The only joy in the world is to begin.

by Cesare Pavese
Italian author, novelist, & translator
(1908 - 1950)

I

Tuco turns his horse toward the trailhead¹.
It is late spring and time to traverse mountain trails.
He loves this time of year.
The horse begins to canter².

The air fills with sounds of birds,
smells of pine begins to push out that of palo verde.
Tuco remembers growing up further down that valley
and walking up to this ridge with his brother.

The joy was in the beginning
the hike in desert wash sand became more than they expected
yet they trudged on, got to the ridge, glanced about
filing memories away
then turned and trudged home that warm summer day.

There were storms forming in the mountain then
and now. This time though, there is a dam upstream.
The wash behind Tuco is now choked with desert scrub
and no longer a durable channel for water
pouring down from the mountain air to the hills
and then to the desert valley.

The mountains to the west are low laying and desert creatures
live in their arroyos³. But these mountains reach to the sky,
fill with pine and puma⁴ sounds. The air turns to water when it rains,
heavy and liquid, hard to breathe, then abruptly stops.
The sound of rain drops falling from and through the trees
fills the quiet. Then birds begin to caw and stretch.

All become joyful with this new, wet, cool world -
this island in the desert.