I am sorry to have to admit that I lived in and around New York City for over twenty years. While I adore the American Museum of Naural History, the 86th floor of the Empire State Building (especially at night), Mott Street, Luna Italian restaurant on Mulberry, Shakespeare in the Park, the cobbled streets of Chelsea, the Sidewalk Cafe on East Sixth Street, and numerous other things that exist on the deranged island of Manhattan, enough was enough. New York is exciting, and wiser people than I have already noted that “It has everything.” It is also loud, dirty, confrontational, expensive and extremely aggravating.

During the many years I lived in the city proper there was never, not once, a lull in the nightime hubbub of sirens, boom boxes, car horns, and shouting. And don’t even get me started about the garbage bags on the curb in summer. I was born on East 14th Street, so if you weren’t, don’t knock me for knocking the big, bad city.

In a galaxy far, far away: On the Hudson River with my great friend Anne, pre-September 11.

Being, therefore, something of a New Yorker, a number of my close friends were puzzled or downright disturbed when, at age 42, I announced that I was leaving the City of Madness in order to commence a new life in Tucson.

“You’ll be back with your tail between your legs in sixth months,” one of my good friends prophesied. After the sixth-month period elapsed he rephrased that to: “When will this silly desert adventure end? We miss you.”

Really, it was very sweet.

Well, the truth is, sixty-six months later, I predict that the desert adventure is not going to end. You see, I have gone native. After spending my youth subsisting on bland English food in London, I have acquired a lust for jalapeno hot sauce. I drive a moderately battered pickup truck, own a shotgun, and two cowboy hats. I wear shorts and flip-flops most of of the year, and when the temperature falls below eighty degrees I agree with other desert rats that “It feels chilly.” My garden is full of rescued, transplanted cacti and I honestly believe that tons of Salt River rock and Coronado limestone make for a lovely landscaping feature. Sonoran enchiladas are my favorite food, I march in the All Soul’s Procession every year, and I write a daily blog for TucsonCitizen.com. Arizona, thank you for adopting me!

Modern times: Enjoying some non-destructive target practice in the Arizona boonies. Photograph by Anne Husick.

“If your old punk rock friends could see you now,” a friend commented the other evening. I was sitting on the patio (in shorts and flip-flops of course) drinking some red wine. I had just put out food for my battalion of wild desert hares and they were munching it up, in the company of a family of Gambel’s quail and an antelope squirrel. A red tailed hawk perched on a tree in the distance.

I admit that I spoil my bunnies horribly, but why not? They enjoy my vegetarian organic scraps every evening and I enjoy watching them cavort around the place. I am as far away from my old life as could be, and the tiny part I left behind in New York is just the echo of the bunnyman.