Brink of Death: Arizona in the Summertime

As if graduate school is not bad enough on its own, I have chosen to bear this torture in what feels like the hottest place on the Earth.  If you have never endured a day over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, you do not know what it feels like to have your brain cook inside your skull and actually think there is a possibility that you might die of dehydration at any moment.  I can now say that I have felt this lovely sensation multiple times in my life and owe it all to the delight of living in Tempe, Arizona in July and August.  Let me tell you a little something about what it's like to live here in the summer....

 I'll start by saying that the next person to say, "well, it's a dry heat," will be left outside here in the middle of the day without water and then punched in the face.  What you don't know is that July and August are during Monsoon Season.  This means that AZ gets the majority of its rain during these months, but most importantly it also means that when it is the absolute hottest, it is also the most humid.  While it is not the 50% humidity and above of the tropics, it is hotter, and it is humid enough that you can feel it, and it makes you feel ill.  Also, why is heat a competition?  Why do you all in humid climates try to compete with the unreal heat of the desert Southwest?  That is just stupid; it is always going to be hotter here.  Also, what temperature is it at night where you live, because this time of year, Tempe rarely gets below 90 at night?  In fact, the heat at night is worse because instead of it radiating from the burning orb in the sky, it is re-radiating from the concrete of the city- that means it comes up from the ground and the walls/roofs of buildings.  When that switch happens after the sun goes down, there is no hiding from the heat even in your air conditioned houses.  

Since I moved to the pit of Hell, I have maintained that you can die at any moment here.  I say this because if you get caught outside for a prolonged period of time, you are going to dehydrate.  People die of dehydration, and if you don't die from it, you wish you did, because it makes you feel worse than you have ever felt before.  I have experienced serious dehydration once in my life and watched other people pass out and basically foam at the mouth from it, and I can tell you, you don't want it to happen to you.  There is nothing like puking and pooping simultaneously all the while hallucinating that animals and inanimate objects are trying to talk to you.  Why would anyone go through the anguish of graduate school and be on the brink of death or worse, dehydration, almost 6 months out of the year?  My guess is a form of insanity that has not yet been named, but I'm no expert. 

I once left a pair of running sneakers in my car during the summer months and the glue that bonds the rubber sole of the shoe to the rest of it, melted, and the shoe basically bubbled and then fell apart.  Awesome, the inside of the car is hot enough to destroy industrial grade glue.  The car wasn't even parked in the direct sun, it was in covered parking, so popular in Arizona.  In recent weeks, someone being arrested in Tempe (a common occurrence in this dirty city) was burned when the police made him kneel on the ground.  Add to this, that if you have a dog, the chance of their paws being burned when you walk them is incredibly high.  My personal favorite: I'm pretty sure I saw one of the members of the "strung out on Meth" community (which has a substantial population here) nearly pass out on her wanderings about town.  This is serious, because I'm pretty sure members of that community don't feel very much based on my observations of them as I move about the city.  It might not have been the heat that got this person, but judging by the "dehydration look" on her face, I'm almost positive it was the heat and not the drugs that made her wish for death.  The heat in AZ is so extreme that no one and no thing is safe!

Here is what annoys me most of all about the AZ heat: lack of shade trees.  The lack of trees that produce shade is a cruel joke that nature has played on those who have chosen foolishly to inhabit a desert city.  It really is one of the biggest F you's she could give us all.  Now, I know that Mesquite and Palo Verde trees are native to this area, and that they produce some shade, but you have to plant them or let them grow in their native environment rather than replace them with non-indigenous plants.  Instead of a plethora of these trees that can create lovely canopies of green above your head when planted in the right places and block out the death rays of the desert sun, we have a million Date Palms.  If you've never seen one, these are the really tall, skinny palms with just a small plume of fronds at the very top, often seen in idyllic views of the Middle East and Mediterranean.  These create no shade at all, but they grow splendidly in the desert southwest when watered.  Obviously this plant is ideally suited for this area: a plant that needs more water than other desert plants, which we don't have, and provides no shade, which we desperately need.  You can't even buy dates, one of the foods of the gods, cheaply around here.  In sum, there is no shade so you roast to death when walking anywhere or when you have to park your car in an open parking lot and you don't even get any good fruit out of it; you see why I say it is nature's F you.

Here is the one upside to the summer heat in AZ: we have a really awesome winter in which no snow falls and needs to be cleaned from cars or shoveled.  Let's keep in mind though that it takes until mid-September for the temperature to drop consistently below 100 and doesn't really get into the 70's until the end of October, if you are lucky.  Enduring this heat for the past 4 years has made me value certain things though, like air conditioning, Nalgene water bottles, luke-warm swimming pools and sunblock.  So, when its 101 for a few days during one summer week where you live, don't complain to someone stuck living in the deepest pit of Hell for 6 months out of the year and on top of it, attending graduate school, you will find no sympathy here.