Best Neighborhood Walk For Transplants
STAFF PICK: University of Arizona MallYOU'RE A NEWCOMER to the Parched Pueblo from some horrendously bleak eastern city straight out of a Dickens nightmare, and you love your new home, but something's nagging at you.
You ponder and ponder, but you can't quite figure out what it is. Something is missing in your life. Weeks pass. The sensation grows, but the source remains elusive.
The answer will show itself eventually, but in different ways to different people. With me, it came when I took my German shepherd to the university for a romp.
Soon as that rascal hopped from the car, he dashed onto a patch of lush, freshly watered green grass and commenced his insane doggy-on-his-back wiggle.
He was big-time happy, and it hit me--grass.
That was the commodity lacking in my day-to-day wanderings. I'd had it up to here with dust in my eyes, dust in my bologna sandwich, even dust in my crank case, if you know what I mean.
I needed to step on something soft. So the UA Mall became my headquarters. For an urban walk, it has everything. Grass first and foremost. The green soothes.
After that you have the camaraderie. It's where everybody who's anybody goes to walk. You see people you know and want to trade chit-chat with, and you see people you hoped never to see again. But the views are long, so you can see them coming, and there are plenty of really big bushes to leap behind.
Another factor is the spectacle. You can always count on a weirdo or two to keep it interesting. The girl walking her monkey, for instance. Or the guy playing bagpipes. Or the ferret perched upon the shoulder of the proud young man, utterly unaware that same shoulder, to the unimpressed pet, was nothing but an outhouse.
Some time back we had the humorous spectacle of one Abel Duffy camped atop the Student Union clock tower in protest of scopes on Mount Graham.
Just what his wacky statement might accomplish was a mystery to everyone but Abel, but he was a show. He sat up there several days, with his bag of trail mix and assorted seeds, and he had a mini-fan club of cops and passersby standing below to talk to.
When one asked how he went to the bathroom, Abel said he couldn't say, but cautioned everybody to look out below. What a guy. I guess his thinking was you save squirrels by living like one.
From stately Old Main to the puzzling eyesore called Curving Arcades out by Campbell, it's the top city stroll. And you can do just about every step of it on luscious grass.
--Leo Banks
