The desert in the summer is above all an environment of extremes
Thistle cholla cactus at Saguaro National Park. Photo by me.
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Spending time in Arizona during the summer is a good reminder that weather can kill you.
Jamie and I recently returned from a two-week stay in Phoenix and Tucson, a long-overdue trip to visit family and good friends that would normally happen in cooler seasons, but because we hadn’t been back since 2019 we made sure to schedule a trip during the window of light COVID danger, which unfortunately basically closed while we were there.
We managed to avoid COVID during our travels, but we did get an ever-so-gentle reminder that the desert is always willing and eager to swallow you up if you offer it an invitation. While in Tucson we made a visit to Saguaro National Park, a forest of century old cactuses just east of Tucson that has a bunch of scenic picnic areas and trails of varying lengths. On the way there, we were caught in a downpour, one of many the area had been experiencing this monsoon season, and it cooled the desert all the way down to the 80s and offered some precious lingering cloud cover.
We ate sandwiches at a trailhead and took in desert views that were greener than I have ever seen them, from a distance more the shade of a golf course or prairie grass than the usual shrubby dirt floor. Twice we saw raptors perched on towering saguaros, probably hoping to pick off a rabbit or a ground squirrel enjoying the morning rain. Every lizard was out.
You normally avoid a desert hike midday in the summer, but it was so cool we figured we could do a couple of miles pretty easily. We had probably a liter and a half of water, not a ton but not bad, and hats, sunscreen etc. The first three-quarters or so very peaceful, cool, beautiful. But about the time we thought we should be closing the loop and getting back to the car, we hit a marker that said we were still a mile away. As it turned out, some hasty map reading meant the chain of trails we picked was more like three and a half miles total. Not only that but the sun had burned right through the morning storm and it was hot once again. And our water was about gone.
To be clear, we were entirely safe. Mostly. The park is never too far from a road and we had cell phone service the whole time. So worst-case scenario we were at risk of humiliation, two hikers, one born and raised in Arizona having to be carted off of a remedial trail by park rangers, like the East Coast tourists and transplants I grew up talking shit about.
So we were safe, but still. Even though I have been on summer hikes several miles longer as a kid, you never forget that creeping feeling of sharp teeth nearby. That you might be in trouble, not now, but maybe soonish, a mix of paranoia and regret at any carelessness, made worse when you’re generally an anxious person. Also made worse when you know better than to be out in the desert in the summer without an overabundance of water—you never bring just enough—and you don’t start a hike in the middle of the day either. I also know that shit can so sideways extremely quickly, even just a stone’s throw from civilization. Just a week earlier, a young woman visiting Phoenix from Massachusetts died on an city hike I’ve done a hundred times, collapsed right next to a home off the mountain trail (that story is very sad and kind of suspect, also a cautionary tale about trusting a cop, it turned out).
When you know you’re starting to push it heat-wise, you get that awful feeling of your body working hard to stay cool, heart pounding, soaked in sweat, your cheeks bright red as your blood vessels open up to release heat at the skin. All signs that the body’s cooling system is doing its job, but also early signs of potential heat exhaustion and eventually heat stroke. But we kept trudging through this sandy wash that was completely dry already of course, me asking Jamie if she was OK every 30 seconds (she was totally fine). Checking the GPS nervously, 0.8 miles from the car. 0.5 miles from the car…
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The desert in the summer is above all an environment of extremes, and those extremes are getting more extreme as a result of climate change. So last summer was the hottest ever recorded in Phoenix, and the region broke many heat records in 2020, including the most days in a year with high temperatures at or above 100 degrees, 145 days.
This August while we were there was markedly cooler than 2020—I think the hottest it got during our visit was 111, usually more like 100, which is manageable when the air is dry—but as we are increasingly learning, climate change is far weirder than just a linear increase in average temperatures. So 2021 has been unusually wet for the region, but not just wet, experiencing deluges that have been overwhelming roads, washes, backyards. The kind of rain that does provide temporary relief during drought, but not the kind of relief you necessarily want, or that you can rely on to quench the region’s thirst.
That kind of precipitation is also dangerous. This year’s monsoon has brought charcoal grey walls of cloud veined with crackling lightning, dust storms, flash flooding, even rare tornado warnings. The day we arrived in Phoenix, search parties found the body of a 16-year-old girl who died in Northern Arizona, swept away by floodwaters. A 4-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy also died in flash floods just in the same week or so.
So it’s the extremes, but also the extreme swings that are really frightening.
Underscoring those extremes, the International Panel on Climate Change released its latest big report while we were in Arizona. It’s another bleak assessment based on an analysis of 14,000 studies, full of similar warnings we’ve become accustomed to hearing, but this round there’s more precision, more certainty, and even more “holy shit this is really really bad” than the last major assessment in 2014, which was more of a red alert than any previous communications from the IPCC.
Among the take-home points include that even if we take urgent, radical action, the world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees since the 19th century, and the carbon emissions we have already released will keep warming the globe for at least another 30 years. So the drought, heat waves, extreme precipitation, storms, and flooding we are experiencing more regularly will keep getting worse, no matter what, until at least around mid-century. Some impacts like global sea level rise will continue for thousands of years. Just sit with that for a minute, that the pollution we have created since industrialization (and in large part even since the 1990s) is such that it’s causing global shifts that will continue for millennia.
The assessment also outlines changes to expect broken down by region, which in North America we know will include rising sea levels in most places, more severe tropical storms and cyclones, more deadly wildfires, more drought, and more extreme precipitation and flooding.
I had the surreal experience of reading the report (or at least the summary of the report) while flying on the plane back to Boston from Arizona, which spewed out into the surrounding skies a large portion of my own annual carbon emissions. The round trip generated about 521 kg of carbon dioxide. That is more CO2 than the average person in 41 other countries will generate in an entire year. A routine trip for me, but also an experience of gross privilege considering only 11% of people worldwide fly in a typical year. I don’t think it’s useful to blame individuals for their actions as the cause of climate change—save your blame for the fossil fuel industry and the GOP—but flying is a difficult reminder that whether I like it or not I am a participant in an economic system and a way of life that are cooking us alive.
Being in an enormous city in the middle of the desert in the summer is another one of those reminders. Not that I think that humans shouldn’t be able to live in the desert. I actually love being there, particularly Southern Arizona and Tucson, I happen to love a great many of the people who live there, people who have caring hearts and want to protect the desert and make the state and its cities better, saner places. There is a lot of important work being done by elected leaders, planners, activists, researchers, and just ordinary people in the Southwest to figure out how communities there can reduce emissions, save water, and otherwise co-exist with the ecosystem as the planet warms.
But it is a tall order. The City of Phoenix—which is actually only a third or so of the metropolitan area that is made up mostly of endless sprawling suburbs—is working to become carbon neutral by 2050. Collective city level reductions in the United States are, in fact, having a small but meaningful impact on national carbon emissions. But for some perspective, Phoenix reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 0.5% between 2012 and 2018, and over the same time period, the city’s population grew by 12%.
Shuttling around the Valley in our rental Mazda down 12-lane freeways and also just normal-ass city roads where people drive 70mph, you can see that growth everywhere. New subdivisions always going up, or more often, out, further and further into former farm and desert land, anchored by parking lots the size of neighborhoods that offer cavernous restaurants air-conditioned to a chilly 40 degrees cooler than the outside air. There are many fighters and pockets of progress in the Valley, but broadly it remains a city that is aggressive in its commitment to eternal growth and water and energy use mostly in the name of comfort and freedom from restraint.
Again, this isn’t to shame all the people who live in places like Phoenix, see above. But it’s these extremes in consumption juxtaposed with extremes in the surroundings that are so jarring. Like flipping channels between HGTV and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Talking to friends and family who live there, who have lived there for their entire lives and are fully aware of and concerned about climate change, there is this shared sense even in idle conversation that things are changing. That there are going to be more problems. Whether that’s flooding, drought, or just shittier summers year after year. Conversations regularly drift back to things people are seeing that they never saw before. How it was never like this, how we all know something is wrong.
During our trip, Arizonans were anticipating the first federal declaration of water shortage on the Colorado River, which triggers 20% reductions in Arizona’s water supply from the river. The shortage was officially announced on Monday. While this first round of cuts will affect mostly farmers, more are likely on the way and will impact more of the millions of people who rely on the river for at least a portion of their water supply.
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Spoiler, we did make it back to the car just fine, crawled into the trusty Mazda and pumped the AC. Made light and looked at the map to figure out where that extra mile and half came from, ah shit there it is. Picked a few cactus spines out of the soles of our shoes and talked about all the wildlife we saw. Waited for our skin to fade closer to its normal pale Bostonian shade before heading to the visitors center to refill our bottles and drink ice cold water courtesy of the Department of the Interior.
Just off the trailhead where we parked the car, there’s a place called Signal Hill, a little mound made of rock that rises about 50 feet above the desert floor. It’s got beautiful views, but is famous for ancient petroglyphs carved into the rocks at the top, made by the Hohokam, who lived in the region between 200 and 1450 CE. It’s drawings of animals mostly, a lot of spirals, and the mind kind of malfunctions when you look at them all just sitting there in the open, made by other people hundreds of years ago, just a half hour drive from a modern city.
There’s a sign on the trail pointing out that people have lived in the Tucson Basin for more than 10,000 years, with a very long historical timeline that only at the very end marks the era of colonialism that would kill, forcibly remove, and assimilate civilizations that have thrived there for centuries, clearing the way for resource extraction. Ruled by the Spanish starting in 1692, then Mexican control in the mid-19th century, and finally, at the very tippy tip of the timeline, America takes over starting in 1853. A blink of an eye, really.
Taking that kind of broad perspective sometimes helps when things feel like they are going off the rails, historically speaking. You can see the big picture and things seem maybe not so bad. Then again, another of the IPCC’s findings is that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher today than at any time in the past 2 million years. The planet is warmer than it has been in the past 125,000 years. It is hard to wrap our heads around these kinds of numbers, the damage on a geological scale that this relatively newborn incarnation of humanity is causing.
If deep history can have any comforting effect, maybe it comes from the idea that this country—a culture that is not fully, but in very large part responsible for this profound impact—is a relative blip in human history. That this period of conquest and extraction, stripping, drilling, and burning that got us here is not everything we have been.
The IPCC report, while grim, still points out pathways that are open to avert the worst-case scenario, better and safer trails. Who reigns can and does change and so do ways of life, meaning maybe we can become something better and humbler in the face of this desert and its sharp teeth. And if not, maybe the civilizations who replace us will be better, or at least better suited to what is coming next.
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Links
- July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded.
- Workers die from heat exposure every year, but there is no OSHA standard to safeguard them, despite efforts to establish rules since the 1970s. Some companies have had multiple workers die from heat, with negligible consequence.
- Wells are drying up in California, and it’s happening in more parts of the state than during the last drought.
- Let’s say it without flinching: The fossil fuel industry is destroying our future.
- Toyota used to be a leader in reducing car emissions, but now it is actively fighting electrification and pushing large trucks and SUVs for a higher profit margin.
- Climate scientists refer casually to one future scenario as “Trump World,” in which nationalist governments protect their own needs instead of contributing to emissions reductions. Emissions double and temperatures rise by 3.6 degrees.
- The stated goal of the Afghanistan war was to remove the Taliban from power. Now after 20 years of U.S. occupation the Taliban is in power again but it has an $83 billion army that the U.S. built and trained.
- In this sad tale of woe from a landlord upset about the eviction moratorium, he says that he is losing a whole 15% in profit so he has stopped making any improvements to his properties but also he is very rich and doesn’t actually need the income and it has not impacted him at all.
- The Rock, Kendall Jenner, Michael Jordan and many more celebrities have their own tequila brands. “Personally I find it very sad when thousands of years of history are reduced to a marketing campaign from a very famous individual.”
- “I Think You Should Leave” quotes are a love language. After the club go to Truffoni’s for sloppy steaks. They’d say no sloppy steaks but they can’t stop you from ordering a steak and a glass of water.
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Listening
You do see a lot of weird things in Phoenix like there’s an ad for a personal injury lawyer who rips the sleeves off of his suit to show that he’s no ordinary lawyer. And we were driving one time in some traffic and on a farm on the side of the road there was this big water tank and the brand had a logo of gun crosshairs on it just for no reason and the car in front of us had vanity plates that said BRBI GRL or something like that and Gasoline Dreams by Outkast came on from Stankonia which is an album I used to listen to a lot in the early 2000s when I lived in AZ and it felt like a very appropriate soundtrack to that particular traffic jam.
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Watching
Speaking of colonialism, maybe everyone has seen The White Lotus by now but it is such a savage critique of wealth and shitty white people and patriarchy but also tourism and philanthropy and nonprofits and journalism and probably a lot of other things and it pulls zero punches. There are also some critiques of the show that are important to engage with and Mike White engages with them pretty openly and thoughtfully in this interview, which I also recommend.
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OK that is the thing this week. I know I was gone a week longer than I said I was going to be, but we had to go get the dogs from the grandparents last Friday and also I was fuckin tired as hell so it just wasn’t going to happen.
I also want to say that I know this vacation recap sounds like I just worried about climate change and got really hot the whole time but you get it that is just the Crisis Palace way.
In addition to all of that, I had a wonderful time seeing my mom and dad and stepmom and my sister Amanda for the first time in over two years I couldn’t believe I was there with them talking and hugging and sometimes arguing in person. We ate very good food, sat on my mom’s couch watching movies with her little chihuahuas, watched the family of doves that live on her back patio, got a mani/pedi, went to a minor league soccer game, stared in amazement at Arizona skies, sat on a back patio with lifelong friends watching a summer downpour, visited some breweries and a winery, bought a few new Western shirts at Saba’s, stayed up late talking with Swedlund in our made-for-Instagram Airbnb, and so on. Restorative and long overdue.
But now I am back and I am also very happy to see you all again. You can now expect a return to the weekly bloviation and crankification from me you are welcome goodbye.
Tate