While we’re not quite up to 110 degree days yet here, the days are finally making their way up to around 100 F (38 C) each day. This is the dry part of summer, hazy blue skies, cool (around 70 F/21 C) mornings followed by hot, hot days. When people talk about how hot Tucson is, we all automatically respond, “but it’s a dry heat,” which gets funny after a while, but it’s true. And dry heat has a very different feel from damp heat. There’s something deeply evocative about the feel of dry heat against one’s skin–a familiar caress, and not an unpleasant one. When I moved here, I thought I’d hate summer, but I don’t.
Well, not until August, anyway, when the heat is no longer dry (monsoon moisture ups the humidity; enough so that last August our doors all swelled shut), and when it feels like summer’s been going on way too long. But that’s later, and right now, summer feels like an old friend, returned from a long journey.