I have lived in the Sonoran Desert since I was a boy and unless I get unlucky, I will die here.
My home is a web of dreams. Thousands move here each year under the banners of the New West
or the Sunbelt. This is the place where they hope to escape their pasts —
the unemployment, the smoggy skies, dirty cities, crush of human numbers. This they cannot do.
Instead, they reproduce the world they have fled. I am drawn to the frenzy of this act.

by Charles Bowden,
intro to Blue Desert

Coyoté thought he heard thunder as he walked over to Owl’s
but there were no clouds or wind so he was confused.
But as he walked toward the boulder next to Owl’s place
he heard the roar and hoot of Owl and knew where the clouds were.
He almost turned back but Badger had buffalo’d him into this
and he didn’t think Owl’s foul temper could be worse than Badger’s
if he didn’t attempt this visit.

Owl was watching TV, hooting and gesturing with pointing feathers.
“Horse manure, pure horse manure!” he was shouting at his TV.
And Coyoté is thinking, man, not this, I’m tired of this,
let it be anything, anything but this. Owl twirls and almost
lands a punch on Saguaro but thought better of it and whiffed him.
He sees Coyoté then and so Coyoté, he says “hey, howareya.”
And falls silent, waiting, watching as lightning flashes and ions
flicker from sight to sound to smell.

“Nobody uses horse manure anymore!” Owl shouts.
Coyoté blinks, confused. “So?” he asks, buying time.
“So, if ya know how to do it, ya get corn ten feet high!” Owl shrieked.
“Ten feet?” “Yeah, ten feet!” “So…
why ya on this? Watzup?”

“This idiot gardener on this TV show says to use fortified peat!”
“So, what’s the problem?” “They sterilize that stuff, ya know that?
Irradiate it or boil it or something.” Coyoté kept quiet, there is argument
and there is dogma and certainty. Owl loves to have all the answers.

“I thought you were watching that other stuff - the did-he-or-didn’t-he,
the what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it stuff.”
“No, No!” Owl said, “I want fertilizer you can grow something in.”
“Ah,” Coyoté said, “but even with horse manure ya get bermuda.
Ya end up weeding in the muck either way.” Owl just stared at him
as he smiled weakly and wished he’d never run into Badger.