D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     July 2005

If You Can't Take the Heat. . .

You're living in the wrong corner of the country. New Mexicans know that heat is good, and damnable heat is better.

I was happily motoring around not too long ago in the hills around Cooke's Peak, prodding my creaky Bronco up and down the sun-blasted ruts of the historic Butterfield Overland Stage line, when I felt a curious sensation on my left arm, which was perched haphazardly on the windowsill. A feeling not unlike having sandpaper dragged across the skin let me know that the famous New Mexico sun was working its ultraviolet magic on me, rendering my pigmentally challenged skin in a desiccated, red patina. Recognizing the threat this represented, I immediately transferred my beer to my right hand where it might stay cool, although it made shifting much more difficult. My left arm, on the other hand, was abandoned to the angry whims of the sun.

This is the time of year that separates the men from the cave-dwelling comfort-seekers in New Mexico. As a long-time desert rat, I find the power of the blistering heat cleansing, washing away all the months of listening to my heater rattle in the leafless months. Far from uncomfortable, it is a life-affirming sensation to brave the worst our native environment can dish out, and to adapt in a most lizard-like fashion to the brutality of 14 hours of mid-latitude Chihuahuan desert solar radiation. The drying effect of super-heated air on the lungs, the constant strata of perspiration between my back and the seatback, the whitewashing overexposure of noonday sunlight. . . . To be quite honest, I wouldn't have it any other way.

People of the East (a.k.a. "flatlanders") who choose to live their lives surrounded by the unremitting presence of these weird things called "trees" and "foliage" don't understand my particular geographical affection for the summertime desert. They have cultivated some manner of strange reliance on water and shade, and rarely travel without the Freon-fortified atmosphere of automotive air conditioning. My philosophy of dry-heat worship is as alien to these softies as a flying saucer full of little green men toting disintegrator rays. As an accomplished traveler, however, I can attest that the East holds no summer charms for me, either. Although our daytime highs can be within eight or 10 degrees of each other, their atmosphere is composed almost entirely of water, albeit in a gaseous state. The exertion required to so much as lift a pencil is rewarded with a yummy sweat bath. I am frankly surprised that the residents of Florida and Georgia have not evolved gills, which would be a more efficient way for the to get their oxygen from the atmosphere.

My appreciation of hellish summer heat goes back to my youth, when my father (himself a native of the Illinois steam bath) moved the family to Phoenix. He claimed it wasn't some sort of survival experiment in family hazing, but I still have memories of the effects of 120-degree days on my eight-year-old lungs. Strangely enough, I kinda liked it. We would motor around the melting asphalt boulevards of pre-smog Phoenix in a non-air-conditioned VW van. Our skin would stick to the vinyl seats in painful ways. Dad would take the family out to the desert in June, where we would wander among the saguaro and palo verde trees, discovering the smells and thrills of the desert. Then we would take out the BB gun and shoot the fruits off the prickly pears.

The price of all these years of desert living is well publicized. Like most of us desert denizens, I have sun-cured wrinkles on my face, and a permanent outdoor squint. My arms and neck are walnut brown, but my chest and legs are fish-belly white. I am on a first-name basis with my dermatologist, a man who has had the pleasure of removing various suspicious aberrations from my hide, courtesy of our sun. All the flowers in my patio are screaming in blistering agony, and you could cook a deep-dish pizza in my car after work. Just like the non-native tumbleweed, however, I find that I am perfectly suited to this environment, and my roots run pretty deep, even though I too am a transplant.

Trundling through Massacre Canyon and the backcountry of Luna County with my family in the old Bronco last month reaffirmed my relationship with the desert. Heat is good, and damnable heat is better. Sure, we ate lunch in the shade of a gnarled old tree in the bottom of an arroyo, and the water in our canteens got hot, but the sinister June heat was not a problem. Of course, I had a piece of fabric stretched over the top of the truck giving me and my wife shade, but the kids in the back were left to sizzle in the sun, albeit with hats and sun block. And, just like a certain eight-year-old kid in Phoenix all those years ago, I think they're taking a shine to the desert. With luck, I have produced another pair of desert rats who, years from now, will be grinding up the rocky canyons themselves in pursuit of the dry heat. I like to think it's destiny.

Henry Lightcap is headquartered in Las Cruces, at least until he finds someplace even hotter and drier.

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