Along the Way: Winter visitors don’t know what they’re missing

Our friends and neighbors who leave Green Valley for the summer each year don’t know what they’re missing.

They just think they do.

At some point between Little Summer and Big Summer in Southern Arizona, the migration begins. Buicks scuffle for pole-position on I-19 and head out as far north as possible as quickly as possible.

Some of the neighborhoods here get so quiet you could hear a “J” drop in Spanish.

From Montana to Martha’s Vineyard, from Duluth to Kennebunkport, from Ithaca to Iceland, Green Valley “seasonals” retreat, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the scorching, flaming hell of Arizona in the summer.

Or so they presume.

They sit there Up North in grassy backyards, sipping ice tea and other pleasant things, swatting mosquitoes big enough to throw a saddle on, watching the skies for the next round of lightning storms and tornado warnings and taking comfort in not having to deal with triple-digit temperatures.

Well, sure, it’s gets hot down here. It sizzles, in fact.

Air conditioners roar, compressors strain.

And you’re not going to enjoy a window box of hydrangeas open to the afternoon sun at your townhouse off La Canada or in one of the Canoa Ranch neighborhoods.

But you will stand in admiration — if not reverence — at the beauty of the valley between here and Madera Canyon after a monsoon rain.

You’ll stare open-mouthed as a shower approaches like a wall or a curtain sweeping toward town.

You’ll gape in glory as a dazzling neon rainbow suddenly explodes out of nowhere in a nearly black sky.

And you’ll wonder how in the heck it can be so cool in mid-July.

“Give me the splendid sun with all its beams full-dazzling,” Whitman wrote.

OK by me, Walt.

And while you’re at it, give me a big ol’ waffle cone of something cool and sweet at Kokopelli’s Gelato Factory.

The folks who hightail it out of here like panicking javelina each spring don’t know how good those oversized dips of gelato taste in the summer.

They don’t know how good it feels to walk out your front door at 5:30 or 6 in the morning on a Wednesday, Friday and Sunday to pick up the Green Valley News, and stop, yawn and stretch in the coolness that follows a rain shower.

It’s downright idyllic, it’s picturesque, simple and charming to watch the clouds plot a Green Valley rainstorm.

Of course, it’s hard to match the excitement of an oncoming tornado or raging flood up north there in Valhalla, where our seasonal neighbors take refuge from Arizona’s summer heat.

No doubt about it, the prickly pear isn’t a buttercup and the jumping cholla sure ain’t a rose.

But it’s wrong — and wrong-headed — to think of this place strictly in rear-view mirror terms when it comes to summer.

You get used to the heat and look forward to the soothing summer rainstorms.

There are cool winds, awesome landscapes, birds a’twitter, quietude and the feeling at times that you’re the last one left in your neighborhood…

Because so many friends are away, escaping Green Valley.

In their summer tranquility they stay busy by dodging tornadoes and raging rivers, mosquitoes seemingly on steroids, and by calculating how much it will cost in gasoline alone to get back here when life turns cold and ugly in their getaway summer places.

We miss you, friends, and look forward to your return.

Hope you’re having a great summer.

But guess what: It’s not so bad down here.

Corky Simpson, former Tucson Citizen columnist and first inductee into the Arizona Associated Press Sports Editors Hall of Fame, writes a Friday column for the Green Valley News.