I came to the Arizona deserts from the generously watered coves and hollers of the Kentucky hills where songbirds flew across dewy, fern-clad hillsides. A single square mile of forest there might yield a 125 varieties of trees. My first job in my new home required me to crisscross the state. I drove over a thousand miles a week from the New Mexico border to the Colorado River. I loved the breathless vistas and clean horizons, but I suffered dramatically from environmental shock. I longed for the softening effect of a hardwood tree line along the red rock arroyos, and the relief of rioting wildflowers at the bare roadside. I found myself anticipating the appearance of lone, stunted cottonwood trees sometimes 50 miles apart. I made do with the subtle gray shades of rabbit brush and the slate sage scattered across the open mesas. And, I made a new friend—the buffalo gourd.
Cucurbita foetidissama is from the same family as melons and cucumbers. Where there’s not enough moisture to support any other plant life, it thrives. The leaves are perfect triangles, folded on the bias and tapered like an Amazon’s spearhead, graduated in size from a foot long down to just a couple of inches in length. The surface of the leaves is rough and reminds me, for all the world, of the rasp of a calf’s tongue. Tendrils at the end of the vine will let it climb if it has a support. The vine bears abundant fruit that are perfectly round and about the size of a hardball. They are rich green with lighter green vertical stripes. They ripen into globes of perfect lemon yellow. The flesh is formidably bitter. Nursing Pima women reputedly weaned their babies by applying its bitterness to their breasts, but once the seeds are cleaned, they are very nutritious and tasty. They contain 35 percent protein and 50 percent fat. The root forms an edible starchy tuber that may weigh several hundred pounds. Scientists are researching it as a food crop in the Saudi Arabian deserts.
I developed an admiration for the buffalo gourd’s bold tenacity—how it spread its vine on the sizzling sand where nothing else could grow and displayed its blue-green foliage like a like a calligrapher’s symbol for “life in the wilderness.” It came to represent to me the focus and toughness and optimism required to survive in this sparsely watered land that had become my new home. During a challenging time, I had a significant dream that featured a vibrant gourd vine. I interpreted it as a symbol of success.
One day near Kingman 20 years ago, I pulled to the side of the road and picked up a gourd. I brought it back to my Doney Park acres. Near the drainage field of the septic tank, I ground the yellow globe into the cinders like a june bug with my boot heel. From that grew a lush thicket the size of my living room. My planting became a favorite spot of the chicken flock. Each afternoon upon their release from captivity they would race to the buffalo gourd vine and scratch for the bugs that lived under it. Then they would take a dust bath and sleep in its shade.
As we prepared for our annual harvest party recently, my son in law cleaned up about the yard. Not realizing how I prized my buffalo gourd, he just saw a noxious weed. He took a hoe to the plant. He wiped his sweaty brow and proudly pointed out his progress. It grew back like a 1950s sci-fi movie monster. A month later you wouldn’t guess it had been leveled to the ground.
Yesterday I poured a glass of the Irish and escaped my hot kitchen for a chair in the back yard. It’s been years since a monsoon has lingered so gloriously into the autumn. A soft rain hit the needles of the tall pines and exploded into a fine mist that hung in the air above me and sifted down, oh so gently, on my upturned face. I pulled the mountain distilled air deep into my lungs. The buffalo gourd lifted a thousand folded hands and joined me in appreciation of the place we live. I blessed the moist incense of pinion pine and gazed at my bitter vineyard. I toasted its tenacious example.
