inglorious wanderer

T he audiovisual presentation about saguaro cacti at the Saguaro National Park  Tucson Mountain District visitor center characterized these 50-foot creatures as gentle giants and our ancestors.   With hands outstretched and  silhouettes of what looked like a whole community of mobilized people, saguaro cacti are said to be so named from a mispronunciation of a  Papago word.   The Papago   word may have been Subaipuri, who knew?  From 1691 to 1767, friars of the Catholic religious order called company of Jesus, more commonly known as Jesuits, established and operated Catholic missions in what is now Arizona and Sonora. It must have been that day when one  Padre Pio,  while visiting a village, noticed one odd-looking plant, that to him was almost blasphemous and sacrilegious, an index  finger flipped to the heavens!  So he asked an indio, "Como se llama esa planta?" The local,  a Tohono O'odham who...

The theme song of the  musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is unforgivably cringy.  I couldn’t help bringing it up, perhaps to humor the memory of Priscilla who died more than seven years ago.  Priscilla, was never a discontented mother nor a regimented wife. Neither had she anything to do with drag queens or a dilapidated pink bus stuck in the middle of nowhere in some Australian desert.  But inspired by the musical, I thought of Priscilla as I drove into the heart of the Sonoran Desert just  north of the US-Mexico border. “Hey lady, you lady, cursin’ at your life You’re a discontented  mother and a regimented wife  I’ve no doubt you dream about the things you never do But I wish someone had to talk to me like I wanna talk to you.” It was Priscilla who first told me about saguaro and  organ pipe cacti as we walked around the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.  She  considered the desert  her sanctuary...