Ah, but Chris, the oaks are dying.


It hasn't rained here in a very long time. There was a dusting of snow early January, but records are being broken and people are getting worried. I didn't notice, or let myself notice, until just yesterday, when I decided to walk rather than run the last half of my morning route - decided that my soul needed it more than my body. But once I slowed down, it struck me: too much brown. So much brown. The junipers are still green, and the manzanita with its cherry heart, but the oaks. Quercus gambelii is our only deciduous species (and, I realize, most of what's on Mingus, so thank you), while turbinella, arizonica and emoryi, and the wild hybrid mixes thereof, are, ostensibly, evergreen.


Technically, of course, nothing is truly evergreen: all leaves die and are replaced. The oaks usually replace most of their leaves in late spring, after the winter rains and before the early summer drought, when - usually - they have plenty of resources to spend. But there have been no winter rains, and the newspaper accurately characterized last summer's monsoons as "wimpy."


I am holding in my heart that these are desert trees. "Drought deciduous" describes a common coping mechanism: look to the ocotillo. Ocotillo appears for all the world like a cactus with particularly beefy spines, until the rains come. Then suddenly it is awash in leaves, and sometimes lovely flowers that make a particularly nice tea. When the soil dries, it is back to a stick with thorns. So perhaps the oaks are just hedging their bets; after all, there are some people who aren't predicting moisture until this summer's monsoons, which inevitably calls to mind last year's: wimpy.


But last year's winter! Last year, Snowbowl had some of the best pack in the country. This year they've gotten approximately 2 inches. Last year all the creeks flooded, all the rivers filled, everywhere you stepped, water welled up or mud sucked you down. I discovered quicksand in a usually-dry bank of Lynx lake; the Wolf Creek waterfall was the heart of my solace. Last year broke all the records, too.


I know enough to know there is still moisture in some soils from last year's rain; after all, that's why mesquite digs so deep. But scrub oak is no mesquite, and it usually rains a comparative lot here. Those brown leaves make me afraid.


We speculate that you could drop a match here and burn all the way to Tucson. Truth is, you could probabably burn all the way to Oaxaca, if not more: last year's winter brought up a lot of grass. And a lot of grass that isn't meant to be here.


(But then the heart shoulders in, bleating.

I suppose a broken heart will find metaphor everywhere: I am hoping to be a mesquite, with roots that dig deep into beauty. I am hoping that what dies now is what I can afford to lose. I am hoping that the wildfire winds of change do not destroy me.)