TWO SIDES OF TUCSON

When I found myself standing in front of a giant saguaro cactus for the first time, I felt this quiet sense of achievement.

There’s always been something about those “big spiky bastards,” as Kane Grose called them in a recent poem for ROVA, that intrigues me. I’d seen pictures of mountains so overrun with saguaros that it looked like the hills were under attack by lurid green desert-men. The images of the expansive landscape, the gently ragged mountain ranges lurking in the background, and these ancient pincushions popping up into frame like photobombers had always captured my imagination. I couldn’t wait until I would finally get to stand face-to-face with a saguaro.

So, on a recent trip to Tucson, I headed out into the desert in a sapphire-blue hatchback that I’d picked up from the Hertz counter at the airport. Intrepid? Me? Why, yes, thank you for noticing. But more on that later.

Tucson is a