancher built a stone mansion and some stone casitas out in the desert near a dry wash. The current owner of the ranch rents the casitas to over-55 year old adventurers who think living down a dirt road in a desert would be fun. I was almost one of those renters.
I drove way out into the suburbs, noting the well-paved road and the many houses scattered around the hillsides among the cacti. As I parked my car, I marveled at the view of the mountains. The manager of the "apartments," an eighty-year-old artist, said she often saw coyotes and deer, and even a couple stags drinking at her outdoor water station. I thought, I like stags. I could set out water buckets and quench the thirst of wildlife. She took me into the available casita, which for some reason had four doors.
First impression: it's a cave with a red concrete floor. Whoa, cool. A voice in my head said, wait, is that cool? The stone walls were painted a solid glossy white. The wood ceiling was low overhead. I thought, oh, how cozy, and then I thought, wait, where will all the hot air accumulate? I noted the beat up air conditioner leaning into (out of?) an open window. The hearth of a once-handsome stone fireplace had been covered with a piece of plywood, painted gray to blend with the stone surround. I pointed.
"No fires allowed here," she said. "Too much fire danger." I thought, well, of course, out here you would have to think about that. My next thought: would I worry about fire danger if I rented an apartment in the city? Possibly not as much, except for the odd neighbor with candles and cigarettes.
To the left was a semblance of a kitchen. A double farmhouse sink, an old gas stove, some ramshackle cupboards, and a narrow refrigerator.
"You'll have to buy the refrigerator from the previous tenant," the manager said. "Unless you want to buy your own."
"How much?"
"Two hundred." Oh, I thought, that's reasonable, while the other half of my brain said hmmm, is that reasonable? It's not very big. Do I need a bigger refrigerator?
The bedroom was beyond the living room. A wood door with glass panes opened out onto a little patio. Cute, I thought. That might be the place to sit sipping my iced coffee while writing my novel. Except when it is cold. Or hot. Which here it is either/or, not much in between. So is that patio really cute and charming? Or is it just another doorway for scorpions?
Up three tall concrete steps was the bathroom—in essence, a bathroom on a pedestal.
"Wow, three steps up," I said. "So you know when you get there, you are about to do something really special."
"The electricity isn't on so the light doesn't work," she said. I wondered what else didn't work. I hopped up the steps and peered inside. No tub. A large shower. I took a photo using my flash. Later I discovered the walls of the shower were yellow and the floor was the same red as the living room floor. I thought, could I live without a tub? The desperate part of my brain said, tub schmub, it's only $500 a month!
I was in a dream, imagining my life as a solitary writer, cocooned in a cozy cave in the desert. Could I live out here miles from anything resembling a grocery store? At that moment, I thought I could.
Back at the trailer later that evening, hours after she offered to rent the casita to me and after I said yes, as I was starting to feel a bit peaked from the shot, I started researching the task of keeping desert pack rats from nesting in my engine compartment and chewing up the wiring under my hood. Home remedies with dubious efficacy include Irish Spring soap, Pine Sol spritzers, and dryer sheets. Ugh, even I can't stand dryer sheets. Part of my brain was like, well, this is what people must do if they want to live the romantic life of a writer in a casita in the desert. The other part of my brain was like, dang it, I just spent another $1,800 fixing the dang check engine light and the transmission leak. Do I really want to pay to remedy pack rat damage?
Next I pulled up information about rattlesnakes, scorpions, and spiders. You can imagine how it went from there. After getting input from my Tucson friends, my spiritual advisors, and my sister, I gave up on the idea of renting the casita in the desert.
The benefit of this decision was immediately apparent. I got a return call from a woman renting a tiny house somewhere north of here. After looking on a map, I know that north of here is nothing but desert. Mountainous desert.
"Oh, you live down in the city?" she said, aghast. "I only go down there when I have to. I can't wait to get back up on the mountain."
Today both sides of my brain are in agreement. We aren't going to rent a tiny house, a cute stone cottage, or any other dwelling that is on a mountain or down a dirt road in a desert. Romance is one thing, but reality is real. You can't take the city out of this girl. I know you are saying, Carol, there are critters in the city, too. However, most of the critters I encounter in town will probably be human. Given the choice between snakes and humans, I'll take my chances with human critters any day.
