Maybe we didn’t think it through when we decided to take a vacation finally and booked a few days at a rental house near Tubac. I looked at the weather map before we left and saw Thursday’s projected high was 108 degrees. It may be a dry heat, but that’s still pretty hot.
We packed the car with lots of extra water and a cooler full of icy drinks and headed down the highway. By the time we made it to Tubac, it was mid-afternoon and we were getting hungry. We found a restaurant online that sounded good and pulled the car into an empty parking lot. Closed. We looked around and most of the places had hours posted Thursday-Sunday. It hit me that we were off-season tourists taking a vacation when everyone else wanted to hide in their air-conditioned homes and wait for the summer to pass.
Finally, we found a Mexican restaurant with a neon “open” sign and pulled the heavy wood doors. A blast of cool air washed over us. One other couple sat at a table in the corner. “Can we sit outside?” Mike asked the waitress, and I gave him a confused look. “It’s nice in the shade,” he added, and the waitress grabbed two menus and seated us on the patio.
The next morning we got up early and drove to Bisbee, to cross it off my “to-do” list. We drove through towns with giant cottonwood trees and marveled at the sea of green around us. Big plumes of white blossoms rose out of roadside cacti and dry riverbeds wound across the landscape.
We made it into Bisbee, wandered around the historic streets, and peeked into closed shops before walking to Queen Mine. Any place you visit that requires a waiver and a hard hat means the day is about to get interesting. We signed our names and stood in line to get a safety vest, hard hat, and a looping light pendant tossed around our shoulders. A few other folks milled around, waiting in line to climb aboard the “man mover” used to take the miners underground into the century-old tunnels.
The tour guide warned us he’d stop at 150 feet and open the airlock, and that if we wanted to chicken out and walk back to the entrance, we wouldn’t be the first to do so. “I’ve seen grown men run for the opening,” he added, and I looked at Mike over my shoulder. He shrugged.
The train started up with a clang and we jolted forward. As we entered the dark tunnel, a blast of cool air washed over us and all the sounds of the world faded away, other than the clack of the metal wheels over the track.
We got off the train and walked into a huge open stone room or “stope” to learn more about the history of the mine. For a brief moment, it was quiet as we flashed our lights around, looking at the mineral deposits on the mine walls.
I started thinking about how rarely we are somewhere truly silent. It reminded me of the time years ago, when we toured Jewel Cave in South Dakota at the end of April and were the only ones there. The park ranger turned off her flashlight for a minute and we stood in silence in the dark, the only sound was our breathing and the gentle whoosh of cave air around us.
Later that night, we sat on the porch of the rental house and watched the sun set over the mountains and I realized it was quiet again. No dogs barked in the distance and the sound of trucks running up and down I-19 had faded away. We watched the almost full moon rise, the stars and satellites twinkle across the sky, and the hummingbirds fighting over the feeder for their last sip of nectar before bedtime. The night air wasn’t as cool as the mining cave, but the warm evening air made the hot summer sun worthwhile.
