The G is silent: Saguaros, sprawl, Tucson

Somehow I got to Arizona convinced that Inti Illimani, the Chilean folk group, made a song called Sahuarita.

They hadn’t, but for some reason the idea stuck; and so I landed in Phoenix latched on to the idea of an Arizona that resembled the Andean desert: a land sparsely populated, tall mountains in the distance and the odd village with alpacas grazing in the backyard of an adobe church.

Reality, it goes without saying, was somewhat different.

Phoenix’s sprawl stretched without respite, spreading along the highways. Then a small interlude, with desert bisected by power lines, faded billboards, building sites and airplane boneyards. Before long, Tucson’s outer tentacles started to appear. Low-slung homes surrounded by vast parcels of scrubland, shopping complexes rising in the middle of oceans of car parks, gated communities. Villas ran up the hills, dirt roads criss-crossing the escarpments. Phoenix’s population density was some seven times lower than Tokyo’s, and Tucson’s was lower still. And it showed.

I kept a mounting wave of despondency firmly in check. Not only my home region in Italy suffered from some of the same issues, though it featured more sidewalks, trains and roundabouts, but I was contributing to the problem. My accommodation – the ranch, as my host politely pointed out – was lost in the sprawl, up a gravel road in that grey area where wild boar roam at night and you need to leave a light under the car to deter snakes from curling under it.

Like everyone imbibed in American culture, I’d also known about saguaros. I’d also never seen one in real life. The picture in my mind was of a lonely cactus, one arm bent at a precise right angle, pointed skywards like a waiter holding an invisible tray, incongruous like a Salvador Dalì painting.

Around Tucson, however there wasn’t just a single, lone, saguaro. They were legion.

Thousands of cacti punctuated the land, growing thicker as houses thinned out. Saguaros stood to attention like silent green soldier, a spiky army running up the mountains and silhouetting against faraway ridges.

The desert itself wasn’t empty and brown; it was light green, the colour of saguaros’ trunks, and full of life. Boar and coyotes, bees and birds of prey. A hummingbird buzzed in as I built my bike and, not finding anything of interest in the patio, flew off in a whirr of wings, a nature-made helicopter.

Cycling on the roads west of Tucson introduced me to the concept of rollers. Much like the waves that hit the beach on a windy day, rollers here were relentless series of up-and-downs that turned your classic American road, straight as a die, into a cramp-inducing ordeal.

Saguaro National Park was a liberation. A hard turn was all it took to get out of tarmac, interminably straight roads and headwind. Here was a twisty ribbon of beautiful chalk gravel, winding its way amongst the hills and the towering Saguaros. It was hard going, and I was tired after the rollers, but I found myself smiling as I climbed.

“The ‘G’ in Saguaro is silent”, a volunteer told me. “Sa-hu-a-ro”, he explained, rolling the ‘r’ in the Mexican way. I tried copying and failed.

“Saguaros bloom in June”, he continued as we chatted during a break. He was riding downhill, I was going up, and it felt only right to stop for a chat with the only other cyclist on the road.

“They get those beautiful white flowers, and then they are pollinated by bats. In the summer they have fruits” he explained, “and Indigenous communities come over to harvest them. They make very interesting sweets with the fruit of saguaro”.

This is a different land, I told myself as we parted ways. This place is unlike any other I’ve been to, I repeat in my mind, and the excitement grows. Beyond the mundane ugliness of motorways and strip malls there was a world where forests weren’t made out of trees but with cacti; where bats and hummingbirds do the work of bees, and where agave is as ubiquitous as rosebush elsewhere.

A chain signalled the end of the road open to vehicles. Beyond this point, the Golden Gate Road was off-limits to cars, and only bipeds or cyclists were allowed to complete the 6 km journey back to suburbia.

A fellow cyclist gave me some useful beta. I’d met him earlier that day, as he delivered a Door Dash with his F150-turned-camper van replete with a sweet Otso gravel rig hanging from a rear rack.

“Yeah man, that track’s sandy” he said after a few pleasantries about bikes. “The whole bit between the two gates of so-and-so and whatever is deep sand, and where it ain’t sandy it’s rocky”.

When it comes to sand, there’s two kinds of cyclists: those with the dexterity to navigate the deep ruts and shifting soil, and me. A hundred metres from the sign and already I’ve stumbled off the pedals. I could look forward to six kilometres of what is known as hike-a-bike.

I stumbled forwards, pushing a bike that was suddenly as compliant as a recalcitrant Bernese Mountain dog. Shoes filled with sand, sun beating down. Deep inside me, I felt a tidal wave of frustration growing. An invisible dial started inching towards red.

Suddenly I stopped. Took my heaphones off, put the bike down for a moment, and took a deep breath.

Around me there was only silence. The hum of the wind, acacias and mesquites swaying in the breeze. Mountains ahead, a glimmering solar farm in the distance, the smell of sage, creosote and age-old dust in the air. That’s all that mattered.