The Real Desert Storm

El Chubasco that’s what my parents call the annual desert tradition of the Monsoons. “Ahi viene el chubasco!” my dad would shout outside the house as he started running to the house in celebration. Those words were magic to my ears and the anticipation would mount for the first rumble of the clouds and the electricity that was to flow everywhere. I had the fortune of growing up in Avra Valley and I believe that it is the one place in the Sonoran Desert where the summer storms put on their most striking and bombastic performances, I will admit though, I am very biased.

Near our house off of El Tiro and Trico-Marana, there are several washes that empty out into the nearby floodplains and when these filled up the runoff would create streams and several ponds in our backyard. Where we lived it was not very developed and we were literally in the middle of the desert. Our neighbors who had moved had left a concrete pool adjacent to our house and that meant exploring for tadpoles once those storms arrived. My brother and I would spend our days playing in the small pools and visiting with some of the vegetation that would sprout after the rains came.

In the afternoons, once the sun went down, you could listen to the frogs starting to come out of their desert hibernation. Soon the front porch came alive with those little frogs trying to figure out their bearings. I loved it as a child and I eagerly watched them as they migrated across our porch towards the puddles and streams. Those summer days beat anything BBC could produce...hands down. My friends were all of the creepy crawlies who lived in the desert and there was definitely a synergistic relationship there.

Another tradition is the loss of power due to lightning strikes, floods, microbursts and any other natural calamity that is associated with the monsoons. We had two swamp coolers that were pretty much useless once the monsoons came, so we usually slept outside weather permitting of course. On those nights that the power went out, we all sat outside and listened to the chorus of frogs, coyotes, and owls as it floated through the dew laced leaves surrounding our house. As a family, those times were wonderful as my mom would tell stories of storms in her native Durango, Mexico and my dad being his goofy self would start singing El Chubasco a norteño hit by Carlos y Jose making the rounds in those days.

On a spiritual level I have one memory or was it a dream?...of going to the door and having the wind slam the door against the house and being engulfed in an electric blue waves of swirling currents, it was all very dramatic indeed. It was a moment in time that has had a lasting impression. At that precise moment it was as if the universe had connected with me in a state of clarity and consciousness that to this day has been impossible to recreate. I was only five years old.

Several years ago I was at a house party in El Paso, Texas and I saw a magnet on the host's refrigerator that had a Tucson Lightning scene and immediately the memories rushed back, I pointed to the magnet and proudly proclaimed, "Hey! that's my hometown!" to which another guest commented to the effect that I was lucky not to live there anymore based on the picture...he didn't get it. Because of that scene, I wanted to return to my land even more so. Some people don't know the meaning of that...of being tied to the land that is.

So now I watch the news to see if the controls of the sun have been set, is the humidity level climbing? Was that a cumulonimbus clouds I saw? The faint whiff of wet creosote sends flashes of genetic memory racing through all of my senses. Ahi viene el chubasco... I’m just waiting for the chubascos to come to bring some relief and to also reconnect with our desert family…it’s been a long time.