Sunday 8.23.09: The Desert

After two days of training in Tucson, we caravan to the desert. An hour on the freeway, then we pull into the little town of Arivaca. We pull into the Red Rooster Inn and Universal Ranch Cafe. A big red building with roosters on the doors. A sign advertising cocktails. It is closed for the summer.

A blue station wagon pulls up. A tall skinny guy in an I (heart) New Jersey t-shirt steps out. We pile our stuff into a four wheel drive suburban and pickup truck, and head to camp.

I didn't expect everything to be so green. Everywhere there is cacti growing in a cylinder, flower-shaped. In the car, we chat about where we're from--San Francisco, Western Massachusetts, Chicago, New Jersey. Out the window is a mass of desert under a refreshing cloud cover. It's not yet as hot as they say it'll be. On the ground, red ants everywhere. There's a really cool looking grasshopper on the windshield, bright green and yellow. Josh, the guy in the New Jersey shirt, says they're everywhere around here. In the car, I feel my fears about the week start to melt away. After all, most of this is just camping and hiking, two of my favorite activities.

Camp is a mass of tents and tarps, blue and black crates next to a mountain of empty water jugs. A bunch of chairs and crates in a circle next to the kitchen tent, some free standing cots under a tarp, a medical tent, an RV/office, a long trail leading to a toilet seat over a bucket, another long trail leading to a sun shower.

It rains off and on our first night. A rainbow appears on the horizon after dinner. The camp is mostly made up of church people and queers, and interesting mix. Everything is hard-packed sand, rocks, lightning in the distance, big sky. Crickets and birds and some kind of horn-like cry coming from the bushes. I'm starting to feel like this is where I'm supposed to be.