They said Phoenix would be hot; I didn’t believe them.  They said the snakes are poisonous, the scorpion’s sting burns like you wouldn’t believe and the cholla cacti spines will actually jump off the plant and stick your leg like some moisture-seeking missile as you walk by.  What they said was true; Arizona is a very different place from my native Wisconsin where the Holstein cows rein supreme, where the pastures are lush due to the dark, fertile mollisols created by hundreds of years of dominance by native tall- and short-grass prairies and where the number of plants with spines pales in comparison to the number of friendly leafy ones.

What they neglected to mention, however, whether due to a blunting of appreciation caused by day after scorching day spent on the rangelands or otherwise, where the wondrous vistas afforded by the vast mesas surrounded by sentinel-like mountain ranges whose looming presence is suggestive of bodyguards, the brilliant canvas of colors that the sun throws towards the heavens in a last grasp for glory before he is extinguished for the night which contrast with the leathery black silhouettes of the peaks and canyons, and the sheer authority and erudition that the noble saguaro cacti command through the valleys and across the plains.

My two weeks working at the Bureau of Land Management in Phoenix have been short but very impressionable so far and I can’t wait to see what is waiting just over the horizon.