When my 11-year-old gets up early and joins me on the back patio to read in the rain while I sip my
coffee and watch the water, life is a little sweeter. When the same kid cheerfully gets his jacket – yes, in July in Tucson, yes the same jacket that has caused major tantrums in winter – and my 8-year-old tries on a few pairs of socks because he wants cozy socks but also doesn’t complain when they make his shoes too tight and he has to take them off – I think we can do this day. So then when the drive to day camp includes my husband just because he wants to come along, and the kids and I are glued to the windows to watch the drops on the glass and the dark clouds swallowing the Catalinas, I am so glad I live in a family of desert rats, and that monsoon season is a shared celebration.
Some days I cannot do, or at least not nicely. The heat and confinement of a desert foresummer are hard even 4 decades into my life and 1 decade into parenting. And sometimes – especially last Wednesday – there’s water. The desert and my place in it are reinvigorated. 
According to the weather statistics in the 7-19-21 Arizona Daily Star, Tucson’s year-to-date rainfall at the Tucson International Airport (TIA) rain gauge is higher than last year: 2.80” compared to 2.21”. If you have lived in Southern Arizona for 12 months or more, you can feel the difference already. If you have lived in Arizona a lot longer than that, you might feel a little weight lifted but still long for more monsoon relief. True, July and August are our highest chances for a lot of rain. Monsoon storms partially define the Sonoran Desert ecosystem, and we can statistically expect the largest rainfall amounts in the height of summer. Also true, our annual precipitation averages have decreased. We don’t get storms like we used to.
The 30-year rolling average rainfall, according to the NOAA, is now 10.61” at TIA. That’s from 1991-2020, in the “US Climate Normals Quick Access” tool at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/us-climate-normals. If you’re looking for a nerdy rainy day or too-hot-outside activity, I really do recommend playing with this site. I selected “Launch Quick Access” to look up the most recent 3-decade data, compared to the 1981-2010 data from which I was previously trained in my science teaching days. The older average was 11.59”. I am not crazy for remembering more rain as a kid or for rounding up to 12” while teaching about input to our local watershed. I do experience anxiety over the long-term effects of these changes.
Which brings me back to playing with water when and where my family can find it – and valuing it all the more for its rarity in our desert lives.
Father’s Day gifts
June is a time of year we Tucsonans do NOT expect water. We make our own water play or go elsewhere to find cool relief. This year, my husband purchased giant water guns for himself and the boys, a week before Father’s Day on the calendar. I was delighted to discover that the boys could refill half a dozen times, get soaked, have fun shrieking – and still use much less water than if they used the sprinkler or hose. Since our grass is fake, yes we only have a sprinkler for the purpose of summer sanity.
It’s not a coincidence that we plan our family vacations for hot, dry June. This year we road tripped to Northern New Mexico. The trip happened to coincide with Father’s Day. We found clear water in hotel swimming pools, mud-creamy water in the Rio Grande River, splatters of water falling from the high desert sky in the first monsoon we could feel, misty water surrounding us higher in the mountains, water glistening off the tent roof after rain to reflect the rising moon, transpiring water making the grass and clover tantalizingly cool to the touch. The escape from Tucson’s foresummer was a gift for the whole family.
Steam Pump Ranch
Our family returned from vacation to the arrival of monsoon summer. My boys then returned to Oro Valley’s “STEM + Art = Steam” day camp, and they love the “irrigation” station as well if not better than two summers ago. That translates to hours of digging with sticks and directing water across a kid-sculpted muddy landscape at Steam Pump Ranch. What about the rainy day? They got to run through plenty of puddles, and respectfully wiped their feet when they needed to go inside the historic but small Pusche House.
Water Play in the Garden
Nature to You joyfully leads water play too! Friday mornings in the Marana Community Garden this July have been a beautiful mix of kids, parents, grandparents, bugs, sticky dirt, crumbly dirt, tomatoes, basil, seeds to plant, flowers to find, and of course water. Water in squirt bottles, water in old milk jugs, water pouring off a sunflower head, water pooling up in the mud, water trickling down to roots, water cooling kids’ necks, water settling seeds in, water washing feet. Even having to take shelter in the barn for a bit because of lightning was fun because we understood the necessity of rain. “What can you do with one gallon of water?” will be our next challenge, in which kids and their grown-ups try cool games with a conservation twist. Are you looking for ways to play and learn about desert gardening? Check the Marana Parks and Recreation website for upcoming options, or schedule a private lesson any time of the year.
Water in the CDO Wash
I celebrate water myself, with my family, and with the community precisely because it’s a “sometimes” thing. Even out of the monsoon storms so far this year, one brought mostly dust, one mostly wind – and finally mostly water. After camp last Wednesday, the boys and I gushed over the sight of the CDO wash flowing. “Raging,” described my 8-year-old. We heeded the posted warnings to not enter the debris-laden water.
That night our whole family explored the stretch of wash near our house, receding but magical: a favorite kid-dug hole filled in, new patterns of mountain ash swirled with bajada sand, raccoon tracks among our own prints in the slick mud. A wash-witnessing tradition was renewed. Fleetingly abundant water in the desert seeped into my memories going forward. Happy Monsoon season to you… and many more.
