Tales From The Desert>Act Two-A Walk In The Desert

In the desert, things can get kind of crazy, if not hectic if you don’t know exactly where you are going especially in light of the fact you’re not sure where you had just come from.

It was December 24, 2001, when I the first of the Mishegasmaster clan to visit my parents, The Arizona Babe & Rex Pater Homo in their new digs within the Valley Of Golden Happiness. I came initially to spend my 39^th birthday with them and sometimes, when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, you tend to get a little stir-crazy, so I decided to take a little walk to see what I could see.

So, off I went into the desert, past an ice-skating rink, where the Phoenix Coyotes practiced at one time and walked along an empty stretch of highway. The sun was still beaming happily in the sky and I was at leisure’s pace, down that beautiful stretch of road.

On my back was my old purple battered backpack, that had seen better days and looked as if a black bear had mauled it just to see where all my goodies were hiding, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, I happened upon a recently built shiny mall that had mostly closed shops and a few fast food joints hooked upon them. I stopped in one of them, took a few bites, wrapped up the rest, loaded up my pack with food, filled up my water bottle and headed back.

By this time the sun had set in the sky and I headed on back, but I was confused, as I really didn’t know which why to go. Then I saw it; the friendly cactus! This was the cactus that my parents had previously told me about, that if I found this cactus, I could find my way back almost any time!

And so, I decided to take a shortcut through the desert. Unlike now, the desert at that point was bare, just sand, brush and cactuses. As I looked to my left, I saw a barren highway, while to my right; I saw newly constructed buildings, with more being built each day. There were no bright lights in the desert back then, only the light of the silvery full moon.

And I kind of liked that. Very romantic and sentimental it seemed. As I got to the middle of the desert, I suddenly heard a noise that sounded like the roar of a Harley-Davidson, which I thought was kind of odd, considering there were virtually no vehicles on the road that night.

Then, I saw a fairly large shadow that I didn’t think twice about. Although physically I was approximately one half hour away from my parent’s place, it took me only five minutes to make a quick dash there.

I never looked back. Only when I returned was I informed that a mountain lion had wandered down from the McDowell Mountains a week earlier and was terrorizing the city.

So much for free reign of animals; they were after all kicked out of their homes. And that’s a shame when you think about it. A darned shame.