March, 2024

You know you’re in the right place when you’re sad to leave. 

The spring flowers have become even more dazzling, and our daily bike rides take us through eddies of fragrance, our favorite being orange blossoms. The days are bright and sunny, just touching on hot in the late afternoons-or so say the Airedales as they pant through their walks. 

In just three days we are heading up the coast, hoping to avoid winter storms, and looking forward to a Pacific Northwest summer.

But now, our focus is on the glorious winter we had, and all the many people and experiences that made it so special.

Phinn has been a challenge, but also introduced me to a new family of kind humans and dogs, and my morning walks to the dog park have become one of the highlights of my day. We said our good-byes this morning. I will miss these lovely souls, and I would say Phinn will miss his pals too, except that during our last two visits he has been relentlessly pursued by Titan, a ten year old retired pit bull stud, who finds our boy irresistible. Poor Phinn has tried all manner of escapes, but Titan seems quite devoted to his craft and not quite ready for retirement.

My former partner and her husband joined us again this year for the amazing Tucson Festival of Books; 300 authors and 150,000 readers, with all manner of topics. It was fun to see the University of Arizona campus draped with white tents with authors, like Abraham Verghese, treated like rock stars with fans standing in line for hours to hear them speak. Of course, we dined on delicious Mexican food, sampled myriad margaritas, and explored the lovely Sonoran desert. Our final act was a girls’ spa day at the luxe Canyon Ranch, where we drummed in the desert, ate like queens, meditated and were massaged into relaxed, gelatinous state. 

Closer to home, my lifelong friend introduced me to amazing flea markets, where we prowled for hours for low-cost treasures and then retired to El Minuto for margaritas (a theme?) and cheese crisps to share our conquests. My favorite thus far is a carved Peruvian birdhouse that is proudly displayed on our patio wall, and seems to have attracted several local residents already.

Day trips took us along winding country roads, to unexpected landscapes: The Serengeti-like grasslands of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Preserve just southeast of Tucson, where pronghorn bound across the plains; The charming town of Arivaca, set amidst rolling border hills and dotted with lakes and Ironwood National Monument, where sugary beige dirt roads snake through fields of saguaro, lupine and poppies and end at the reflective cemetery of Sasco, Arizona, where the town died with the 1918 Spanish Flu.

Our pals in retirement in Mesa introduced us to the amazing Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, where I wandered in a trance through the thousands of displays, each accompanied by it’s own audio. Definitely a multi-day affair, as I became addled after only a few hours! Who knew there were so many beautiful instruments in the world? Post-museum, we traded tales of the road and thoughts on retirement-such a treat to spend time with these kindred spirits!

We’ve also become joiners of myriad local venues: The Tucson Presidio; The Tucson Art Museum; The Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum; The Tucson Zoo and The Pima Air and Space Museum. All are amazing, but the latter provided us living history, as we were able to listen to a B-17 pilot speak of his wartime experiences on his 101st birthday. Erich was enraptured and giddy as a little boy meeting this heroic man.

Days were also defined by simple pleasures, like afternoon walks around our friendly neighborhood, bike rides to lunch at the University’s main square, and reading on the porch as the fountain burbles in the background. 

How lucky we feel to live in two places we so thoroughly enjoy that parting from each is bittersweet…