VIL nov 09 GRID3.indd - Tubac Villager

The Importance of Being Nowhere
by Charles Bowden
The day felt like rain and smelled
like rain. The sky held the soft
gray of a winter storm, the kind
of weather Mexicans describe as
equipatas, equal steps, to capture
that idle way the rain on a
December day can slowly drizzle
across the land. It was 1957, and I
was your basic 12-year-old, out of
the Southside of Chicago, riding
in the back seat of a '55 Chevy
down the Ruby Road, that section
where you climb across the flank
of the Atacosas and then slide
along a ridge above Bear Valley
near Montana Peak. I looked
out at a landscape of dry grass
and green oaks, the trees evenly
spaced like in a model railroad
layout, and was struck dumb by
the ground, that moment they
now call imprinting, where some
things make an impression that
can neither be explained nor
removed. I remember imagining
living down there, a sane thought
for a kid who'd spent most of his
life in an apartment. And that
was it, no bolt of lightning from
the heavens, no roll of celestial
drums, no voice thundering a
revelation.
Since then, I have, like most of
my fellow citizens, wandered far
afield and squandered generous
blocks of my life, but always that
day and that stretch of road and
that landscape came back to me,
riding the El in a Chicago rush
hour, commuting to work in the
Bay area or doing dim toil on the
East Coast. I can still feel the
light, taste the air, and smell the
soil of that day. The rocks brood
under the gray clouds and the
trees, the scrubby oaks dotting
hills, the trees glow with an eerie
green.
photograph by Joseph Birkett
Luckily, I seem to have imprinted
with a patch of earth almost
beneath notice. Along the
border from the Huachuchas
to the Altar Valley is a swatch
of oak woodland that is tucked
away in the national and forest
and forgotten, a place without
coffee-table book vistas and
major landmarks. This has been
my sanctuary from a world that
demands the special effects
of the red rocks of Sedona or
the monotonous pines of the
Mogollon Rim or the fleshpots
and villas of Carefree, Paradise
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