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Trip to Tucson
Tue Apr 05, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
New England winters are long and cold. Sometimes, a change of scenery is a way to
break up the monotony, as commentator Ruth Cash-Smith learned.
I'm a certified couch-potato baby boomer from frozen Maine, whose exercise consists
of turning pages or stoking fires. But when I visit my friend Barb in Tucson, she
convinces me to join her tennis club for an outing in the mountains. "Of course you can
do it," she cajoles. "Two of the gals are in their eighties." Driving north to the Santa
Catalina Mountains, she explains that the Sonoran desert contains four of the six Life
Zones.
Hiking Rose Canyon trail, five brutal miles long, we hit a heavily rooted section where
loose stones threaten our footing. Next we inch up a sheer rock incline and clamber
over gigantic fallen ponderosa pines. The sun climbs higher and so do we. STRAIGHT
UP. The ten tennis ladies march along, politely ignoring my huffing, puffing and
frequent stops. Since it's about thirty degrees cooler up here despite the fierce sun, I'm
grateful for my light jacket. Atop Mt. Lemmon, we rest, peering at Tucson six thousand
feet below, then retrace our steps.
Exhausted but happy on the drive back, I marvel at the sentinel-like,
two-hundred-year-old saguaro, their crown of white flowers blooming in late spring.
Mostly, though, I'm just vastly relieved that I managed to survive my daunting trek with
these indefatigable tennis ladies.
The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory. It is
supported by the National Science Foundation.
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