Sweet Home Arizona

When I got my haircut before I left on my epic roadtrip out to my new home in AZ, my haircutter asked "Have you always wanted to live in the Midwest?"

I didn't have the heart to correct her geographical misconceptions. But thinking about it, no, I have not always wanted to live in the SOUTHWEST. I never, actually, saw myself living out here.

But now that I am here, I couldn't be happier that the TFA gods placed me four hours from the Mexican border in the Valley of the Sun.

It's definitely different here. I now know what "dry heat" feels like (hint: an oven) and I know what a "western" accent sounds like (hint: listen to John McCain). It's literally sunny ALL the time, and there is almost no humidity, which makes the heat bearable. In fact, the sun is so strong here that you only have to stand outside for 15 minutes each day to get a tan. This is perfect for my busy schedule...in no time at all I will have the pretty brown skin (inside joke alert) that I have always wanted.

It's also beautiful here, like nothing I've ever seen. And Phoenix isn't even supposed to be the prettiest part...Flagstaff and Tucson are supposed to be unreal.

It's kind of bizarre, actually. The freeways and parks and left as unspoiled desert; saguaros and palos verdes line the streets. As I mentioned in a previously entry, the endless desert is gorgeous, stretching in all directions. But breaking through the vastness are the chains of mountains that ring around the Valley, the most beautiful of which is the famous Camelback, which, according to someone with a little too much imagination, looks like a camel resting at a desert oasis. Umm...I just see a red mountain when I look at it. But there's something soothing about looking out of my window and seeing mountains in the distance every morning. It's like your protected from everything; it's super hard to explain, but they're beautiful and I like them. (Note to self: start hiking when it cools down).

In fact, my views of the mountains are unobstructed because of an architectural quirk: it would be unreasonably expensive to pump air conditioning to the highest floors of skyscrapers here, since heat rises and all. Thus, there aren't really many skyscrapers here. You'd have no idea that Phoenix is America's fifth-largest city; there's barely any skyline to speak of. But, this way, everyone has a clear view of the Estrella, Camelback, Ahwatukee, and other ranges that circle the city. Tradition here states that each house will be the same level as the one next to it, so as not to block your neighbor's view of the mountains and desert.

The mountain ranges circle a massive valley, the Valley of the Sun. Phoenix and its 1.5 million inhabitants lie at the center, circled by rings and rings of suburbs. Because almost everything is one story, there is massive suburban sprawl here. There are only really 12 towns in the whole 3.5 million person Valley: Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, Tempe, Peoria, Surprise, Goodyear, Avondale, Chandler, Gilbert, and Buckeye. In fact, Mesa, Phoenix's largest suburb, is larger than Oakland, St. Louis, or Miami. Tempe, the "college town" where I am living this summer, has 150,000 people. The area is so big, and has grown so fast (AZ is the 2nd-fastest-growing state, besides those Mormons up in Utah), that zoning is a foreign concept here. The streets are laid out in a helpful, if sprawling grid, but one block on one of the main streets may have a school, a natural gas plant, a freeway exit, a taqueria, an apartment complex, and a strip club. The Maricopa County Zoning Board dropped the ball bigtime.

Perhaps it's the mountains that cut off 2/3 of the state's population from the rest of civilization, but Arizona is like a different world. And you know you're in this altered reality immediately after you cross over the Hoover Dam from Nevada and the big welcoming sign says "IN ARIZONA, THE TIME IS..." Arizona doesn't *do* daylight savings time. What would we do with another hour of daylight in the summer? Sweat some more? I kind of like that about this state; people here do there own thing, and don't really give a damn what the rest of the region, country, or world think. That's pretty ballsy, if you ask me, considering what Arizona's legislature has been running around doing recently (more to come on this later).

But on that subject, politics and elections are HUGE here. There are literally yard signs on every lawn ("lawn" means the plot of desert in front of your house), campaign commercials in English and Spanish on every radio and TV station all the time, and people actually ask about politics in passing. Needless to say, as a politics nerd, I'm loving it. However, the state of the state is actually pretty bleak. People daily will tell me "This state is NOT doing well." The issues that Arizona faces on a micro scale (budget, immigration, education, an aging population, the housing crisis that crippled the state's economy) are the issues this country will have to face on the federal level if we want to move forward. And Arizona is proving to be a crucible for those issues, a policy testing-ground for controversy. It's an interesting time to be here.

I'm also adopting some uniquely Western idiosyncrasies. I don't call big roads "highways" anymore; I drive on "freeways". And I don't say "I-10" or "Route 202" anymore; I call those roads "the 10" or "the 202". I never realized Westerners spoke differently, but I've been amazed at how quickly I've picked up some of these Westernisms. But I'll never stop saying y'all, no matter how much I get made fun of.

The thing about Phoenix, and many of the western states, is that everyone here comes from somewhere else, be it California, Mexico, or "Back East". Very very few people here are native Arizonans. Maybe that's why this state has a lot of guts - it takes balls to pick up and move to a completely and utterly new place.

But that's what I did and that's what millions of other Arizonans did, and we're all loving it here.

Come and visit me soon! But bring lots of water - I've been averaging a gallon a day.

peace and love from the grand canyon state,

pb