Air-E-Zone-Ah

I always love coming back home because of that warm embrace, the air wraps you up and swallows you into the heat. It is a dry, scorching thing. Hard to understand unless you have been tempered through the furnace of many Sonoran summers. I like to think we natives are a special breed, a steel in our spine helps us to take hold of the fire. Its like every time we opened our car's doors, sat on our black leather seats and felt the second degree burns...we built a certain stamina, perhaps a healing-coping ability others lack. Wolverine would be proud.

The real wonder of it all is the dryness. It takes the usually dull medium of air and gives it a little life. The smell of the eucalyptus trees along the side of the road makes my run bearable. The trees waver in the wind, pause to give respite from Apollo, and lifts my spirits with a gentle perfume. Lamentingly, I cannot stay all day.

The clouds have begun to roll in, an unusual occurrence in May. The monsoon season does not start until late July, but the smell of rain and damp earth intoxicates me. I know that I am home, in the Valley of the Sun, where the air balks at the mention of rain. The smell fills the air, up into the grey, conflicted bowl above me. The clouds gather at its edges, like a pack of wolves tumbling into its center.

Smooth edges of the rubberized asphalt stretches out into the horizon. Man has certainly become master of his domain here. The rows of subdivisions do not end. I don't mind this, for a while at least.