People who meet us here often comment on the stark differences between Vermont and Arizona. Vermont is cold and damp, Arizona is hot and dry. Desert versus Green Mountains. It seems to amaze people that we’d relocate to some place so totally different.

I prefer to think of them as yin and yang. We need both to stay balanced. In Vermont we play on a lake full of water, and all summer I see the rain and clouds passing by. It seems that water is a constant presence, in endless supply. Moss grows near the Airstream and at times the dampness invades to the point that even the furniture seems to go limp. I think longingly of the vast dry sands and succulent saguaros posing in the sun. Then we come to the Sonoran Desert and it is so dry (“how dry is it?”) that I can drink two liters of water a day just sitting at my desk, and still feel thirsty.

But it is not always so. The typical winter day in Tucson features blue-gray clouds that cruise by in the breeze, and temperatures only in the 50s, like today. As I write this I can hear an unusual sound: water dripping off the eaves of the house. We’ve had rain, actual soaking rain, today. There are puddles in the back yard, and I hear a slishing sound as cars drive by. Those are things I associate with the northeast, not here.

And with this rare rain we have gotten a bit of humidity. It’s still a dry day by northeast standards, but there is enough moisture in the air that the mid-50s feel cooler than usual. This has led me to a discovery about our house: it’s chilly.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Our house was built to be cool, defended again 110 degree July days by a reflective roof and thick masonry walls that absorb the cool at night. It has no insulation except a few inches of fiberglass in the ceiling. The windows are single-pane cheapos that the wind whistles through. The floor is concrete covered by slate. There are no windows on the west side, and only two small ones on the east side. Southern exposures are protected by overhangs. In short, everything about this house is designed to feel cool.

That’s all fine ten months out of the year. But when the temperature drops and the humidity rises, it feels like a drafty old stone castle, and running the furnace seems futile. It can heat the air, but it can never overcome the stored coolness in eight-inch-thick adobe block walls. I am fighting the urge to run out and buy lots of thick wool rugs for the floors, and to crank up the heat to 72. With the windows we have at present, and the general leakiness of the house (I’m talking about air infiltration, not rain), running the furnace more would heat the local neighborhood more than the house.

Window replacement on the house doesn’t pay here, because the heating season is too short. If we replace the windows it will be for comfort and convenience rather than energy savings. We probably won’t heat the house for more than a few days this winter, and we don’t expect to run the air conditioning at all since we’ll be traveling during the warmest months.

Up in Prescott AZ, where our Airstream buddy Rich C is living, they are getting occasional snow. Rich is up around 5,000 feet and things are quite different up there. People associate Arizona with sunshine and desert, but in reality half the state is above 4,000 feet and it is covered in green forests that are quite a bit cooler than the southern half of the state. Flagstaff, at 7,000 feet, has a climate more like Denver than Tucson. People are skiing up there right now.

This is why our Airstream travel routes are quite limited this time of year. We stay south of a line defined by the Mogollon Rim (muggy-on), which is why our travels are focused on places in southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, southern and coastal California, Mexico, and west Texas.

Speaking of which, our next Airstream trip is the day after tomorrow. We have to stop doing house stuff and get on the job of prepping the trailer for the trip, but it’s hard to stop the momentum.   Handy Randy showed up to work on the bathroom tile that was failing, and a guy from the gas plumbers showed up to scope out the job.   Another guy came by to measure for window shades, too.   Tomorrow the gas plumbing begins in earnest, and I’m expecting another contractor to stop by to estimate some masonry work.   Also, FedEx LTL (Less Than Truckload) says we may get 213 lbs of toilets tomorrow. Wheee.   It will be a busy day.