This article was first published in the Spring 2009 issue of Edible Phoenix, available on newsstands in the Phoenix area now and by subscription at www.ediblephoenix.com. Edible Phoenix is a member publication of Edible Communities, a network of 51 regional food magazines across the US and Canada.
Last November I found
myself driving a rental car on I-19 heading south from Tucson toward Nogales
with a cranky GPS gadget telling me that the location I was headed for did not
exist. The destination was Rex Ranch, a casual southwestern resort where you
leave your request for a reservation on the caretaker’s cell phone and wait for
her to call you back. Once she does, she takes your name (not your credit card
number) and tells you not to be concerned that you have to drive through the
Santa Cruz River in order to get there — she does it everyday in a Subaru and
unless its monsoon season — there is nothing to worry about. I brought extra
water and some snacks with me just in case.
Since the irritating
voice on the navigation device didn’t seem to know her way any better than I
did, I turned it off, followed my old-fashioned printed directions and took in
the beautiful desert scenery. It had been snowing when I left Santa Fe earlier
in the day and now I was happily soaking up an eighty-degree afternoon. The
Santa Cruz River Valley is often called “the palm of God’s hand,” and has been
a sanctuary to those who have traveled there for centuries. It didn’t take long
for the expansive calm of this landscape to take effect, and before I knew it,
I had made it through the river and was still dry.
Arriving at Rex Ranch, I
was greeted by Gary Nabhan, the ethnobotanist and author who had invited me
here for a conference he and some colleagues were hosting on the farming,
ranching and food folkways that span the U.S. /Mexico borderlands from Texas to
California, called Sabores
Sin Fronteras (Flavors Without
Borders). For three days, conference goers would be immersed in bilingual
workshops, talks and activities — everything from the poetry of Rita Magdaleno,
to mouthwatering histories of cactus fruits, mesquite and wild chiltepin
peppers; panel discussions with ranchers; a keynote by renowned author, Betty
Fussell, who regaled us with stories from her new book, Raising Steaks; and a food festival fieldtrip to Tubac.
Each of these events
celebrated what the heart and soul of Sabores is intended to be: “a regional, bi-national and multi-cultural alliance that
seeks to elucidate, document and celebrate the farming, ranching, foraging and
culinary traditions shared by individuals and communities on both sides of the
international boundary,” according to the University of Arizona’s website for
the Southwest Center, which serves as the official home of Sabores (http://swctr.web.arizona.edu/).
Loosely modeled
on the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), based in Oxford, Mississippi, which
documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South by
producing documentary films, hosting events and publishing compendiums of great
writing, and that “sets a common table where black and white, rich and poor—all
who gather—may consider our history and our future in a spirit of
reconciliation,” Sabores hopes to do the same for the foods
of the Sonoran desert and borderlands.
What struck me most about this diverse group of writers,
scholars, scientists, ranchers, historians and poets was how much we all had in
common. Regardless of whether our first language was English or Spanish,
whether we farmed the land or wrote about it, cooked or raised cattle — we
shared something that truly went beyond borders —an abiding respect for the
land, the people and the authentic culinary traditions of this harsh, yet bountiful,
region we call home.
During one of his talks, Gary Nabhan spoke of how so
many people walk or drive across the desert seeing nothing but wide-open, empty
space. They don’t know how often they are standing on a barren patch of land
with water not far beneath their feet. They don’t know that the dark green line
on the distant horizon is a stand of pecan trees or that the gnarled bushes
alongside the road are mesquite, an edible staple of the desert southwest that
was once more widely used to make flour. There is so much more to this land
than is immediately noticeable. It is abundant and rich and enduring.
But does knowing this about our regional foodshed have any impact on our daily lives? Does any of it matter? I believe it does. If we learn to supplement our diets with native foods that don’t require thousands of gallons of irrigation to survive, it matters. If we learn to appreciate the subtleties of desert — the heat, the soil, the monsoons that fill our rivers, it matters. If we learn and remember the time-honored traditions of the ranchers and foragers those who blazed the road before us, it matters. As people become more and more aware of the locally produced and indigenous foods available to them, there is hope of achieving a more sustainable food future, even in the desert.
