ARIZONA DREAMIN'

A week ago, for the first time in my life, I touched down in Tucson, Arizona. I am due to leave in less than three weeks, but I do not think I will. This place goes beyond anything I've ever experienced in the little more than two decades I've spent on this earth: could it be that, already, I have found love? The Catalina Mountains is the first image that crystalized in me as I began to spell out that very word on the keyboard: L.O.V.E. The second image was the cloudless sky, that "canopy of light and blue", as Joseph Blanco White put it. The third was the sunset. Then came the stars, mesquite trees, junipers, saguaro cactus, the red sand earth, and, alas--the people. There is magic in this land.