Arizona

When we arrived in Arizona, I was excited because the landscape was like nothing I had ever seen. We arrived in April and my expectations of what a desert was supposed to be were turned upside down. The Sonoran Desert is the only desert in the world that blooms and the variety of flora and colors blew my mind. As we approached the subdivision where we were going to live, she pointed to the mountain and said, “If you’re ever lost, just head towards our mountain and it will bring you here.” She was right because you couldn’t go any further – I thought to myself, “she brought me to the end of the world.” On one side of the street were green, lush landscapes and homes and on the other were dirt devils and tumbleweeds (yes, those things are real).

Image: Sketch for Our Mountain. Pencil on paper, 2008